BioMed Central Update
Were you aware…?
This month, we have been celebrating Open Data Day, International Women’s Day and Criminal Justice Month. And the list of awareness days, weeks and months commemorating issues including health and disease, ethics, science or the environment is much longer. April will see Parkinson’s Disease Month, Parkinson's Awareness Week, Autism Awareness Week, and World Health Day, among others. Why not let us know what you are planning? Email us at info@biomedcentral.com.
 Flickr: Descrier |
Saturday 4th March was Open Data Day, an annual event that celebrates open data all over the word.
One of the four key themes for this year was open research data, so in his blog, BioMed Central’s Community Manager Davy Falkner takes a look back over some of our most popular blogs and videos on all things open research data.
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Wednesday 8th March was International Women’s Day, a global day observed since the early 1900’s to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women as well as marking a call to action for accelerating gender parity.
The theme this year was #BeBoldForChange. In her blog, Nawsheen Bodun, editor at BioMed Central focuses on violence against women. Nawsheen introduces a cross-journal thematic series - The Role of Structural and Interpersonal Violence in the Lives of Women – running in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth and BMC Women’s Health, which is open to submissions.
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March is National Criminal Justice Month in the United States. The aim of the event is to increase awareness of the causes and effects of crime, as well as improving strategies for prevention and response.
This March, Springer Nature is sharing the top downloaded criminology and criminal justice research articles of 2015 and 2016. All articles are free to read until March 31, 2017.
Before the Abstract, the official podcast of the Springer Nature Storytellers program, features a story shared by criminologist Heith Copes, about his work on a photo ethnography of methamphetamine use in rural Alabama. Listen to Heith’s story and have a look at the photo series GOOD BAD PEOPLE, photographed by Jared Ragland here.
A round up of recent events
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Peter Dayan and Wolfram Schultz, editorial board members for BioMed Central’s open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions, have been awarded this year’s Brain Prize, jointly with Ray Dolan, ‘for their multidisciplinary analysis of brain mechanisms that link learning to reward, which has far-reaching implications for the understanding of human behaviour’. Further information on the € 1 million Brain Prize and the winners can be found here.
 Photo: Davide Gaglio |
BMC Ecology’s 5th annual Image Competition is now accepting entries. Submit your images for a chance to highlight your research, win prizes, and have your photography featured in BMC Ecology.
The overall winner will receive a cash prize of £250 (~ €300/$325), while the runner-up will receive £100 (€125/$150). Additional prizes of £50 (€65/$75) will be awarded for those images selected by the Section Editors that best represent their section. More information on the competition and on how to enter from Chris Foote, editor at BMC series here.
The overall winner will receive a cash prize of £250 (~ €300/$325), while the runner-up will receive £100 (€125/$150). Additional prizes of £50 (€65/$75) will be awarded for those images selected by the Section Editors that best represent their section. More information on the competition and on how to enter from Chris Foote, editor at BMC series here.
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On February 9th, a coalition of Dutch parties and organizations, including DANS: the Netherlands Institute for Permanent Access to Digital Research Resources, The Young Academy, and 4TU.Centre for Research Data, launched the ‘National Plan Open Science’ with the support of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. The plan provides details of the parties intending to take action, listing their ambitions and the timeframes within which they believe they can realize their objectives.
The first ambition listed in the plan is for the Netherlands to achieve full open access in 2020, at which point all publicly funded scientific publications, including articles, reports and books or parts of books, will be made open access. PDFs of the plan can be downloaded in English and Dutch.
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On 23rd February, Springer Nature launched Recommended, a new service which connects the research community with the most relevant content.
An algorithm learns about users’ individual research interests by analysing the last 100 papers read across nature.com, SpringerLink and BioMed Central. Based on these interests, Recommended – the first such service from a publisher – generates personalised article recommendations, regardless of the publisher. Further information can be found in a blog by Mark Staniland, Senior Communications Manager at Springer Nature.
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BMC Research Notes, a BioMed Central journal, is returning to its roots.
BMC Research Notes was launched as part of the BMC series in 2008 to provide a home for short publications, case series, incremental updates to previous work, results of individual experiments, and similar material that lacked a suitable publication outlet. After extending its remit to include full-length research articles in 2011, the journal is now re-focusing on publishing null results, dark data and micropublishing.
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More big changes are afoot at another journal in the BMC series, BMC Proceedings, ranging from a change of editor to a broad expansion of the journal’s scope.
In his blog, Tom Rowles, senior editor at BioMed Central discusses the importance of conference proceedings, how they contribute to the dissemination of research, and what we can expect from BMC Proceedings in the future.
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In February, Springer Nature’s figshare integration, which was introduced for additional files at BioMed Central and SpringerOpen in December 2016, reached more than 450 BioMed Central and SpringerOpen journals. Upwards of 19,000 articles now have their supplementary materials (additional files) stored in figshare and available for preview within the journal article. As a result these research outputs are now available in a more citable, shareable and discoverable manner. Graham Smith, Research Data Editor at Springer Nature explains this in more detail in his blog.
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Publishing is an important part of sharing research outcomes, but the publication process may sometimes feel daunting. We are pleased to announce that we are partnering with Health Systems Global which is affiliated with BMC Health Services Research, to deliver a series of webinars to open up the peer review and publication processes. With webinars aimed at researchers at a variety of career stages, the series will cover: how to prepare an article and choose the right journal, what happens during peer review, publishing models and open access, research and publication ethics and how to be a peer reviewer.
Sign up to the first in our series, ‘Preparing your article and submitting to a journal’, to be held on April 7th here.
BioMed Central in the news
 | A contraceptive gel has provided long-term and reliable contraception in male rhesus monkeys, according to research published in Basic and Clinical Andrology. The gel, which was trialled in rabbits in 2016, has the potential to be a reversible alternative to vasectomy. The research was reported and broadcast by Sky News, BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Wired, and Daily Mail in UK; The Scientist, Smithsonian Magazine, Fox News, ABC , NBC , Time magazine and Live Science in US; IFL Science in Canada; Spiegel Online and aerzteblatt.de in Germany; and many other outlets worldwide. On social media, actor and filmmaker, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, tweeted about a video he created about the study and SciShow posted a video discussing this male birth control option on YouTube. |
 Photo: Stacey Tecot | A team of lemur biologists and computer scientists has modified human facial recognition methods to develop a semi-automated system that can identify individual lemurs. The new technology, dubbed LemurFaceID is published in BMC Zoology. The research was covered by BBC and Daily Mail in UK; Wired, Live Science, Fox News and Smithsonian magazine in US; IFL Science in Canada; Scimex in Australia; Sciences et Avenir in France; Sveriges Radio in Sweden; Bao moi in Vietnam and gazeta.ru in Russia. |
 | Research published in Genome Biology explains how CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology has been used for the first time to successfully produce live cows with increased resistance to bovine tuberculosis. This was a popular news story, reported by BBC, BBC Radio 4 Farming Today (including a great interview with Genome Biology editor Andrew Cosgrove), The Times and Daily Mail in UK; Genome Web, genengnews.com and Vocativ in US; Le Scienze in Italy; The Australian in Australia; forskning.no in Norway; Sveriges Radio in Sweden; and Entorno Inteligente in Venezuela. |
 Photo: M. Maruyama | A new species of beetle has been spotted hitchhiking on the back of army ants as a means of transportation. Research published in BMC Zoology describes how the newly discovered beetle, Nymphister kronaueri, uses its strong mandibles to anchor itself tightly to the ant’s body in order to hitch a ride when the nomadic army ants move to new nesting sites. The press release gained coverage in New Scientist and Daily Mail in UK; Live Science in US; Bluewin and 20 minuten in Switzerland; Scientias and nu.nl in the Netherlands; Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt and Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany; Scimex in Australia; and science.apa.at and Der Standard in Austria. |
 | Female green bottle flies attract potential mates by flashing sunlight at particular frequencies from their wings, according to research published in BMC Biology. Using video technology to capture and measure wing flash frequency, the researchers showed that male flies are attracted to specific flash frequencies and not the morphological characteristics of the female flies. The research was covered in Daily Mail in UK; Sciences et Avenir in France; forskning.no in Norway; Inverse in US; spektrum.de in Germany; and Scimex in Australia. |
 | The high level of genetic diversity between individual tumors suggests that if it were to be developed, a broad cancer vaccine would be unlikely to work for more than 0.3% of the population. The research, published in Genome Medicine, was covered in Medical News Today in UK; Medscape in US and ABC.es in Spain. |
 | The most popular blog across the BMC blog network in February was published in the BMC series blog. Anna Clark, senior editor at BioMed Central, looks at whether peripheral biomarkers of Parkinson’s disease found in the skin could be used as a definitive diagnosis for the disease. The blog was based on an article recently published in BMC Neurology, which provides new insights into the pathological changes that occur in the skin during Parkinson’s disease, and may shed light on potential targets for a diagnostic biomarker. |
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