Wellcome Trust calls for Open Access
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BioMed Central congratulates the Wellcome Trust on its move to require researchers receiving Wellcome funding to deposit copies of resulting research articles in an Open Access archive. The Trust announced its Open Access policy on 19 May.
The Wellcome Trust is the UK's biggest non-governmental funder of biomedical research with an annual spend of £400 million. With such a major funding body backing Open Access, it is now expected that other funding bodies around the world will follow suit.
Wellcome's policy specifies that articles must be made freely available within, at most, six months of initial publication. BioMed Central already deposits a copy of the official final version of every research article that it publishes in its journals with the appropriate Open Access archive, enabling authors to automatically meet the requirements of the Wellcome policy. Read BioMed Central's response to the Wellcome announcement on our website.
In a related development, the Wellcome Trust and a group of major UK funders have announced their intention to develop a UK PubMed Central, and invited expressions of interest from organisations to run the archive.
The group of funders, which includes the Wellcome Trust, MRC, BBSRC, the British Heart Foundation and the Arthritis Research Campaign (arc) with the support of Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) want to create a permanent, freely accessible digital archive of peer-reviewed papers arising from the research they have funded.
The archive would be a UK PubMed Central, and a mirror of the US version operated by the National Library of Medicine. It would use the same software as its US counterpart and be a fully searchable facility containing all papers from both versions.
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Journals published by BioMed Central impressive impact factors
Journals published by BioMed Central have again received impact factors that compare well with equivalent subscription titles, with five titles in the top five of their specialty.
BMC Bioinformatics, with an impact factor of 5.42, has reinforced its reputation as one of the top journals in its field. Launched in 2000, it is the second highest ranked bioinformatics journal, and already has an impact factor comparable to that of Bioinformatics (5.74), the most established journal in the field, which has been publishing for more than two decades and is supported by a major society.
Critical Care's impact factor jumped from 1.9 to 3.21, and the journal is now third in the critical care medicine field having leap-frogged the competitor title Intensive Care Medicine, the official journal of the major European society. Breast Cancer Research also increased it's impact factor from 2.93 to 2.98 and remains the second highest ranking breast cancer journal. Arthritis Research & Therapy maintains its rank of second in the rheumatology field with an impact factor of 4.55. With an impact factor of 4.03, Respiratory Research is the fifth most cited journal in the highly competitive respirology field.
Other journals published by BioMed Central also received impact factors this year, including:
The impact factors, which are calculated by ISI, look at citations in 2004 of articles published in the journals in the period 2002-2003. The high impact factors for these journals affirm that they are respected by researchers, and are fast becoming the place for authors to submit important research findings. For full details, please read our press release or visit our impact factor FAQ.
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Consortia agreements
Spain embraces Open Access
BioMed Central has recently formalised agreements with four regional health authorities in Spain: Aragon, Madrid, Galicia and Asturias. Madrid, the most recent health authority to come on board, agreed membership for two years for 22 institutions, thanks to the Consejeria de Sanidad y Consumo de Madrid / Agencia Pedro Lain Entralgo. As a nation, Spain has taken huge strides in supporting Open Access publishing, in total over 67 universities, hospitals and research institutions have become BioMed Central members under these recently signed agreements.
SCAMeL renews and increases membership and subscriptions
Last year we welcomed institutions from the SCAMeL consortium as members of BioMed Central and subscribers to our products. We are pleased to announce that these institutions have chosen to renew their memberships and subscriptions and we have welcomed new SCAMeL institutions on board. There are now 15 BioMed Central members from the SCAMeL group and a number of these are also subscribing to our products including: Faculty of 1000 Biology, images. MD, Breast Cancer Research, Arthritis Research & Therapy, Current Reports Journals and Critical Care.
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"As one of the collection development coordinators for the SCAMeL Consortium, I am excited by the opportunity we have to support the practical, open access model for biomedical scholarly publishing represented by BioMed Central. Open access publishing is a genuine public good and BMC is one of the leaders in this critical paradigm shift. Furthermore, I am favorably impressed with the warm and hospitable professionalism of the BMC staff."
Dohn H. Martin, Associate Director, OSU Medical Library, Tulsa, Oklahoma
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Focus on Genome Biology
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Genome Biology is a high-profile, peer-reviewed journal published by BioMed Central. It is an essential resource, serving the biological research community as an international forum for the dissemination, discussion and critical review of information about all areas of biology informed by genomic research.
The journal publishes topical and original research articles free of charge through the website, but only subscribers to the journal can benefit from regular systematic reviews, critical assessments, reports, research news and commentaries, including timely, topical and authoritative reports of work published elsewhere.
If you are interested in setting up a 30-day free trial of Genome Biology for your institution simply fill out our online request form or contact your sales representative.
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Open Repository has launched a demonstration site - please feel free to look around!
You will find a couple of communities of genuine research articles and the Department Of Arts And Literature where we have put some images and other multi-media files so you can see how a fully functioning Open Repository site works. There is also the Open Repository community where you can find further information about the service and look at new and forthcoming features. Finally there is the Visitors area where you can set up your own collections and submit test articles.
For more information, please contact Marie Martens.
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Don't forget to promote your BioMed Central Membership!
Our Resource Center for Librarians continues to supply librarians with all the materials they need to promote their BioMed Central membership and our complete range of subscription products. From posters and flyers to logos and email text, materials to publicise and promote your BioMed Central trial or subscription can be downloaded from each product page.
If you require additional assistance with promotion, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Service team.
Sales Contacts
Canada, Western Europe and Asia and Australasia
Marianne Josserand
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7631 9990
E-mail: Marianne@biomedcentral.com
Eastern and Southern United States and Italy
Maria Romano
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7631 9971
E-mail: maria.romano@biomedcentral.com
Western and Central United States, Caribbean, Germany and Austria
Dominic Tate
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7631 2947
E-mail: dominic.tate@biomedcentral.com
Open Repository Sales Contact
Marie Martens
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7631 9956
E-mail: marie.martens@biomedcentral.com
Renewal Sales Contact
Rosalind Arrowsmith-Brown
Phone: +44 (0) 207 631 2173
E-mail: rosalind@biomedcentral.com
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New physiology faculty launched
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Online literature awareness service Faculty of 1000 Biology is pleased to announce the launch of its new physiology faculty.
Faculty Heads Allan Cowley (Medical College Wisconsin, USA), Harold Atwood (University of Toronto, Canada) and Denis Noble (University of Oxford, UK) are overseeing more than 300 Faculty Members highlighting and evaluating the most important papers across 10 Sections.
Over 80% of the world's top institutions currently subscribe to Faculty of 1000 Biology. To find out how you can join them with a free 30-day trial, or to discover more about this revolutionary research tool, contact your sales representative.
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A new look for The Scientist
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This month has seen some changes for The Scientist, with a new look for the website and a brand new Blog section featuring updates and opinions on topical life science issues and events. Our current Blog, by contributor Ricki Lewis, comes from the World Summit on Evolution conference being held in the Galapagos.
The Scientist is still the premier source of life science information, with over 600,000 users consulting its print and online editions each month. The journal's website incorporates The Scientist Daily, the first daily newspaper for the life sciences, along with its 18-year archiveof over 16,000 articles.
To try The Scientist free for 30 days at your institution fill in our quick form, or contact your sales representative who will also be able to answer any questions you may have.
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New journals published by BioMed Central
In the last 3 months, we have launched 4 new journals as part of our innovative 'Independent Journals Program'.
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Behavioral and Brain Functions
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Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health
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Globalization and Health
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Chiropractic & Osteopathy
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Help your researchers to make the most of Open Access by cataloguing our journals. There are many more independent journals in development. Please sign up here for e-mail alerts to notify you of newly launched journal title, ISSN, URL and journal scope information.
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