Collaborating with societies and institutions at BioMed Central

In recognition of this year’s Open Access Week theme, ‘open for collaboration’, we asked publishing partners from three of our journals for their views on open access, including why they chose to collaborate with BioMed Central and how open access has helped them.

This post was also coordinated by Mr Leo Cheung, Regional Open Access Publishing Manager, BioMed Central Asia

1. Journal of Foot and Ankle Research

This is the official journal of The College of Podiatry (UK) and the Australasian Podiatry Council. The Australian Podiatry Council are responsible for the development of national policies and support research within the discipline. As the peak body for podiatry in Australia, find out what they had to say…

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Pixabay

What is your society’s viewpoint of open access?

Open access offered the opportunity for us to advance clinical knowledge and skill sets across the profession as a whole – in fact globally. The added advantage was that access is free to the end user whether they are in a developed or developing nation.

Why did you choose BioMed Central as your journal publisher?

We reviewed a number of open access journals and choose BioMed Central largely on the basis of recommendation. The organization already had an excellent reputation.

What differences has Open Access publishing made to your journal?

The journal’s impact rating speaks for itself, and it is probably true to say that no other publishing model would have allowed that to happen. We are now the most highly rated of like journals.

What future expectations do you have for your journal?

We are anticipating, over time, a much stronger use of multi-media, as researchers and their sponsoring organizations recognize the educational capacity of these technologies. Also, of course, given the excellent progress in terms of its ranking, we expect the journal to attract more and more authors of top calibre with consequent ongoing improvement of the impact factor.

2. Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases

Orphanet is affiliated with this journal and is the portal for information on rare diseases and orphan drugs. The aim of Orphanet is to improve the diagnosis, care and treatment of those with rare diseases.

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Flickr

What is Orphanet’s viewpoint of Open Access?

Open access is a prerequisite to advance research and translation of research results in a timely fashion. In the field of Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs it is even the only ethical approach as the extent of unmet medical needs is enormous and everything should be done to ease the research and development process.

Why did you choose BioMed Central as your journal publisher?

We wanted to go online in 2008. At that time BioMed Central was the only option we found, and we were warmly welcomed. This is a choice that we do not regret as the journal has helped us to fulfill our mission which is to be the reference portal for information on rare diseases and orphan drugs.

What differences has Open Access publishing made to your journal?

Our journal is very well known due to its open access nature, as a very important category of potential readers are patient advocacy groups.

Our journal is very well known due to its open access nature, as a very important category of potential readers are patient advocacy groups. They play a crucial role nowadays in initiating research, in funding it, even in establishing biotech companies.

In addition many policy makers are now aware of the importance of this field and read our articles. They would never make the effort to obtain the papers if there were any difficulties in accessing them.

What future expectations do you have for your journal?

I hope that in the future there will be a way to make the journal a recognized source of crucial data to advance knowledge through data-mining. The technology allows that. It is just a matter of establishing the right partnership and of being visionary. I am pretty confident that we will succeed!

3. Journal of Biomedical Science

The Ministry of Science and Technology supports this journal and is a government funded organization involved in drawing up plans and policies, drafting related laws and regulations and guaranteeing the implementation of these. What do they think about open access?

Pixabay
Pixabay

What is your organization’s viewpoint of Open Access?

Open access has allowed researchers to get access to the articles of their interests immediately as the paper is published online, meaning the article is more likely to be noticed and cited. This advantage has attracted researchers’ attention to publish their papers in an open access journal.

Why did you choose BioMed Central as your journal publisher?

BioMed Central publishes 290 peer-reviewed open access journals. We believe that with the help of an experienced publisher like BioMed Central, Journal of Biomedical Science can become a better journal in a short time.

What differences has Open Access publishing made to your journal?

Journal of Biomedical Science (JBS) switched from the traditional publication to open access publishing in 2009. We noticed a tremendous increase in the number of submissions (from 286 submissions to 524 submissions in 2008 to 2009 respectively). In addition to more submissions, Open Access has made the journal more visible and accessible to researchers worldwide.

We noticed a tremendous increase in the number of submissions (from 286 submissions to 524 submissions in 2008 to 2009 respectively).

The journal was founded by the National Science Council in Taiwan 20 years ago. By then, most submissions were from Taiwan researchers. However, based on recent statistics, the percentage of submissions from other countries is increasing.

In 2013, papers from Taiwan comprised 13% of all submissions. In 2014, however, submissions from local researchers comprise only 9% of all submissions. This means that JBS is not only recognized in the national academic community, but it has also attracted scientists internationally.

Open access has helped to make papers available to anyone with internet access and in turn attract more papers with merit. Consequently, it increases the journal’s impact factor and its worldwide recognition.

What future expectations do you have for your journal?

With open access publishing, and with more submissions of papers with merit, I would aim for a better impact factor, and hopefully JBS can serve as a reputable scholarly platform for researchers to publish their valuable studies.

JBS can facilitate a scientist’s growth of research by sharing their experiences and practices with researchers around the world. In return, one is able to have the immediate access to latest discoveries of others and can mutually learn from the experiments and research findings.

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