Advocacy
News Update
In this issue....
Introducing BioMed Central's open access advocacy news update
This is the first of our quarterly advocacy news updates. As a valued advocate of open access publishing and a BioMed Central supporter, this has been sent to you because we believe that it will be of interest. If you wish to unsubscribe please click here
From now on we will send you regular news updates, giving you the latest on new resources we have developed, ways to promote BioMed Central and open access publishing, and what advocates like yourself have been up to. We will also keep you informed on competitions, new promotions and how you can get involved to promote open access.
You will get feedback on open access seminars we have given, information about upcoming events and suggestions for hosting your own open access seminar. Pioneers behind the open access revolution will be profiled from time-to-time, and you will also get the chance to tell us about your own advocacy activities.
If you think this update would be of interest to your colleagues, please pass it on.
Use our advocacy resources to support BioMed Central and the open access movement!
BioMed Central’s advocacy resources
Our advocacy resources provide numerous easy-to-use resources, which you can use to spread the word about BioMed Central. Help support the open access publishing movement by using these resources to convince faculty colleagues and administrators of the importance of open access publishing.
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Launch of Open Access Now
Open
Access Now is a new forum for open access news and debate. Open
Access Now provides information for researchers about the revolution
taking place in the way research findings are published and distributed.
The aim is to inform and educate researchers concerning the many and
complex issues surrounding the debate about open access.
Open Access Now will appear in print in The Scientist, and is also available online. The Open Access Now website features additional information and resources.
Open access seminars roundup
In light of the significant uptake in institutional membership by Canadian and US Ivy League universities, representatives from BioMed Central gave a series of open access seminars in May 2003. Venues included institutions in Ontario, the west coast of Canada, and at various University of California campuses.
The aim of these events was to inform authors about the advantages and opportunities of open access publishing. Authors were encouraged to submit their papers to open access journals, such as those published by BioMed Central.
Canada
Dr Camille Seecharran, Editorial Promotions Manager at BioMed Central, gave presentations at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, University of York, McMaster University and Brock University. The seminar at McMaster University was co-hosted by the Health Sciences Library and featured talks by external speakers as well as faculty members who have published with BioMed Central (featured in our Advocate profiles).
Jan Velterop, BioMed Central’s Publisher, presented at the universities of Alberta and Calgary, and Simon Fraser University on the west coast. Like the seminars in Ontario, these sessions were well attended and proved to be an excellent forum for discussing the BioMed Central publishing model in detail, and open access publishing from a scholarly perspective.
California
Dr Theodora Bloom, Deputy Editorial Director at BioMed Central, gave talks at four University of California campuses: San Francisco, Berkeley, Davis and Los Angeles. Dr Mike Eisen, co-founder of the Public Library of Science and a geneticist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, also participated in the session at Berkeley. He spoke about the importance of open access and about PloS’s involvement in the open access movement. These sessions proved to be great for engaging the scientific community in lively discussions about the merits of open access publishing and BioMed Central’s role as an open access publisher.
Presentations by advocates
Dr Peter Galsworthy, Coordinator of Collections at the Allyn and Betty Taylor Library at the University of Western Ontario gave a presentation on behalf of BioMed Central at the Symposium on open access publishing at the university on 7th May. Dr Galsworthy talked about the BioMed Central publishing model and Faculty of 1000 Biology. He reported that the session was well attended by faculty members from Biology, Basic Medical Sciences, Library and Information Sciences, Engineering as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities. The Vice President of Research, Dean of Engineering and the University Librarian were all present at the symposium. Many of the speakers and participants indicated to Dr Galsworthy that the seminar was very useful and that they had learnt a lot about open access.
Dr Andrew Vickers, Assistant Attending Research Methodologist in the Integrative Medicine Service and the Biostatistics Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, gave a presentation to academic colleagues in February of this year. Dr Vickers reported that the response to his talk was very positive and that he will be repeating the presentation at Cornell University in the Fall. The presentation and essential presenter’s notes can be found on our advocacy pages.
Host your own open access seminar
You can use our comprehensive guide to host your own open access seminar at your institution, or contact us for more information. A list of upcoming seminars can be found on our website.
Tell a friend
Use this email to tell a friend or colleague about BioMed Central and help spread the word about open access.
If you tell 10 friends about open access and they then tell 10 friends, that’s a hundred people you have introduced to open access. Just imagine the impact you could have on the open access movement with just a few clicks!
Have you been an open access advocate?
Please let us know if you have spoken about BioMed Central or advocated open access publishing in any way.
Advocate profiles
These profiles feature some of the pioneers who are leading the open access revolution by publishing in open access journals, and helping to spread the word through presentations at open access seminars.
Dr Marek Smieja
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Marek
Smieja, MD PhD FRCPC
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Marek Smieja is Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada. He is an infectious diseases physician, microbiologist, and clinical epidemiologist. His primary research interests are the contribution of infections to chronic cardiac and respiratory diseases, and the improvement of diagnostic testing for respiratory infections.
Dr Smieja has published two papers in BMC Infectious Diseases, and gave a talk about his BioMed Central publishing experience at the McMaster University Health Sciences Library seminar on open access publishing on 13th May. He highlighted the rapid peer-review and publication processes as major advantages of publishing in BioMed Central’s journals. Dr Smieja also discussed the wide range of subject areas covered by BioMed Central’s journals, and the specialist journals program we offer.
Prof Charlie Goldsmith
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Charlie
Goldsmith, BSc, MSc, PhD Professor Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Faculty of Health Sciences McMaster University Charlie Goldsmith is a Professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University and Head of Biostatistics at the Centre for Evaluation of Medicines, Father Sean O'Sullivan Research Centre. |
Prof Goldsmith's research interests are: The statistical methodology related to the evaluation of therapies involved in musculo-skeletal conditions such as rheumatology, physical therapy and chiropractic; developing research methodology for carrying out studies on the quality-of-life for patients who use pharmaceutical agents; developing standards for research quality assessment in manuscripts, grants and research articles and developing improved understanding of graphical communication.
Prof Goldsmith has published four papers with BioMed Central and also spoke at the McMaster University Health Sciences Library seminar on 13th May. The user-friendly manuscript submission system, fast peer-review process and immediate publication upon acceptance were some of the reasons he gave for choosing BioMed Central. He also described the BioMed Central’s specialist journals program as a “dynamic mechanism that responds to the community when the need arises to start a new journal”. Prof Goldsmith believes that open access publishing is the future and urged other faculty members to try it.
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More than 80,000 biology and medical researchers working at UK universities can now share their research findings freely with fellow researchers, funding bodies, students, journalists, and the general public worldwide. All 180 UK universities became BioMed Central members on 1 July. From this date article-processing charges are waived - for all UK higher education staff - when publishing in any of BioMed Central’s 90+ peer-reviewed journals in which all research content is freely accessible. The membership was made possible by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a joint committee of HEFCE and other UK further and higher education funding bodies. Together with the recent NHS England membership agreement, this deal means that the majority of research produced in the UK could be published in open access journals at no cost to the individual author. The JISC deal doubles BioMed Central’s membership. For more information, please go to our information page or read the press release. Details about institutional membership are available on our website |
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