BioMed Central press release: First Century for 21st Century Publisher

[Gordon Fletcher <Gordon@biomedcentral.com>]

This press release may be of interest to readers of this list.

BioMed Central press release:	06 February 2003
For Immediate Release
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First Century for 21st Century Publisher: BioMed Central announce
the first 100 Institutions to join its Membership Program
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BioMed Central celebrated a milestone today when they signed up the
University of Nottingham, one of the top ten universities in the UK, as
the 100th member for their Institutional Membership Program.

January 2003 was a record month for the program - over 15 institutions
joined from the USA, Canada, Australia, and Europe.  Jan Velterop,
Publisher at BioMed Central is delighted with the success:

"We are thrilled that academic institutions have shown this level of
support for open access to scientific research. This, after all, is our
core belief: free access, to anyone, in any place, at any time. The take
up of the membership program demonstrates that institutions are prepared
to 'walk the talk' and accept new open access publishing models as a
genuine alternative to the traditional subscription-based model which
restricts the dissemination of scientific research."

As well as institutions, there are indications that authors are "voting
with their feet" to support open access. Paper submissions to BioMed
Central's 90 online open access journals have increased steadily over the
last year. January 2003 submissions were at an all-time-high and more than
double the figures for the same period last year - an increase of over
140%.

BioMed Central's Institutional Membership Program was launched in January
2002 and has gone from strength to strength. Ivy League schools Brown,
Columbia, Cornell, Harvard and Princeton are all Institutional Members, as
are the Institut Pasteur, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University
of Lund, and the World Health Organization.

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About BioMed Central's Institutional Membership Program

BioMed Central's Membership Program enables institutions to ensure the
widest possible distribution of their peer-reviewed research articles.
Article processing charges, levied for publishing in one of BioMed
Central's 80 peer-reviewed journals, are waived for researchers from
member institutions. The full text of all published research is
immediately and freely available through the web to readers worldwide.

To find out more about BioMed Central's Institutional Membership Program,
please visit our website:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/instmembership
                      
For further information about BioMed Central please contact Grace Baynes
(mailto:grace.baynes@biomedcentral.com or +44 20 7631 2988) or visit our
website http://www.biomedcentral.com/).

To read further press releases from BioMed Central visit:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/pressinfo/

About BioMed Central:

BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com) is an independent online
publishing house committed to providing immediate free access to the
peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This
commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential
to the rapid and efficient communication of science. In addition to
open-access original research, BioMed Central also publishes reviews and
other subscription-based content.

BioMed Central offers an alternative way of publishing peer-reviewed
research papers that does not rely on subscription charges or the transfer
of copyright from author to publisher, as is the case with most scientific
journals. Instead the company charges authors a fee for managing peer
review and formatting their manuscripts. Article processing charges, as
these fees are known, can be paid by an author or by the organisation with
which they are affiliated.

BioMed Central is the only publisher offering a range of open access
journals across the breadth of biology and medicine. It has many
enthusiastic supporters including the Nobel Laureates Harold Varmus and
Paul Nurse and is endorsed by the Public Library of Science - a group of
high profile scientists who believe conventional publishers are
restricting the communication of scientific research
(http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/openaccess.htm).

Press Office contacts:

Grace Baynes 
e-mail | grace.baynes@biomedcentral.com
phone | +44 (0) 20 7631 2988
Fax    | +44 (0)20 7580 1938

Gordon Fletcher 
e-mail | gordon@biomedcentral.com 
phone  | +44 (0) 20 7323 0323
Fax    | +44 (0)20 7580 1938