Posts by Hilary Glover

Mapping the risks of H7N9 infection in China

Hilary Glover on May 4, 2013 at 10:49 am - 0 Comments

Avian influenza A (H7N9) is a tricky version of bird flu which seems to be sweeping across China. At the end of April the WHO registered 126 cases and 24 deaths but as of the beginning of May according to the Chinese CDC, there have been 127 confirmed cases of H7N9 in mainland China with 26 deaths.

A lack of information about the virus and its mode of transmission has led to public concerns that H7N9 could be a pandemic waiting to happen. It is a difficult virus to track because its main hosts – birds – do not appear to show symptoms of infection.

But do humans need to be worried? The BBC hesitates with ‘yes and …

What is the cost of rare diseases?

Hilary Glover on February 28, 2013 at 3:35 pm - 0 Comments

Rare diseases day February 28th 2013 aims to raise awareness of rare diseases and their impact on people’s lives. These diseases have a cost, not just to the people affected and their families, but also in medical care, lost earnings, and to pay for research into improving diagnosis and treatment.

Diseases are classified as ‘rare’ if they affect less than one in 2000 people. But in reality ‘rare diseases’ are not that rare. In the UK alone one in 17 people will be affected at some point in their lives, which equates to more than 3.5 million people. Most of these will be children, and 30% of individuals with a rare disease will die before they are five years old.

Currently …

World AIDS Day 1st December 2012

Hilary Glover on November 30, 2012 at 3:14 pm - 0 Comments

Saturday 1st December is World AIDS Day. World Aids Day was the first global health awareness day held in 1988 to help commemorate those who have died of AIDS, raise awareness of the disease, and help drive support for people living with HIV. 25 years on, this year the WHO has defined this year as World AIDS Day 2012: Getting to Zero.

100,000 people are currently living with HIV in the UK alone – worldwide this number is estimated to be 34 million which includes 3.3 million children. Each day almost 7,000 are people newly infected and although antiretroviral therapy is increasingly allowing people to lead normal lives 1.7 million people died of AIDS in 2011.

The Terrance …

BioMed Central and Springer Superheroes: helping research into breast cancer

Hilary Glover on November 16, 2012 at 12:53 pm - 0 Comments

October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month and on October 26th superheroes from the London offices of BioMed Central and Springer participated in the Wear it Pink (WiP) day. Together we raised £222.29 to help the Breast Cancer Campaign continue research into improving treatment and finding a cure for the (more than) 48,000 people diagnosed each year with breast cancer. Even our mascot Gulliver joined in the fun…

As Gulliver pointed out in his blog, WiP day fell right in the middle of Open Access Week. Research published during October in Breast Cancer Research, an open access journal, are all steps in understanding what exactly are the changes within a cell which cause it to …

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Hilary Glover on October 1, 2012 at 12:03 pm - 0 Comments

According to the Breast Cancer Campaign one in eight women in the UK will be diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetimes. This equates to 48,000 new cases each year. 12,000 women (and 80 men) die of breast cancer each year in the UK alone. While these are hard facts, there are thousands of dedicated doctors, nurses and researchers out there trying to help.

Macmillan and Breast Cancer Care are two of the many charities providing advice, nurses and specialised centres. Other organisations such as Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Against Breast Cancer rely on donations to fund research about breast cancer cures and prevention. Wear it Pink this October 26th aims to reach its £25 …

Order high quality reprints online – it’s easy with EzReprint

Hilary Glover on July 20, 2012 at 4:18 am - 0 Comments

BioMed Central is pleased to announce the launch of a new online reprint ordering service, provided by EzReprint, a part of Yurchak Printing, Inc, based in the USA.

Reprints are produced from the final typeset article PDF. To place an order, from the full text version of the article or its abstract, select the “Order reprints” option in the Tools list in the right-hand navigation, and you will be taken directly to an order form where between 25 and 500 reprints can be purchased.

EzReprint’s system is easy to use, offers high quality copies of both color and black only reprints, plus a number of payment options to suit your needs.

The EzReprint service is available for both open access …

Open for business: open access journals have the same scientific impact as subscription journals

Hilary Glover on July 17, 2012 at 1:51 am - 0 Comments

The debate about who should pay for scientific publishing is of continuing importance to the scientific community but also to the general public who not only often pay for the research though charitable contributions, their taxes, and by buying products, but are also affected by the results contained within these articles. So what is the difference between open and closed (subscription) access?

Many publically funded agencies, such as the Wellcome Trust require that scientific research sponsored by them is made freely available to the public. In recent months the debate about who should pay for scientific publishing had been raised a notch. The Research Works Act in December 2011 designed to …

BioMed Central announces winners of 6th Annual Research Awards

Hilary Glover on May 18, 2012 at 10:05 am - 0 Comments

Open access publisher BioMed Central revealed the
winners of their 6th
Annual Research Awards
last night at Emirates Stadium, London, UK. Celebrating the very best research
that has been made available by open access publishing, more than 100 guests
attended the prestigious ceremony including leading researchers, shortlisted
authors and science journalists from around the world.

The winners were selected by internationally renowned judges from over 230 BioMed Central journals which
published more than 18,000 peer-reviewed open access articles over the last 12
months.

BioMed Central Research Award

The overall winner of the prestigious BioMed
Central Research Award, selected from …

Category award winners and shortlists announced for BioMed Central’s 6th Annual Research Awards

Hilary Glover on April 25, 2012 at 9:48 am - 0 Comments

Our annual Research Awards recognize the excellence in research published across our journals in the past year.

BioMed Central Research Award 2011

We are pleased to announce the winners for the ten award categories:

Cancer and Cardiovascular Research Award

Clinical and Translational Medicine Award
General Biology Award
General Medicine Award
Genetics, Genomics, Bioinformatics and Evolution Award
Microbiology, Immunology, Infection and Inflammation Award
Molecular and Cellular Science Award
Neuroscience, Neurology and Psychiatry Award
Plant, Animal Sciences and Veterinary Research Award
Public Health Award

The winning articles, selected by internationally renowned

Critical Care publishes two new supplements – free to access

Hilary Glover on March 20, 2012 at 2:25 am - 0 Comments

Critical Care has just published two new collections to coincide with
the start of the 32nd
International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (ISICEM). All articles in both collections are free to access.

The first collection, poster
abstracts from the 32nd ISICEM are published as a supplement to the
journal. Click here to view a full
list of the 530 abstracts presented at the conference. Also are you attending the conference – if so visit
us at our booth in the entrance hall for more information.

The second, a selection of 11
articles from Springer’s Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency
Medicine 2012 have been co-published as a thematic