“Winning the BioMed Central Research Awards 2011 gave our article a boost… a little over a year after the paper was published, it had been viewed almost 4000 times. This is reflected in a high citation rate,” says Áine McKnight winner of the 2012 BioMed Central Research award.

Our Research Awards bring visibility to excellent articles and researchers published in BioMed Central journals. We want to hear what you think are the best articles published in 2013 in a BioMed Central journal, or an individual or institution you think has made a significant contribution to Open Access or Open Data?

If you want to nominate your favourite 2013 BioMed Central open access research article for 8th Annual Research Awards, you can do so here. Or if you’re reading a great article, why not hit the ‘Nominate’ button found on the right-hand column of all eligible  articles.

There are several award categories that cover many areas of research:

• Animal Science, Veterinary Research and Zoology
• Cancer
• Case Report of the Year
• Clinical Medicine
• Computational and high-throughput studies in genomics and systems biology
• Editor of the Year
• Microbiology, Immunology, Infection and Inflammation
• Molecular and Cellular Science
• Neuroscience, Neurology and Psychiatry
• Open Access Advocate Institution of the Year
• Open Data
• Plant Biology, Environmental Biology and Ecology
• Public Health and Health Services Research
• Translational Medicine

Nominations will close at the end of January 2014 but get your nomination in early and the spread the word. After all nominations have been received a panel of scientists and clinicians consisting of experts in each category will select the winners.

Last years’ BioMed Central Research Award winner, Kenneth Stedman was “extremely honoured by this award considering all of the wonderful research that is being published at BioMed Central.” Since publication of the award-winning article further collaboration has allowed several other groups to detect the presence of viral genomes formed through interviral RNA-DNA recombination. Stedman is hopeful that “having been selected for such an award will encourage other researchers to venture into this fascinating new territory as well.” You can read more from Stedman’s article and all the other winners here.