BioMed Central membership: Information for UK Academics and Librarians

All universities in the UK will become BioMed Central members from 1 July 2003. From this date article-processing charges will be waived - for all UK higher education staff - when publishing in any of BioMed Central's 200 peer-reviewed journals in which all research content is freely accessible.

The membership is made possible by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a joint committee of HEFCE and other UK further and higher education funding bodies. This deal was announced on 17 June. Further details can be found in the press release.

This page provides further information about the deal for researchers and librarians working in UK universities, with links for further information.

Q. What is BioMed Central?

A. An open access publisher
BioMed Central is an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate access without charge to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science. In addition to open-access original research, BioMed Central also publishes reviews and other subscription-based content.

BioMed Central publishes 200 peer-reviewed journals across the whole spectrum of biology and medicine. For a full list of titles, please visit our A-Z list or journals by subject.

Q. How will my institution's membership benefit me?

A. Automatic waivers for article-processing charges (APCs)
Basically you can now publish for free in any of BioMed Central's journals.

BioMed Central's business model is based on charging authors to publish, and then making the content available with no barriers to access to anyone with an internet connection. BioMed Central normally charges authors an article-processing charge of £1025.

BioMed Central institutional membership means that universities and organizations can make a one-off, yearly payment on behalf of all of their potential authors. This removes the burden of payment from you as an individual.

If you work at a UK university, you are now entitled to receive an automatic waiver of the article-processing charge.

Q. How do I claim my APC waiver?

A. Via Athens
When you submit a research article to a BioMed Central journal, then at the point where you would normally have to commit to pay the Article Payment Charge, you will be prompted to authenticate via Athens. As soon as your Athens username is recognized, as a user from a member institution you will be granted an automatic waiver.

Q. Why should I publish in BioMed Central journals?

A. Why publish any other way?

• Efficient online submission and peer-review
• Immediate publication on acceptance
• No need to transfer copyright to the publisher
• No extra colour plate charges
• Inclusion of large data sets and supplementary material
• No page limits
• Very high visibility: downloads up to 6000 per month
• Track article downloads with My BioMed Central
• Indexed in PubMed with a link to freely available full text
• Archived in PubMed Central and other open access archives
• Open access: available to anyone with internet access without any barriers

For more information about publishing with BioMed Central see our instructions to authors.

Q. Do BioMed Central journals have Impact Factors?

A. Some do, most don't yet but articles are citation-tracked.

Before an Impact Factor is calculated for a journal, it must have been tracked by Thomson Scientific (ISI) for two years. Because BioMed Central's journals are rather new, most do not yet have Impact Factors. However many are already tracked by Thomson Scientific (ISI) and will have Impact Factors soon. A full list of the BioMed Central journals that are covered by Thomson Scientific (ISI) and other bibliographic services is available.

Additionally, it is worth noting that citations of all BioMed Central articles are already captured by Thomson Scientific (ISI)'s 'Cited article' database, making it easy to look up how many citations a specific BioMed Central article has received.

Any article published in one of BioMed Central's journals carries with it a record of how frequently and where the article has been cited in other articles published in BioMed Central's journals - see, for example, the "cited by" link on this abstract.

For more information, please see our general FAQ's

Q. How do I find out more about BioMed Central?

A. Browse our journals and our about section. Register as a BioMed Central user.

This will enable you to:

• Submit manuscripts
• Specify your scientific interests so that when you visit My BioMed Central, the most-relevant articles to you will automatically appear
• Sign up to receive E-TOCs, article alerts, BioMed Central updates and more
• Use the advanced search facility to store searches and set up alerts when new articles are published.