At BMC we have a dedicated marketing team that can help you promote your journal. Your Journal Contact can help you get involved with some of the marketing initiatives outlined below.
Some of the things marketing can help you with include:
- Increasing the recognition and awareness of your journal on an international scale
- Helping you with journal advocacy initiatives
- Showcasing your journal and ensuring it reaches a wide audience
You can find the benefits of publishing with BMC here.
For further information and guidance on championing your journal we encourage you to attend our Fundamentals for Editors: On-Demand webinar series by clicking on the following link:
Championing Your Journal and Attracting High Quality Submissions
Marketing strategy
At BMC we pride ourselves on providing a supportive and accessible service throughout the publishing process. We are committed to ensuring high standards in publication times, speed, quality, and impact are met. All BMC's journals have certain strengths which you can read about here.
Some journals have their own particular features and strengths, for example:
- The specific ethos and scope of the journal
- Editorial Board - be aware of the size, skills and reach of your Editorial Board
- Journal Level Metrics – we display a range of journal level metrics (where available) on journal websites
- Particularly fast peer review
- Involvement in peer review initiatives
- Inclusion in subject specific indexing services
Types of marketing activity
The following sections focus on marketing activities that we recommend you use either in collaboration with your journal contact and the BMC marketing team.
Using BMC's marketing team
BMC's marketing team has a program of call-for-papers email campaigns, focusing on particular journals within the portfolio at any one time. You may be invited to contribute to a range of email call for papers, which may include:
- Article mailings - focusing on a recent article/articles in a particular area of interest. These are highly targeted to ensure that the articles will be of interest to recipients. These emails are best used to attract submissions in a specific subject area
- Special occasion mailings - these are sent if, for example, the journal, or an article published in it, receives some accolade or award, providing a special reason to contact potential authors and readers
Press releases
BMC offers a press release service for articles of broad general or scientific interest. Please see Article promotion for more information on this.
Conferences, meetings and presentations
BMC regularly attends large conferences with an exhibit booth. The booth will carry literature promoting all journals in the relevant subject area.
Promote the journal yourself at conferences
We encourage you to market the journal at conferences you and/or your colleagues attend. You can do this in a number of ways:
- Attend conferences and place marketing material on display tables and poster boards
- Organise a presentation about the journal and/or open access at the conference
- Set up meetings with individuals or groups of researchers to discuss the benefits of publishing in the journal
- If you are presenting at a conference, we can provide you with a promotional slide tailored to the journal to display at the end of your presentation
- Conferences are also an excellent opportunity to get the Editorial Board together for a meeting to discuss the journal's progress
Online advertising
There are a number of advertising options available:
- Banner adverts. We produce 'banner adverts' for the journal to place on BMC's website and target it to individuals in your subject area
- Email article alerts. Registrants of BMC can elect to receive journal article alerts or receive regular email alerts of their stored search results. Results from our author surveys have shown that one of the key reasons for publishing in a BMC journal is having previously read an article in a BMC journal. We recommend highlighting this facility to peers in the field
- Email signature. We recommend that you change your email signature once in a while to alert your email recipients to benefits of publishing in the journal