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About BMC Proceedings

Aims and scope | Open access | Publication charges | Indexing services | Publication and peer review process | Production process | Reprints | Editorial policies | Citing articles in BMC Proceedings | Why publish your article in BMC Proceedings?

This page includes information about the aims and scope of BMC Proceedings, editorial policies, open access and article-processing charges, the peer review process and other information.

Aims & scope

BMC Proceedings is an online, open access journal publishing proceedings of conferences, including both peer-reviewed full-length articles and collections of meeting abstracts. Devoted specifically to conference publications, including large collections of articles, meetings of specialized interest and conferences of a cross- or multi-disciplinary nature, each collection is published as a supplement. Content is not restricted to any particular discipline within biomedicine.

Open access

All articles published by BMC Proceedings are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

Authors of articles published in BMC Proceedings are the copyright holders of their articles and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement.

Publication charges

Open access publishing is not without cost. BMC Proceedings therefore levies charges for all supplements accepted for publication. Publication charges are quoted for publication of supplements on a case-by-case basis, and will depend largely on the number of articles or abstracts to be published. Publication charges for articles in supplements cannot be covered by BioMed Central membership and waivers cannot be granted. Requests for quotations should be directed to supplements@biomedcentral.com.

Indexing services

All articles published in BMC Proceedings are included in:

  • Google Scholar
  • PubMed
  • PubMed Central

The full text of all research articles is deposited in digital archives including e-Depot (The Netherlands).

Preparation and submission of manuscripts

A supplement organizer is appointed for each conference collection, and will distribute the Instructions for Authors to those invited to submit articles. Manuscripts should be submitted directly to the supplement organizer and not via BioMed Central’s online submission system.

Publication and peer review process

Publication of research articles by BMC Proceedings is dependent primarily on their scientific validity and coherence as judged by our external expert editors and/or peer reviewers, who will also assess whether the writing is comprehensible and whether the work represents a useful contribution to the field.

BMC Proceedings allows Supplement Editors to oversee peer review of articles once an outline of the procedure (which must be compliant with BioMed Central’s standard procedures) and an academic board is approved by BioMed Central. BioMed Central will hold copies of reviews on file to ensure that rigorous standards of peer review are maintained.

Publication of individual articles in supplements to BMC Proceedings is dependent primarily on their scientific validity and coherence as judged by the Supplement Editors and peer reviewers, who will also assess whether the writing is comprehensible and whether the work represents a useful contribution to the field. The Series Editor retains overall editorial control of the Supplement content at all times and may request changes, corrections, rejections or withdrawals where articles do not meet Journal standards. Content proposals for BMC Proceedings will be analyzed by the Series Editor to assess the suitability of the content for publication. Proposals should be directed to supplements@biomedcentral.com in the first instance. In order to reach a decision about suitability, BioMed Central will need to receive the following information:

  • information about the meeting (title, location, dates, program, web address, expected number of delegates, any other relevant details)
  • the type of content to be submitted (full articles, short articles, abstracts)
  • the estimated number of articles/abstracts to be submitted for publication
  • the approximate length (word count) of each article/abstract (if known)
  • a sample of previously published proceedings (if available)
  • a description of the review process to be undertaken prior to submission (note that BioMed Central will provide peer review guidelines)
  • an estimation of when the articles/abstracts would be ready for submission
  • names of proposed Supplement Editors and review committee (if available)
  • print requirements (if any) including quantity and deadline for receipt of copies
BioMed Central aims to provide a decision about suitability within two weeks of an initial request.

Reviewers preparing reports on articles to be published in BMC Proceedings should not return reports to BioMed Central, but should submit these to the organising group for the proceedings. Any queries regarding reviews for BMC Proceedings can be directed to BioMed Central by email: supplements@biomedcentral.com.

Production process

All content will be published in full-text and fully formatted PDF versions on the journal's website.

Supplement organizers should be aware that in order to keep publication costs down BioMed Central will expect that much of the administration will be handled by the supplement organizers.

This will involve:

  • ensuring that all article submissions are rigorously peer reviewed, and that copies of all reviewers' comments are deposited with BioMed Central
  • distributing BioMed Central's instructions for authors and copyright and license agreement
  • collecting the articles and submitting these as a batch by agreement with BioMed Central
  • providing BioMed Central with evidence that all authors have agreed to our copyright and license policy
  • ensuring that authors have checked the full-text version of each article
  • providing any corrections that may be necessary to BioMed Central
  • checking and confirming that corrections have been completed satisfactorily

Reprints

High-quality, bound reprints can be purchased for all articles published. Please see our reprints website for further information about ordering reprints.

Editorial policies

Any manuscript, or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Information on duplicate/overlapping publications can be found here. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

Correspondence concerning articles published in BMC Proceedings is encouraged. A 'post a comment' feature is available on all articles published by BMC Proceedings. Comments will be moderated by the editorial office (see our Comment policy for further information) and linked to the full-text version of the article, if suitable.

Editorial standards

BioMed Central is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and endorses the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Policy Statement on Geopolitical Intrusion on Editorial Decisions.

Ethical guidelines

Submission of a manuscript to BMC Proceedings implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content, and that any experimental research that is reported in the manuscript has been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee. Research carried out on humans must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration, and any experimental research on animals must follow internationally recognized guidelines. A statement to this effect must appear in the Methods section of the manuscript, including the name of the body which gave approval, with a reference number where appropriate. Informed consent must also be documented. Manuscripts may be rejected if the editorial office considers that the research has not been carried out within an ethical framework, e.g. if the severity of the experimental procedure is not justified by the value of the knowledge gained.

For all articles that include information or clinical photographs relating to individual patients, written and signed consent from each patient to publish must also be made available if requested by the editorial staff.

BMC Proceedings's publisher, BioMed Central, has a legal responsibility to ensure that its journals do not publish material that infringes copyright, or that includes libellous or defamatory content. If, on review, your manuscript is perceived to contain potentially libellous content the journal Editors, with assistance from the publisher if required, will work with authors to ensure an appropriate outcome is reached.

The involvement of scientific (medical) writers or anyone else who assisted with the preparation of the manuscript content should be acknowledged, along with their source of funding, as described in the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) guidelines on the role of medical writers in developing peer-reviewed publications. If medical writers are not listed among the authors, their role should be acknowledged explicitly.

Standards of reporting

BMC Proceedings supports initiatives aimed at improving the reporting of biomedical research. We recommend authors refer to the EQUATOR network website for further information on the available reporting guidelines for health research, and the MIBBI Portal for prescriptive checklists for reporting biological and biomedical research where applicable. Authors are requested to make use of these when drafting their manuscript and peer reviewers will also be asked to refer to these checklists when evaluating these studies. Checklists are available for a number of study designs, including randomized controlled trials (CONSORT), systematic reviews (PRISMA), observational studies (STROBE), meta-analyses of observational studies (MOOSE), diagnostic accuracy studies (STARD) and qualitative studies (RATS). For authors of systematic reviews, an additional file, linked from the Methods section, should reproduce all details concerning the search strategy. For an example of how a search strategy should be presented, see the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook.

Standardised gene nomenclature should be used throughout. Human gene symbols and names can be found in the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) database and any enquiries, or requests for new gene symbols, should be directed via email to hgnc@genenames.org. Nomenclature committees for other species are listed at http://www.genenames.org/about/faq#otherspecies. For mutation nomenclature please use the guidelines suggested by the Human Genome Variation Society.

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should adhere to the Good Publication Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies, which are designed to ensure that publications are produced in a responsible and ethical manner. The guidelines also apply to any companies or individuals that work on industry-sponsored publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organizations and communications companies.

BMC Proceedings also supports initiatives to improve the performance and reporting of trials, part of which includes prospective registering and numbering of clinical trials. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has implemented the World Health Organisation (WHO) definition of clinical trials which states that a clinical trial is any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes. This definition includes phase I to Phase IV trials.

Authors of protocols or reports of such clinical trials, where the primary purpose of the research is to understand the causes, development and effects of disease or to improve preventative, diagnostic or therapeutic interventions, must register their trials prior to submission in a suitable publicly available registry. In addition to accepting registration in any of the five existing registries (http://www.icmje.org/faq.html), the ICMJE will accept registration of clinical trials in any of the primary registers that participate in the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform including the ISRCTN register administered by Current Controlled Trials, part of BioMed Central Group.

The trial registration number should be included as the last line of the manuscript abstract.

Data and materials release

Submission of a manuscript to BMC Proceedings implies that readily reproducible materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes. Nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences, and atomic coordinates should be deposited in an appropriate database in time for the accession number to be included in the published article. In computational studies where the sequence information is unacceptable for inclusion in databases because of lack of experimental validation, the sequences must be published as an additional file with the article.

Any 'in press' articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Nucleotide sequences

Nucleotide sequences can be deposited with the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL/EBI) Nucleotide Sequence Database, or GenBank (National Center for Biotechnology Information).

Protein sequences

Protein sequences can be deposited with SwissProt or the Protein Information Resource (PIR).

The accession numbers of any nucleic acid sequences, protein sequences or atomic coordinates cited in the manuscript should be provided, in square brackets with the corresponding database name; for example, [EMBL:AB026295, EMBL:AC137000, DDBJ:AE000812, GenBank:U49845, PDB:1BFM, Swiss-Prot:Q96KQ7, PIR:S66116].

The databases for which we can provide direct links are: EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (EMBL), DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), GenBank at the NCBI (GenBank), Protein Data Bank (PDB), Protein Information Resource (PIR) and the Swiss-Prot Protein Database (Swiss-Prot).

Mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry data should be supplied in the mzML format recommended by the HUPO Protein Standards Initiative Mass Spectrometry Standards Working Group guidelines (http://www.psidev.info/index.php?q=node/80). We also recommend that the data is deposited in the ProteomeExchange (http://proteomexchange.org/) through the PRIDE website (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/), and protein interaction data can be submitted to members of the IMEx consortium (http://www.imexconsortium.org/submit-your-data).

Structures

Protein structures can be deposited with one of the members of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank. Nucleic Acids structures can be deposited with the Nucleic Acid Database at Rutgers. Crystal structures of organic compounds can be deposited with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre.

Chemical structures and assays

Structures of chemical substances can be deposited with PubChem Substance. Bioactivity screens of chemical substances can be deposited with PubChem BioAssay.

Functional genomics data (such as microarray, RNA-seq or ChIP-seq data)

Where appropriate, authors should adhere to the standards proposed by the Functional Genomics Data Society and must deposit microarray data in MIAME-compliant format in one of the public repositories, such as ArrayExpress or Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Deposition of high-throughput functional genomics sequencing data (such as RNA-Seq or ChIP-Seq data) with ArrayExpress or GEO in compliance with MINSEQE is also required.

Computational modeling

We encourage authors to prepare models of biochemical reaction networks using the Systems Biology Markup Language and to deposit the model with the BioModels database, as well as submitting it as an additional file with the manuscript.

Plasmids

We encourage authors to deposit copies of their plasmids as DNA or bacterial stocks with Addgene, a non-profit repository, or PlasmID, the Plasmid Information Database at Harvard.

Competing interests

BMC Proceedings requires authors to declare any competing financial or other interest in relation to their work. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no competing interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests'.

Citing articles in BMC Proceedings

Articles in BMC Proceedings should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal supplement. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. BMC Proceedings [year], [volume number][(Suppl number)]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. BMC Proceedings 2009, 1(Suppl 2):S3.

refers to article S3 from Volume 1 Supplement 2 of the journal.

Why publish your supplement in BMC Proceedings?

High visibility

BMC Proceedings's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal and helps conferences reach a wide, global audience in the scientific community. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a 'Highly accessed' graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.

Speed of publication

BMC Proceedings offers a fast publication schedule, aiming to publish within 6-9 weeks of submission of the final article. Articles and abstracts are published in both fully browseable web form and as formatted PDFs, and are made available through BMC Proceedings and BioMed Central. Articles are indexed in PubMed and included in PubMed Central; abstract supplements are indexed by supplement title in PubMed.

Flexibility

Online publication in BMC Proceedings gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other papers).

Promotion

On publication of a new set of proceedings or abstracts, announcements will be made on the BioMed Central homepage and on subject-related BMC journal homepages, as well as in our regular email update to BioMed Central users. These announcements aim to bring the proceedings to the attention of BioMed Central’s wide readership. For current traffic and email circulation figures, please contact us.

Articles or entire proceedings published in BMC Proceedings may be promoted in other ways to increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles.

Authors of articles published in BMC Proceedings retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the BioMed Central copyright and license agreement).

For information about publishing in other BioMed Central journals, please see our supplements information.

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BioMed Central, please click here.