Pitt becomes BioMedCentral Institutional Member

Attention, authors: HSLS is pleased to announce that the University of Pittsburgh is now an institutional member of BioMedCentral <www.biomedcentral.com>, the Open Access publishing house.

As we reported in April 2004 <www.hsls.pitt.edu/about/news/hslsupdate/2004/april/open_access/>, Open Access (OA) publications allow immediate, universal, free online access to their content. In lieu of the subscription fees charged by traditional journals, OA journals typically raise operating revenue by collecting publication fees from authors. Several benefits of Pitt’s new institutional membership:

  • Researchers or students at the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC can publish an unlimited number of research articles in journals published by BioMed Central without paying any article processing charges. (Non-member author fees for most of BioMedCentral’s journals are $525, though some charge up to $1500.)
  • Authors who publish original research articles in BioMedCentral journals retain copyright over their work.

The list of BioMedCentral publications currently numbers 158 titles, including 60 so-called Independent OA journals initiated and edited by researchers interested in establishing new journals on their own. BioMedCentral publications are available through the HSLS databases by Title page <www.hsls.pitt.edu/resources/databases/titles/B>.

Like other OA proponents, BioMedCentral recognizes that establishing credibility with potential authors is a crucial challenge. All research articles are peer-reviewed through an electronic submission and review process that facilitates rapid turnaround. A number of BioMedCentral journals are already being indexed in MEDLINE and other online databases, and this number will grow in the future. The BioMedCentral Web site incorporates a number of useful features for authors and readers such as personalization tools, electronic submission and peer review as mentioned above, and the Faculty of 1000 "consensus map" of key papers and trends in the biological sciences.

Pitt is one of 142 institutional members in the United States. Worldwide, there are more than 46l members in 38 countries.

--Patricia Weiss Friedman

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