The new and improved BioMed Central website

Website revamp

Eagle-eyed regular visitors will have already noticed that biomedcentral.comhas undergone a revamp. So what’s new? The website now works across a range of devices, so that you can access our content wherever you are. We have been focusing on better performance and improving speed, so that you can access the information you need faster, and finally, our new uncluttered look makes it more pleasant to read and use our articles. The evolution of the website is an ongoing process. Please do help us make our new website as effective as possible for you by telling us what you think.

BioMed Central in the News

Shrinking glaciers could lead to increasing numbers of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) in East Antarctica, according toresearch published in the open access journal,BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study shows that in the last 14,000 years the population of Adélie penguins has seen a 135-fold increase, as additional breeding sites become exposed by retreating glaciers. This population explosion suggests that current environmental conditions are more favorable for Adélie penguins than they were at the end of the last ice age. The story was covered globally, by theBBC, Daily Mail, Times of India and The Sydney News to name just a few outlets.

OpenCon

BioMed Central are proud sponsors of OpenCon, the global conference on Open Access, Open Education and Open Data. This year, the main event was held in Brussels over the weekend of November 14-16, with additional satellite events held all over the world. Diana Marshall, Senior Managing Editor at BioMed Central spoke at OpenCon on open peer review and open data, just before the keynote Jimmy Wales; you can listen to her speaking here (from 6 minutes, 25 seconds in). Daniel Shanahan, Associate Publisher at BioMed Central also spoke at an OpenCon 2015 satellite event run by Digital Science in London which asked “Are we still innovating in Open?” For a great summary of the event, you can view the Storify here. The OpenCon livestream, which is a great way to catch up in the latest developments and innovations in open access, can also be viewed on YouTube here.

Open Access Landscape Update

This month in open access news, the Dutch funder NWO has announced that it is tightening up its research grant conditions with effect from 1 December 2015. The State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science in the Netherlands has stated that in 2024, 100% of publications funded with public money must be Open Access. The stricter conditions apply to all calls for proposals that NWO publishes after 1 December 2015. We’re pleased to say that all articles published in BioMed Central journals will be compliant with the new policy. If you’re not sure whether you’re eligible for funding to help with the cost of APCs, check whether your institution is part of our membership scheme. We have 567 organizations and institutions who have signed up as members to cover all or part of their researchers? APCs. We also provide automatic waivers for authors from low income, or lower-middle income economies, but anyone can apply to us for a waiver if they do not have funding, regardless of where in the world they are based. In addition, we have identified 87 APC funds provided by funding bodies, and 125 institutional APC funds that are funded in whole or in part by the institution, with a further 86 institutional APC funds that solely distribute OA block funds from research funders. 32% of open access funders prefer or mandate the CC BY license which BioMed Central uses (and all funders permit this license).

November blogs digest

November was another busy month for our blog network with an excellent array of topics covered. With genome editing technologies becoming more advanced, we explain why this could be the best invention since sliced bread. We focused on the importance of evidence-based medicine and asked how we can further the study in this area. And the link between diabetes and podiatry is not something that is well-known - so we explained all here in light of World Diabetes Day. If you’re wondering what the best career path is for you, we provided some useful tips to help you make a decision. And in light of World Prematurity Day we asked how we can prevent the consequences of preterm birth. You could also see how much you learn about this topic with our eye-opening quiz.

SpotOn is taking a break in 2015

SpotOn, the annual series of community events for the discussion of how science is carried out and communicated online, is taking a break in 2015. BioMed Central have long sponsored and supported the SpotOn events, but the science conference landscape is more crowded than ever, and we want to ensure that going forward SpotOn is as useful for everyone as it possibly can be. The SpotOn team are revisiting the concept to ask what the research community might need from future conferences. If you’d like to contribute to the discussion, there is aGoogle document here. Please do add your thoughts: we would love to hear your views.

Supplements

Cancer Imaging published proceedings of the International Cancer Imaging Society (ICIS) 15th Annual Teaching Course. Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice published abstracts from the 3rd International PPRI Conference 2015: Pharmaceutical Pricing and Reimbursement Policies: Challenges Beyond the Financial Crisis. BMC Nursing published meeting abstracts from The European Academy of Nursing Science EANS Summer Conference Improving access to healthcare. BMC Bioinformatics published proceedings of the 14th Annual UT-KBRIN Bioinformatics Summit 2015. BMC Proceedings published abstracts from the 4th International Conference for Healthcare and Medical Students (ICHAMS) 2014. Safety in Health published meeting abstracts from Safety in Health. BMC Bioinformatics published articles from BioNLP Shared Task 2013: Part 2. Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases published sbstracts from the First European Congress on Hereditary ATTR amyloidosis. Journal of ImmunoTherapy of Cancer published meeting abstracts from the 30th Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2015). Breast Cancer Research published meeting abstracts from the British Society of Breast Radiology Annual Scientific Meeting 2015.

BioMed Central is an open access publisher of science, technology and medicine. We have over 290 open access, online, peer-reviewed journals. Find out which are relevant to you and your research here.

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