BioMed Central

BioMed Central
Parent company	Springer Nature
Status	Active
Founded	2000
Founder	Current Science Group
Headquarters location	London, WC1; United Kingdom
Distribution	Open access
Publication types	Scientific journals
Nonfiction topics	Science
Official website	www.biomedcentral.com

Logo of BioMed Central until 2018

BioMed Central (BMC) is a United Kingdom-based, for-profit scientific open access publisher that produces over 250 scientific journals. All its journals are published online only. BioMed Central describes itself as the first and largest open access science publisher. It was founded in 2000 and has been owned by Springer, now Springer Nature, since 2008.

History

BioMed Central was founded in 2000 as part of the Current Science Group (now Science Navigation Group, SNG), a nursery of scientific publishing companies. SNG chairman Vitek Tracz developed the concept for the company after NIH director Harold Varmus's PubMed Central concept for open-access publishing was scaled back.^[1] The first director of the company was Jan Velterop. Chemistry Central was established in 2006 and the PhysMath Central journal imprint in 2007.

In 2002, the company introduced article processing charges,^[2] and these have since been the primary source of revenue. In 2007, Yale University Libraries stopped subsidizing BioMed Central article processing charges for Yale researchers.^[3]

In October 2008, it was announced that BioMed Central (along with Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central) had been acquired by Springer Science+Business Media, the second largest STM publisher.^[4] The Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central brands have since been retired.

In November 2008, BioMed Central became an official supporting organisation of Healthcare Information For All.^[5]

Following the merger of BMC into Springer Nature, BMC journals were gradually converted to the general Springer Nature software. The software migration meant the loss of several features, often related to open science requirements, like the ability to download a machine-readable version of the paper (in XML format), direct download of PDF files and the ability to read articles without cookies.^[6]

Journals

BioMed Central's flagship journals include BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Biology, BMC Medicine, Genome Biology and Genome Medicine. It also produces the BMC Series of journals covering the fields of biology and medicine. Most of the other journals published by BioMed Central are owned and produced independently by societies and academic editorial boards, with BioMed Central providing the hosting, publishing platform and marketing.

All journals are published online; some of the flagship journals have in the past also been available as print subscriptions, such as Arthritis Research & Therapy. Publications in BioMed Central journals are, immediately upon publication, released under the Creative Commons "Attribution" license which grants permission to reuse publications and produce derivative work. The only exceptions to this (as of 2010) were the flagship journals, which reserved rights on review and commentary content; those articles were available to purchase on a subscription or on a pay-per-view basis, becoming freely available (but not fully open access) to all after six months; however, as of January 2015, "no subscription fees apply to these journals or to any articles published in them."^[7]

Open peer review

In 2001, BioMed Central was the first publisher to carry out open peer review as default, by openly posting named peer reviewer reports alongside published articles as part of a 'pre-publication history' for all medical journals in the BMC series. With currently 70 BMC journals operating fully open peer review.^[8]

BMC Series

The BMC Series is a collection of several dozen online research journals published by BioMed Central.^[9] Like all other BioMed Central journals, they have a policy of open access to the research articles they publish. Between them, they cover all major subject areas within biology and medicine. Two of the journals, BMC Biology and BMC Medicine, have a broad scope, and aim to publish particularly significant research. A third journal, BMC Research Notes, publishes scientifically valid research outputs that cannot be considered as full research or methodology articles across all scientific and clinical disciplines,^[10] while BMC Proceedings publishes conference proceedings. The other journals specialise on a particular subject area. Due to their free licensing, images from BMC journals can be reused in other places.

BMC Anesthesiology
BMC Biochemistry
BMC Bioinformatics
BMC Biology
BMC Biomedical Engineering
BMC Biophysics
BMC Biotechnology
BMC Cancer
BMC Cardiovascular Disorders
BMC Chemistry
BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
BMC Developmental Biology
BMC Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders
BMC Ecology
BMC Emergency Medicine
BMC Endocrine Disorders
BMC Evolutionary Biology
BMC Family Practice
BMC Gastroenterology
BMC Genetics
BMC Genomics
BMC Geriatrics
BMC Health Services Research
BMC Hematology
BMC Immunology
BMC Infectious Diseases
BMC Medical Education
BMC Medical Ethics
BMC Medical Genetics
BMC Medical Genomics
BMC Medical Imaging
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making
BMC Medical Research Methodology
BMC Medicine
BMC Microbiology
BMC Molecular Biology
BMC Molecular and Cell Biology
BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders
BMC Nephrology
BMC Neurology
BMC Neuroscience
BMC Nursing
BMC Nutrition
BMC Ophthalmology
BMC Oral Health
BMC Palliative Care
BMC Pediatrics
BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology
BMC Physiology
BMC Plant Biology
BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
BMC Proceedings
BMC Psychiatry
BMC Psychology
BMC Public Health
BMC Pulmonary Medicine
BMC Research Notes
BMC Rheumatology
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation
BMC Structural Biology
BMC Surgery
BMC Systems Biology
BMC Urology
BMC Veterinary Research
BMC Women's Health
BMC Zoology

Most BMC Series journals have an impact factor. As of 2016, for the 53 journals with impact factors, BMC Biology had the highest at 7.98.^[11]

Databases

The company also has hosted biomedical databases, including the ISRCTN registry (previously Current Controlled Trials), a Primary Registry of clinical trials in the WHO Registry Network.^[12] The Biology Image Library and the Cases Database, a database of medical case reports,^[13] were closed in 2014.^[14] The company also provided hosting for institutional repositories of publications based on the DSpace platform under the brand Open Repository.^[15] The Open Repository activity was sold to Atmire in 2016.^[16]