In conjunction with Mental Health Awareness Week (21st-27th May) BMC Medicine wants to highlight mood disorders such as unipolar and bipolar depression. To find out more please visit our blog.

Edanz have created the BioMed Central Author Academy, an online learning resource for authors on writing and publishing scientific journals, which aims to work with authors to improve the quality of manuscripts sent for peer-review.

The program has been announced for the 2nd biennial Challenges in Malaria Research conference, which takes place in Basel, Switzerland from 10th-12th October 2012. Visit the conference website for further information.

The Metabolism, Diet and Disease 2012 conference, hosted by BioMed Central in association with its journals BMC Biology and BMC Medicine, which takes place in Washington DC, USA from 29-31 May 2012.

The winners for our 6th Annual Research Awards have been announced. All our winners were awarded for excellence in scientific research or for their individual contribution to open access research. Congratulations to all.

Cila, that launched last week, is a new open access peer-reviewed journal that focuses on publishing high quality basic and translational research on the biology of cila and diseases associated with ciliary dysfunction.

BMC Ophthalmology will be attending this year's The Royal College of Ophthalmologists Annual Congress in Liverpool from the 15th-17th May 2012. Over the duration of three days the UK’s largest ophthalmology conference and will include various poster sessions and workshops plus a wide array of talks from world renowned experts in their fields.

BMC journals Health Research Policy and Systems, International Journal of Mental Health Systems and Population Health Metrics have recently been accepted by Thomson Reuters for impact factor tracking and are all due to receive their first impact factors in June 2013.

To view full details on indexing of all BioMed Central journals are available here.

Timothy Caulfield, Shawn Harmon and Yann Joly investigate Open science versus commercialization in this first Open Debate published in Genome Medicine - come and join the debate.

Editor-in-Chief, Professor Akira Yasukouchi, Kyushu University, Japan Journal of Physiological Anthropology (JPA) has now transferred to BioMed Central's portfolio of open access journals. JPA is an official journal of the Japan Society of Physiological Anthropology and publishes research on the physiological functions of modern mankind, with an emphasis on the bio-cultural effects on human adaptability to current environment.

The nomination deadline for BioMed Central's 6th Annual Research Awards has been extended to Friday 27th January 2012. These awards celebrate some of the most groundbreaking open access research that was published in BioMed Central's 220+ journals last year.

Open Access Week, now entering its fifth year, is a global event which promotes the benefits of open access publishing. This year, BioMed Central will be celebrating the week with a strong 'global' focus spanning an impressive four continents.

This special issue is guest edited by Dr. Jay Shendure and features a collection of commissioned, topical reviews and opinions, written by leaders in the field themed around exome sequencing. Genome Biology’s first podcast coincides with the special issue and features talks with Jim Lupski, Jay Shendure, Elaine Mardis and Joris Veltman about the challenges of identifying disease genes using exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing.

Infectious Agents and Cancer has published the abstracts from the First Biennial Conference on the Science of Global Prostate Cancer Disparities in Black Men, Jacksonville, FL, USA. 27-29 August 2010

Clinical and Translational Allergy has published the abstracts from the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Meeting 2011, Venice, Italy. 17-19 February 2011

The Journal of Biomedical Semantics has published the proceedings from the Second Louhi Workshop on Text and Data Mining of Health Documents, Los Angeles, CA, USA. 05 June 2010.

BMC Neuroscience has published the meeting abstracts from the Twentieth Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting: CNS*2011, Stockholm, Sweden. 23-28 July 2011

Open Access Africa 2011 will be held at Kwame Nkrumah University Of Science And Technology (KNUST) from 25-26 October during Open Access Week to discuss open access in an African context.

Come meet the BioMed Central team at Plant Biology, Minneapolis, Minnesota at Booth #401 from 6 – 9 August.

Critical Care has published the meeting abstracts of the Sixth International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine for Latin America. São Paulo, Brazil. 22–25 June 2011.

Diagnostic Pathology, in an exciting new development, is the first of BioMed Central’s journals to provide virtual glass slides as an valuable addition for readers to its articles. Authors can choose to include virtual versions of their glass slides in their articles for free and these will be linked to the main article. For an example of a virtual slide please see here and for more information please see here.

BMC Proceedings has published the meeting abstracts of the International Conference on Prevention & Infection Control (ICPIC 2011) Geneva, Switzerland. 29 June – 2 July 2011.

The program for Beyond the Genome 2011 has now been made available on the conference website. Organised by Genome Biology in conjunction with Genome Medicine the conference will discuss key areas of post-genomic research in biology and medicine. Register here.

Immunity & Ageing has published the Proceedings from Predictive Diagnostics and Prevention of Chronic Degenerative Disease. Bologna, Italy. 4 December 2009

BioMed Central is creating an Open Access and the Developing World Blog Special ahead of the release of the first issue of the Open Access and the Developing World newsletter. Sign up to receive the latest open access news.

BMC Bioinformatics has published the proceedings from the 21st International Conference on Genome Informatics (GIW2010). Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China. 16-18 December 2010.

Cerebrospinal Fluid Research has published the meeting abstracts from the 54th Annual Meeting of the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida. Vancouver, Canada. 7-10 July 2010.

Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology has published the abstracts from Knowledge transfer in primary care: the model of allergic respiratory diseases. Quebec City, Canada. 7 May 2010.

BMC International Health and Human Rights has published a collection of articles on Health innovation in sub-Saharan Africa.

Malaria Journal has published the proceedings from 5th Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Pan-African Malaria Conference. Nairobi, Kenya. 2-6 November 2009.

Genome Medicine is conducting a short survey to gather feedback on how to develop the journal further. On completing the survey you will automatically be entered into a prize draw to win an Apple iPad 2, the winner of which will be announced shortly.

BMC Ecology and Carbon Balance and Management would like to invite you to submit your manuscript to a new thematic series entitled 'Forests: Looking to the Future' which will be co-published by both journals.

BMC Proceedings has recently published perceptions and views on public health proceedings at the Fifteenth Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union.

Come and meet the BioMed Central team at ALA in New Orleans, LA from 24 – 27 Jun and Booths #853 and #855.

BioMed Central has launched Clinical Proteomics, with Dr Daniel Chan as Editor-in-Chief. Clinical Proteomics covers a wide range of topics within the clinical proteomics field.

Malaria Journal has launched an exciting new series on travelers' malaria. The series provides an ideal forum for discussing diagnosis, treatment and surveillance of malaria associated with travelling.

The second Open Access Africa conference, in association with our partner charity Computer Aid International, will be held at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), Tanzania 25-26 October during International Open Access Week.The conference is free to attend but registration is necessary.

For all the latest open access news and developments from low-income countries sign up to receive our e-newsletter.

Open Access Africa is tweeting from @OA_Africa. Follow us for all information on the upcoming conference and more open access news from the developing world.

Come meet the BioMed Central team at NASIG, St. Louis, MO from 2 – 5 June.

BMC Medicine is seeking submissions of original research offering novel translational and clinical insights into stem cell therapies, to be presented as part of an ongoing stem cell series.

A further five BioMed Central journals have been accepted for Impact Factor tracking by Thomson Reuters (ISI).

BioMed Central has partnered with Edanz to provide authors with English language support from expert scientists throughout the peer review process.

Our mascot, Gulliver Turtle, is now on Twitter. He's funnier than we are so make sure to follow him too for the latest open access news.

The winners for our 5th Annual Research Awards have been announced. All our winners were awarded for excellence in scientific research or for their individual contribution to open access research. Congratulations to all.

Irish Veterinary Journal, the official journal of Veterinary Ireland, has re-launched with BioMed Central and published its first open access articles led by Editor-in-Chief Michael Doherty.

Arthritis Research & Therapy has published the first articles in a new review collection which aims to provide an in-depth discussion of recent developments in the pathogenesis, treatment and genetic background of four autoimmune rheumatic diseases.

Sign up to our newsletter and receive the latest open access news from the developing world.

BMC Bioinformatics has published the proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Data and Text Mining in Biomedical Informatics (DTMBio) 2010.

Meet us at Booth #132 in Philadelphia, PA from 30 March to 1 April.

We will be exhibiting at Booth #1965 in Orlando, FL from 3 - 6 April.

Meet the BioMed Central team at Booth #57 in Harrogate, UK from 4 - 6 April.

Our annual Research Awards recognize the excellence in research published across our journals in the past year. Shortlists for the Biology, Medicine and Open Data Awards have now been announced.

12 open access journals were acquired from Hindawi Publishing Corporation, including the International Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology (IJPE).

Irish Veterinary Journal's submission system has now launched with BioMed Central and is open for submissions. The journal is supported by the society Veterinary Ireland.

Register now for Wiring the Brain and SCBA's 13th International Symposium 'Bioscience for the 21st century: Emerging Frontiers and Evolving Concepts'.

Journal of Nanobiotechnology has been accepted for tracking by Thomson Reuters (ISI).

Conference registration is now open and speakers have been elected for Frontiers of Retrovirology 2011, 3-5 October in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Register now for Beyond the Genome 2011, 19-22 September in Washington DC.

To further promote Open Data and data sharing, BMC Research Notes has launched a series of articles on data standardization, sharing and publication. Contributions from all fields of biology and medicine are welcome.

Come meet the BioMed Central team in Milan, Italy at Bibliostar 2011, 3-4 Mar. We will be exhibiting at Booth #C4.

BioMed Central will be exhibiting at Booth #654 in Vienna, Austria at ECR, 3-7 Mar.

These changes reflect an expansion of the journals' scopes to address the needs of their respective audiences. Read about these exciting changes in the recent Editorials for: Chiropractic & Manual Therapies, Fluids and Barriers of the CNS and Vascular Cell.

Videos, slideshows and photos from Open Access Africa 2010 are now available to view online.

Come meet the BioMed Central team at WONCA Asia, 21-24 Feb, Cebu City, Philippines. Find us at Booth #32.

Skeletal Muscle publishes articles investigating molecular mechanisms underlying the biology of skeletal muscle. The emphasis is on understanding adult skeletal muscle, its maintenance, and its interactions with non-muscle cell types and regulatory modulators. EiCs: Kevin Campbell (U. Iowa); David Glass (Novartis) and Michael Rudnicki (U. Ottawa).

Neural Systems & Circuits publishes exciting research on how individual neurons interact at the network level to perform interesting computations. EiCs: Peter Latham (UCL) and Venki Murthy (Harvard).

BMC Bioinformatics has published the proceedings from the 21st International Conference on Genome Informatics (GIW2010). Hangzhou, People's Republic of China. 16-18 December 2010

BMC Proceedings has published the meeting abstracts from Immunodiagnosis of Tuberculosis: New Questions, New Tools. Virginia, VA, USA. 21-23 September 2008

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research has published the meeting abstracts from the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists Annual Conference 2010. Bournemouth, UK. 21-23 October 2010