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Insights into BMC Research Notes

Since it launched in 2008, BMC Research Notes has been a place where researchers can publish research outputs that are useful for the community but can otherwise end up hidden in a researcher’s notebook or as a footnote in a dataset.

In order to re-affirm the importance of publishing these kinds of outputs, the journal has since renewed its focus on publishing note articles and to making potentially dark data such as observations and short null results available.

Article types

As a forum across all scientific disciplines for micro publications, BMC Research Notes publishes two article types: the Research note and the Data note.

Research Notes

New Content ItemBMC Research Notes is a forum for micro publication across all scientific disciplines - physical, earth and environmental, engineering, biological and health sciences.  We believe simple but sound observations deserve a platform.

A research note is ideal for the following:

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Data Notes

New Content ItemValuable data often go unpublished when they could be helping to progress science. That's why in 2017,  we launched data notes - a short article type allowing you to describe your data and publish it to make your data easier to find, cite and share. 

A data note can be from any scientific discipline - from nanotechnology to global health, from machine learning to physical cosmology.

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We're expanding our scope

As the BMC Series expands into the physical and engineering disciplines, so has research notes. We now accept articles across the following disciplines:

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Provide the puzzle piece others are looking for

We encourage you to submit those notes from your notepad; that experiment that didn’t quite work out; that algorithm that didn't provide expected results, and your hard-learnt lessons in the field.

Turn those data already collected into a publication and potentially provide the puzzle piece others are looking for.

Why publish in BMC Research Notes?

  • Communicate research in an easy-to-digest format
  • Same threshold and editorial rigor as other BMC-series journals
  • Open up new ways of thinking and testing that are of value to the research community
  • High standard and quality outputs