Copyright

Research articles

• Copyright on any research article in a journal published by BioMed Central is retained by the author(s).
• Authors grant BioMed Central a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
• Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.
• The BioMed Central Copyright and License Agreement (identical to the Creative Commons Attribution License) formalizes these and other terms and conditions of publishing research articles.
• In accordance with our Open Data policy, the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication waiver applies to all published data in BioMed Central open access articles

Other articles

• In general, authors retain copyright for any article that is published with open access but are asked to assign copyright to the publisher for articles that are not.

Authors' certification

In submitting a research article ('article') to any of the journals published by BioMed Central Ltd ('BioMed Central') authors are requested to certify that:

They are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements.

They warrant, on behalf of themselves and their co-authors, that:

• the article is original, has not been formally published in any other peer-reviewed journal, is not under consideration by any other journal and does not infringe any existing copyright or any other third party rights;
• they are the sole author(s) of the article and have full authority to enter into this agreement and in granting rights to BioMed Central are not in breach of any other obligation. If the law requires that the article be published in the public domain, they will notify BioMed Central at the time of submission;
• the article contains nothing that is unlawful, libellous, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of contract or of confidence or of commitment given to secrecy;
• they have taken due care to ensure the integrity of the article. To their - and currently accepted scientific - knowledge all statements contained in it purporting to be facts are true and any formula or instruction contained in the article will not, if followed accurately, cause any injury, illness or damage to the user.
• they agree to all terms of the BioMed Central Copyright and License Agreement and Open Data policy.