Each year BioMed Central’s Annual Research Awards celebrate excellence in scientific research made freely available through open access publishing within our portfolio of biology and medical journals. Now in their 7th year, they are intended to recognize the achievements of particular research teams in ten diverse subject-specific award categories spanning all areas of Biology, Medicine and Health Services Research. We also have an Open Data award recognizing leadership in the sharing of data and a Case Report of the Year Award for the best case report recognized for its originality and significance to clinical practice.We are pleased to announce the winners for the ten subject-specific award categories:

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

The winning articles, selected by internationally respected scientists, will automatically be shortlisted for the overall BioMed Central Research Award, sponsored this year by antibodies-online.The winner of the overall BioMed Central award will be announced at a presentation on Sunday, 21^st April, at the Seaport Hotel in Boston, USA, as part of an evening celebrating the tenth anniversary of publication of BMC Biology, the flagship biology journal of BioMed Central. The evening includes a panel discussion on the hotly-debated topic of how to avoid the ‘tyranny’ of current peer review practices.

The panel will include Hidde Ploegh, the author of a widely read article on peer review, Emilie Marcus, Editor of Cell, John Timmer, Science Editor at Ars Technica and Miranda Robertson, Editor of BMC Biology, whose re-review opt-out policy is intended to address some of the problems faced by academics.

If you will be in Boston on April 21st and would like to attend, please email us for a formal invitation by April 19th.