Academic Supplements

All academic supplements to BioMed Central's journals are:

• free to access online eliminating barriers of registration/payment to view articles
• listed in PubMed, Google Scholar and other citation databases increasing visibility via major reference resources
• archived in PubMed Central guaranteeing the permanency of publication on the Internet

Acceptance

The provisional acceptance of a supplement into a journal is subject to the approval of its Editor(s)-in-Chief. In order to reach a decision about suitability, we will need to receive the following information:

• information about the meeting (title, dates, programme, web address, any other relevant details)
• the estimated number of articles to be submitted for publication
• the approximate length of each article (if known)
• a sample copy of previously published proceedings (if available)
• a description of the review process to be undertaken prior to submission
• the name of the BMC journal which would publish the proposed supplement

We aim to provide a decision about suitability within two weeks of an initial request.

Peer review

It is the responsibility of the meeting organizer to ensure that all articles to be published have been peer reviewed and deemed acceptable for publication by the meeting's review committee. As mentioned above, a description of the review process undertaken will be required to ensure that the quality of each article published in the supplement meets the journal's standard of editorial content and quality.

Charges

Charges for publication will apply in all cases, and will vary according to the number of articles submitted, and the length and complexity of the articles submitted. Because supplements are processed separately from our standard production procedure, BioMed Central is unable to offer waivers of article processing charges for submissions to supplements. However, the maximum charge per article submitted as part of an academic supplement will not exceed our standard article processing charge.

Production

All supplements will be published as a full text version and a fully formatted PDF version on the journal's website.

Meeting 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 meeting organizers.

This will involve:

• ensuring that all 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

For further information, please contact us.