Consortium NEWS

This year we have received huge interest from consortia for our BioMed Central membership. In March NHS England became members, in July JISC signed an agreement for membership for all UK Universities, these two agreements mean that nearly every researcher in England can publish in any BioMed Central journal without incurring the usual $500 article processing charge. Following this we have now signed membership agreements with consortium far and wide, including:

SCAMEL (Southern Central Academic Medical Libraries) – 12 institutions in the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana

CONBLS (Consortium of Biomedical Libraries in the South) – 14 institutions in the states of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee

CIC (Committee on Institutional Cooperation) – 5 institutions in the states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota

OhioLINK – 84 Institutions in the state of Ohio

CAUL (Council of Australian University Librarians) – 14 institutions in Australia

Conference Attendance

BioMed Central will be attending the following conferences over the coming months. Please contact us at institutions@biomedcentral.com for an appointment or just drop by our booth if you are planning to attend any of these events. We look forward to meeting you!

Online Information 2003, London UK
Visit us at Booth Number 287 at the Online Information show from the 2nd-4th December.

2004 ALA Midwinter Meeting, San Diego US
Visit us at Booth Number 2020 at the American Library Association's 2004 Midwinter Meeting from the 9th-14th January.

Don't miss the debate on open access and the future of scientific publishing between JanVelterop, Publisher, BioMed Central Ltd and Reed Elsevier.

VALA 04, Melbourne, Australia
Visit us at the Victoria Association for Library Automation's 12th Biennial Conference and Exhibition from the 3rd-5th February

UKSG Annual Conference, Manchester UK
Visit us at the United Kingdom Serials Group meeting from the 29th-31st March

MLA 2004, Washington US
Visit us at the Medical Library Association's Annual Meeting from the 21st-26th May.

Focus on Faculty of 1000 Biology

Two years after its launch Faculty of 1000 Biology is still the only authoritative literature awareness service that highlights and evaluates the most interesting papers published in the biological sciences, based on the recommendations of a Faculty of, currently, over 1600 of the world's leading researchers.

As this unique service grows in popularity it continues to expand its services to include exciting new features.

• Users can now download their favourite Faculty of 1000 Biology papers using Endnote or Ref Manager.
  
  
• Our new “Dissenting Opinion” feature shows the papers and evaluations that our Faculty members have disagreed on.
  
  
• It's now easier to find evaluations within your speciality – the new related articles feature links evaluations for similar papers.
  
  
• Faculty of 1000 Biology now includes evaluations from over 200 new Faculty Members, bringing our total contributors up to over 1600.
  
  
• Look out for new Faculties due to be launched in 2004 as Faculty of 1000 Biology continues to increase its scope.

Sign up for new journal launch alerts

BioMed Central has launched over 40 new open access journals in the last 2 years (full list here) and we have many more on the horizon. Please sign up here for e-mail alerts to notify you of newly launched journal title, ISSN, URL and journal scope information.

New Journals launched most recently, include:

• Cell Communication and signalling
  
  
• Genetic Vaccines and Therapy
  
  
• Journal of Circadian Rhythms
  
  
• Journal of Translational Medicine

To catalogue BioMed Central's open access journals on your own website please click here

Sales Contacts at BioMed Central

Marie Martens has moved to a new area within the company, and is now working on informing scientists about publishing with BioMed Central. Marianne Josserand has joined the BioMed Central sales team and has taken on Marie's accounts and contacts. She is working alongside Mark Bevan and Silvia Serra to spread the word about BioMed Central's subscription services.

To see the whole team, along with their contact details, take a look at our new Sales Contacts page.

New BioMed Central Catalogue

The new 2004 BioMed Central Catalogue is now available and has been sent out to all of our contacts. Detailing new developments and new products from BioMed Central as well as useful sales and customer service information, this is your essential guide to our wide portfolio of products and services.

If you haven't received your catalogue, or would like further copies sent to you, please let us know at institutions@biomedcentral.com, we'll be happy to help.

FREE 30-Day Trials

We are happy to provide institutions with a FREE 30-day trial of BioMed Central's online subscription products.

Trials are helpful when evaluating products, and BioMed Central will also supply promotional materials to each institution to ensure as many people as possible know about each trial.

Simply click here for more information and to arrange your FREE 30-day trial.

Promotional Materials for Everyone!

The BioMed Central Resource Center for Librarians continues to supply librarians with all the promotional items they need for 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

Journal of Biology - new issue in print and online

Journal of Biology has just published a new issue in print and online. To ensure that your library has a copy of Volume 2 issue 3 please sign up here to receive your free print issue. Ensure that your researchers have easy access by cataloguing this Open Access journal for exceptional biological research on your library's website.

The pioneers behind membership acquisitions

This year we have had huge growth in membership numbers with now more than 350 BioMed Central members which is a 290% increase on 2002. A great number of key decision makers and librarians within institutions have chosen to become BioMed Central Members. These institutions and individuals are setting a pioneering example of what can be done to enhance the communication of science, and we are grateful for their continued support of our philosophy and publishing program. For this reason we have asked a number of our Members to submit Membership profiles, below is a comment from one of our pioneers:

Linda Watson, Director of the Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia.

"I believe it is important for libraries and their universities to invest in new models of scholarly communication which return intellectual property rights to the scholars and their institutions, and which support open access. In addition to investing resources in an institutional license to BioMed Central, we must also invest time and energy in educating our faculties and promotion and tenure committees as well as funding agencies about what is at stake."

Open Access Now

In July BioMed Central launched Open Access Now - a new forum for open access news and debate. Since then, new content has been added every two weeks. News, in-depth interviews and much more make this an invaluable resource for those interested in the Open Access movement.

Open Access Now provides information for researchers about the revolution that is 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 appears in print in The Scientist, and is also available online. The Open Access Now website features additional information and resources, and you can sign up to receive an alert by email when new content is available.

Two new Open Access archives

Research published by BioMed Central is now being deposited in two more open access archives.

Recently, BioMed Central and Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the Netherlands, signed an agreement to secure the long-term digital archiving of all research published by BioMed Central. As well as archiving all of the research articles BioMed Central publishes, the KB has committed to updating the archive as technology changes. This will preserve the articles as a usable resource and ensure open access in perpetuity.

The University of Potsdam has established a mirror of all BioMed Central's open access research articles. The site offers browsing, metadata search and full text search. Articles are available in HTML or PDF formats, and users can also access high-resolution graphics and videos.

All the research articles published in BioMed Central's journals are also archived at the United States National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central site and by INIST, the documentation centre of French scientific research organization CNRS.

Open Access developments

Since our last Library update, there have been a phenomenal number of developments in the open access movement. Here are just a few:

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) announced that it will cover the article processing charge for publishing in open access journals, up to an initial limit of US$3000 per investigator per year. On the other side of the Atlantic the Wellcome Trust, the UK's leading biomedical research charity, issued a position statement in support of open access.

The Public Library of Science launched PLoS Biology and there is a new series of open access journals from the University of California. The Company of Biologists, publisher of Development, and Oxford University Press both announced that they will be experimenting with open access.

Two important statements of principle have been issued that offer strong support to open access – the Bethesda Principles and the Berlin Declaration.

Talking about a revolution

Open access advocates are helping to bring about a revolution in biomedical publishing. You can play your part by spreading the word about the benefits of open access. Our advocacy pages contain a wealth of resources to help, including some fantastic new posters. We also now have author profiles available on our website. Use the comments from our authors, about their experiences of publishing with BioMed Central, to convince researchers in your faculty to publish in open access journals.