Here at BioMed Central there are a number of ways we can keep track of how many times our articles are accessed (a more detailed guide to this can be found here). Articles doing particularly well receive a ‘highly accessed graphic’ , which is calculated based on the number of accesses an article receives relative to its age and also the journal it is published in. We’re delighted that nearly 300 (of just over 900) BMC Medicine articles have been accredited as highly accessed over the last decade.

To mark our 10 year anniversary, today we will look at the top 10 most highly accessed articles in the journal. The top 10 articles encompass a variety of different areas of medicine – from celiac disease to physician burnout and mental health – and feature interesting original studies from authors across the globe. The full list can be found below, or you can view all of our articles in order of popularity here.

Our third most highly accessed article is an Opinion piece published in 2012 by Alessio Fasano and colleagues, who propose new nomenclature in the spectrum of gluten-related disorders in light of recent evidence suggesting that gluten sensitivity can be caused by conditions other than celiac disease. To date, this article has received 78,959 Accesses.

In second place, a recent article on contamination of herbal medicines has been read many times already, with 83,134 accesses since it was published on 11 October 2013. In this study, Steven Newmaster and colleagues used DNA barcoding to show that many herbal products contain contaminants that are not listed on the label, suggesting that more stringent regulation is required to protect consumers.

Our number one most highly accessed article of all time is a research article by Sabine Rohrmann and colleagues from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) collaboration, showing that people who eat large amounts of processed meat have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and early death. This article has been read 84,598 times since it was published in March 2013, and continues to be highly accessed, with over 2500 views in the last 30 days.

We are delighted that our most accessed articles includes some from BMC Medicine’s early days alongside some of our more recent publications. We will continue to promote our authors’ interesting work through our blogs and Twitter page, in order to make sure our articles are disseminated as widely as possible.

The full list of our top 10 most highly accessed articles is as follows: