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BioMed Central (BMC) is a United Kingdom-based, for-profit scientific
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
publisher that produces over 250
scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as s ...
s. All its journals are published online only. BioMed Central describes itself as the first and largest open access science publisher. It was founded in 2000 and has been owned by Springer, now
Springer Nature Springer Nature or the Springer Nature Group is a German-British academic publishing company created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macm ...
, since 2008.


History

BioMed Central was founded in 2000 as part of the Current Science Group (now Science Navigation Group, SNG), a nursery of scientific publishing companies. SNG chairman
Vitek Tracz Vitek Tracz (born 31 May 1940) is a London-based entrepreneur who has been involved in science publishing, pharmaceutical information and mobile phone-based navigation. Early life Tracz was born in 1940 in Poland. He studied Mathematics in War ...
developed the concept for the company after NIH director
Harold Varmus Harold Eliot Varmus (born December 18, 1939) is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center. He was a ...
's
PubMed Central PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. As one of the major research databases developed by the National Center f ...
concept for open-access publishing was scaled back. The first director of the company was
Jan Velterop Johannes (Jan) Josephus Marinus Velterop (born 18 March 1949) is a science publisher. Education Born in The Hague, Netherlands, he was originally a marine geophysicist and became a science publisher in the mid-1970s. Career Velterop started hi ...
.
Chemistry Central Chemistry Central was a academic publishing, scientific publisher specializing in Open access (publishing), open access publications in chemistry. It was established on August 22, 2006 and was operated by BioMed Central. Along with BioMed Central ...
was established in 2006 and the
PhysMath Central PhysMath Central was an imprint of Springer Science+Business Media, publishing online open-access scientific journals in physics and mathematics and operated by BioMed Central. It was active from 2007 until 2011. Journals published were: * ''P ...
journal imprint in 2007. In 2002, the company introduced
article processing charge An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors. Most commonly, it is involved in making a work available as open access (OA), in either a full OA journal or in a hybrid journal. ...
s, and these have since been the primary source of revenue. In 2007 Yale University Libraries stopped subsidizing BioMed Central article processing charges for Yale researchers. In October 2008, it was announced that BioMed Central (along with Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central) had been acquired by
Springer Science+Business Media Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...
, the second largest STM publisher. The Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central brands have since been retired. In November 2008, BioMed Central became an official supporting organisation of
Healthcare Information For All Healthcare Information For All (HIFA) is a global campaign and community of practice of health professionals, publishers, librarians, technologists, researchers, policymakers, and patient representatives, working to improve the availability and u ...
. Following the merger of BMC into
Springer Nature Springer Nature or the Springer Nature Group is a German-British academic publishing company created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macm ...
, BMC journals were gradually converted to the general Springer Nature software. The software migration meant the loss of several features, often related to open science requirements, like the ability to download a machine-readable version of the paper (in XML format), direct download of PDF files and the ability to read articles without
cookies A cookie is a baked or cooked snack or dessert that is typically small, flat and sweet. It usually contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of oil, fat, or butter. It may include other ingredients such as raisins, oats, chocolate chips, nuts ...
.


Journals

BioMed Central's flagship journals include ''
BMC Bioinformatics ''BMC Bioinformatics'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering bioinformatics and computational biology published by BioMed Central. It was established in 2000, and has been one of the fastest growing and most successful journals ...
'', ''
BMC Biology ''BMC Biology'' is an online open access scientific journal that publishes original, peer-reviewed research in all fields of biology, together with opinion and comment articles. The publication was established in 2003. The journal is part of a s ...
'', ''
BMC Medicine ''BMC Medicine'' is a peer-reviewed electronic-only medical journal published since 2003 by BioMed Central which is part of Springer Nature. It is described as "the flagship medical journal of the BMC series. An open access, open peer-reviewed gene ...
'', ''
Genome Biology ''Genome Biology'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering research in genomics. It was established in 2000 and is published by BioMed Central. The chief editor is currently Andrew Cosgrove (BioMed Central, New York). Abstracti ...
'' and ''
Genome Medicine ''Genome Medicine'' is a peer-reviewed open-access medical journal with a focus on medical genetics. It was established in 2009 as a companion journal to ''Genome Biology'' and is published continuously by BioMed Central. The editor-in-chief is Rab ...
''. It also produces the BMC Series of journals covering the fields of biology and medicine. Most of the other journals published by BioMed Central are owned and produced independently by societies and academic editorial boards, with BioMed Central providing the hosting, publishing platform and marketing. All journals are published online; some of the flagship journals have in the past also been available as print subscriptions, such as ''
Arthritis Research & Therapy ''Arthritis Research & Therapy'', formerly ''Arthritis Research'', is a peer-reviewed open access medical journal covering the field of cellular and molecular mechanisms of arthritis, musculoskeletal conditions, and systemic autoimmune rheumatic d ...
''. Publications in BioMed Central journals are, immediately upon publication, released under the Creative Commons "Attribution" license which grants permission to reuse publications and produce derivative work. The only exceptions to this (as of 2010) were the flagship journals, which reserved rights on review and commentary content; those articles were available to purchase on a subscription or on a
pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program guid ...
basis, becoming freely available (but not fully
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
) to all after six months; however, as of January 2015, "no subscription fees apply to these journals or to any articles published in them."


Open peer review

In 2001, BioMed Central was the first publisher to carry out
open peer review Open peer review is the various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the term is applied are: # Open identities: Authors and reviewers are aware of each other's ident ...
as default, by openly posting named peer reviewer reports alongside published articles as part of a 'pre-publication history' for all medical journals in the BMC series. With currently 70 BMC journals operating fully open peer review.


BMC Series

The BMC Series is a collection of several dozen online research journals published by BioMed Central. Like all other BioMed Central journals, they have a policy of open access to the research articles they publish. Between them, they cover all major subject areas within biology and medicine. Two of the journals, ''
BMC Biology ''BMC Biology'' is an online open access scientific journal that publishes original, peer-reviewed research in all fields of biology, together with opinion and comment articles. The publication was established in 2003. The journal is part of a s ...
'' and ''
BMC Medicine ''BMC Medicine'' is a peer-reviewed electronic-only medical journal published since 2003 by BioMed Central which is part of Springer Nature. It is described as "the flagship medical journal of the BMC series. An open access, open peer-reviewed gene ...
'', have a broad scope, and aim to publish particularly significant research. A third journal, ''BMC Research Notes'', publishes scientifically valid research outputs that cannot be considered as full research or methodology articles across all scientific and clinical disciplines, while ''BMC Proceedings'' publishes conference proceedings. The other journals specialise on a particular subject area. Due to their free licensing, images from BMC journals can be reused in other places. Most BMC Series journals have an
impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ...
. As of 2016, for the 53 journals with impact factors, ''BMC Biology'' had the highest at 7.98.


Databases

The company also has hosted biomedical databases, including th
ISRCTN registry
(previously Current Controlled Trials), a Primary Registry of
clinical trials Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel vaccines, drugs, dietar ...
in th
WHO Registry Network
The Biology Image Library and the Cases Database, a database of medical
case report In medicine, a case report is a detailed report of the symptoms, signs, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of an individual patient. Case reports may contain a demographic profile of the patient, but usually describe an unusual or novel occurrence ...
s, were closed in 2014. The company also provided hosting for institutional repositories of publications based on the
DSpace DSpace is an open source repository software package typically used for creating open access repositories for scholarly and/or published digital content. While DSpace shares some feature overlap with content management systems and document managem ...
platform under the brand Open Repository. The Open Repository activity was sold to Atmire in 2016.


See also

*
Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association The Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) is a non-profit trade association of open access journal and book publishers. Having started with an exclusive focus on open access journals, it has since expanded its activities to include ...
, of which BioMed Central is a founding member * ''Trials'' (journal)


References


Further reading

* * * * Chillingworth, Mark (9 August 2004). "BioMed Central Seeks Open Access Advice." ''
Information World Review ''Information World Review'' was an English monthly trade magazine covering the information industry. Established in 1976, it was initially published by Learned Information Ltd and subsequently by VNU Business Publications and finally by Bizmedia ...
''. * * Accessed July 17, 2005. * Galbraith, Kate (July 11, 2003)
"British Researchers Get to Publish in 90 Online Medical Journals Free"
''
The Chronicle of Higher Education ''The Chronicle of Higher Education'' is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals (staff members and administrators). A subscription is required to rea ...
'' 49 (44): A28. * Gavaghan, Helen (June 30, 2003)
"Open-Access Publishing Finds Official Favor"
'' The Scientist.'' Accessed July 17, 2005. * * Loxton, Liz (May 1, 2003). "NHS Information Project Launched." ''
Information World Review ''Information World Review'' was an English monthly trade magazine covering the information industry. Established in 1976, it was initially published by Learned Information Ltd and subsequently by VNU Business Publications and finally by Bizmedia ...
.'' * MacLeod, Donald (June 17, 2003)
"Publish and Be Free"
''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''. Verified availability July 17, 2005. * Peel, John (February 2000)
"BioMed Central"
''
D-Lib Magazine ''D-Lib Magazine'' was an online magazine dedicated to digital library research and development. Past issues are available free of charge. The publication was financially supported by contributions from the D-Lib Alliance. Prior to April 2006, th ...
'' 6 (2). Accessed July 17, 2005. * (September 3, 2001)
"BioMed Central Launches 12 New Author-Initiated Research E-Journals"
''
Information Today Information Today, Inc., is an American publishing company. It publishes Internet and technology magazines, newsletters, books, directories and online products. Information Today was previously known as Learned Information, Inc. Learned Informat ...
'' 18 (9): 24–25. Accessed July 17, 2005. * Shearer, Kathleen (January 2002)
"BioMed Central: An Alternative to Scholarly Publishing (CARL/ABRC Backgrounder Series No. 4)"
Ottawa: Canadian Association of Research Libraries. Accessed July 17, 2005. * Suber, Peter (September 6, 2001)

. ''Free Online Scholarship Newsletter.'' * Watson, Linda A., Ivan S. Login, and Jeffrey M. Burns (2003)
"Exploring New Ways to Publish: A Library-Faculty Partnership"
''Journal of the Medical Library Association'' 91 (2): 245–247. Accessed July 17, 2005. * Young, Jeffrey R (January 18, 2002). "Publisher of Free Online Science Journal Charges Authors a "Processing Fee"". ''
The Chronicle of Higher Education ''The Chronicle of Higher Education'' is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals (staff members and administrators). A subscription is required to rea ...
'' 48 (19): A36.


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Biomed Central Academic publishing companies Companies based in the London Borough of Camden Digital media publishers of the United Kingdom Open access publishers Publishing companies established in 2000 Springer Science+Business Media imprints