It’s that time of year again! Nominations are open for you to put forward your favorite BioMed Central open access research article for our seventh annual Research Awards. Articles must be published in one of our 240 plus BioMed Central journals, during 2012 to qualify.

BioMed Central’s Research Awards have been successfully highlighting the very best research that has been made available through open access publishing for the last six years, chosen by you and selected by internationally renowned judges.

This year we’ve taken a closer look at our ten category awards and refined subject areas . Each award now allows us to distinguish the articles that deserve recognition across several disciplines.

These categories are:

• Cancer
• Public Health and Health Services Research
• Neuroscience, Neurology and Psychiatry
• Clinical Medicine
• Translational Medicine
• Computational and high-throughput studies in genomics and systems biology
• Plant, Environmental Biology and Ecology
• Animal Science, Veterinary Research and Zoology
• Microbiology, Immunology, Infection and Inflammation
• Molecular and Cellular Science

The winners of the ten categories will automatically be shortlisted for the prestigious BioMed Central Research Award which carries a $5,000 prize for the winner.

Last years’ BioMed Central Research Award winner, Aine McKnight said,  “At the time receiving the prize was a fantastic morale boost for my group.  I’ve been an advocate of open access publishing from the early days.  I’ve come to appreciate, even more, that if the work is significant publishing in an open access journal is the best way to ensure widespread and general exposure.   My experience publishing with Retrovirology was fast and efficient.  The speed of publication was a real plus.  The paper, almost a year later, continues to be highly accessed by research groups all over the world”

Suggestions have started to flow in already but the nominations will close on 31 January 2013. To nominate please visit the website.

In addition, special awards will be given to the following categories:

• Case Report of the Year
• Open Data Award, sponsored by LabArchives
• Editor of the Year
• Open Access Institute/Advocate of the Year

Matthew Cockerill, Managing Director of BioMed Central, said, “With the number and standard of entries at such a high level, I am looking forward already to recognizing the winners of our seventh annual Research Awards, celebrating the best research in 2012, and recognizing the authors, editors and open access advocates whose contributions have been vital to the success of BioMed Central’s journals in 2012.”

If you are interested in sponsoring one of our awards please contact Nick Moss, Event Sales Executive.