Isabelle Colombet

Assistant Hospitalo Universitaire, INSERM ERM202, Santé Publique Informatique Médicale, Université Paris V, and Département d'Informatique Médicale, Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou

Isabelle Colombet is a clinical epidemiologist and cardiologist, working in the Department of Public Health and Medical Informatics at Université Paris V and Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou. She is currently working on a qualitative study to evaluate a web-based decision aid system for medical prevention called ESPER, as well as an experimental study to evaluate a decision aid to prescribe oral anticoagulants.

What prompted you to submit a paper to a BioMed Central journal?

I am taking advantage of open-access journals on the net all the time in my research work and I found several BMC journals which, I feel, are in the scope of my work. I first heard of BioMed Central thanks to a PubMed search, and was later encouraged to publish in a BioMed Central journal by the example of colleagues from other countries.

What was your assessment of the electronic submission and peer-review process?

I appreciated the process of electronic submission, which was very easy, quick and clear. I also appreciated the peer-review process, which helped me to improve my paper. The association of speed and quality in the peer-review and publishing processes is particularly interesting and valuable.

What do you think you gained from publishing in an open access journal?

I think that open access increases and diversifies the number and quality of readers, giving access to a lot of different research communities. It can foster instant exchanges and communication between researchers. In my opinion, these exchanges represent a potential gain for the quality of research. The pre-requisite for this gain is to keep a high quality peer-review process.