BioMed Central Blog
Journal of Trauma Management & Outcomes - a new open access journal from BioMed Central
We are pleased to announce the launch of Journal of
Trauma Management & Outcomes, a new open access journal from BioMed Central. The journal considers articles on all aspects of trauma research,
with a focus on interventions demonstrating efficacy and effectiveness in improving clinically
relevant outcomes for severely injured patients such as mortality, morbidity, quality
of life, function, and costs.
The journal is lead by the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Axel Ekkernkamp (Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin and University of Greifswald, Germany), who is supported by an expert Editorial Board.
The first research articles published in Journal of Trauma Management & Outcomes focus of a variety of different areas including:
- Epidemiology and surgical management of floating knee injuries
- Use of geographic information systems to study trauma management in India
- Incidence and severity of injuries arising from sledging accidents
Posted by Charlotte Hubbard at 09:55 Comments (0)
Trials publishes its first thematic series
Trials, BioMed Central's journal dedicated to exploring any aspect of the design, performance, and findings of
randomized controlled trials in health care, has recently published a series of articles on Standardization of outcomes, the latest of the journal's thematic series.
The series includes a review by Travis et al., which highlights the need for clear patient selection criteria and agreed definitions of disease remission in ulcerative colitis trials. This principle has successfully been applied in rheumatology, and is discussed in Tugwell et al.'s commentary, which also forms part of the series. Finally, Dr Mike Clarke provides an overview of the series in his commentary, and discusses the rationale for standardization initiatives in both clinical trials and systematic reviews. All of the articles are open access.
Commentary
Standardising outcomes for clinical trials and systematic reviews
Mike Clarke
Commentary
OMERACT: An international initiative to improve outcome measurement in rheumatology
Peter Tugwell, Maarten Boers, Peter Brooks, Lee Simon, Vibeke Strand, Leanne Idzerda
Review
Outcome measurement in clinical trials for ulcerative colitis: towards standardisation
Rachel M Cooney, Bryan F Warren, Douglas G Altman, Maria T Abreu, Simon PL Travis
Trials is overseen by Doug Altman (United Kingdom), Curt Furberg
(United States), Jeremy Grimshaw (Canada) and Peter Rothwell (United
Kingdom), the Editors-in-Chief, and an expert editorial board. If you would like more information on the journal, please contact the editorial office.
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz
In-house Editor, Trials
Posted by Iain Hrynaszkiewicz at 10:23 Comments (0)
BioMed Central YouTube channel debuts
We're pleased to announce the launch of our new BioMed Central YouTube channel, which brings together videos of our authors and editors talking about their work, BioMed Central's journals, and the benefits of open access publishing.
Video is an increasingly important way for researchers to
communicate their results, and BioMed Central is at the forefront of
developments in this area. We encourage authors and editors to upload suitable
videos to YouTube and contact us
so that
we can add these videos to the BioMed Central channel. If you want to know when
we post new videos, just click the 'Subscribe' link on the channel
home page.
In addition to our YouTube channel, we are working with SciVee to ensure the visibility and linking of PubCasts featuring BioMed Central articles. For example, SciVee currently features a pubcast by Apostol Gramada in which he describes the research he published in BMC Bioinformatics.
BioMed Central also offers perhaps the best and most fully integrated support for video content within research articles of any scientific publisher. Thumbnails are displayed for any video files associated with an article, and these videos can be played back within the context of the article.
Examples of the diverse recent BioMed Central articles making use of this support for embedded video include:
We encourage and support authors who wish to publish video-enhanced
articles, and to this end we have recently doubled the maximum file
size for additional material files to 20 megabytes (using modern video
standard such as MP4, this is sufficient for several minutes of high
quality video).
Posted by Matthew Cockerill at 17:52 Comments (1)
Biology Direct launches new Discovery Notes section
We are
delighted to announce the launch of a new Discovery
Notes section for Biology Direct, overseen by Section Editor L
Aravind, and Editors-in-Chief David J Lipman, Laura Landweber, and Eugene
Koonin.
Discovery Notes will be brief reports of specific
discoveries made by computational analysis of nucleic acid and/or protein
sequences, structures or other data, with novel observations and conclusions
about the function, organization, or evolution of proteins, genes or genomes. These succinct articles will be an exciting addition to Biology
Direct, as they will allow the rapid communication of key findings, and the novel connections and relationships which they identify will spur experimental investigations in new and unexpected directions. Full details are available in an Editorial which launches the new section:
Opening Pandora's Box: making biological discoveries through computational data exploration
L Aravind
Biology Direct 2007, 2:29 (20 November 2007)
Biology Direct, which was launched in 2006, operates a unique open peer review system, whereby reviewers’ comments and authors’ responses are published alongside the final article, making the process of peer review open, rather than anonymous. The journal has published more than 60 articles; nearly half of which have been accessed more than 2,000 times, and seven of which have been highlighted on the literature recommendation service Faculty of 1000 Biology. Biology Direct is tracked by Thomson Scientific and is due to receive its first impact factor in 2008. As an open access publication, all articles are freely and immediately available online, maximising the visibility of the author's work, and copyright is retained by the author.
Posted by Anna Webb at 18:03 Comments (0)
Enthusiasm for open access on the Harvard campus
Much of the afternoon’s discussion revolved around open access and associated issues. The benefits of open access were clearly laid out in an opening keynote by Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate and former Director of the NIH. A campus-level perspective on open access was then provided by Stuart Shieber, Professor of Computing at Harvard and Isaac Kohane, Director of Harvard Medical School’s Countway Library - both strong open access advocates.
Posted by Matthew Cockerill at 22:57 Comments (0)
Journal of Biology, the premier biology journal published by BioMed
Central, has published the first minireview covering an article from the BMC
series of journals.
In the review,
entitled Landscape genetics goes to
sea, Michael Hanson and Jakob Hemmer-Hansen discuss the constraints placed
on the gene flow of marine 
populations by environmental and geographical
barriers. This review highlights a
recent study by Fontaine et
al, published in BMC
Biology, describing how such constraints may have led to the genetic
isolation of populations of harbour propoises in some locations.
The scope of minireview articles in Journal of Biology was recently expanded to include open access articles of particular interest published by BioMed Central, and this is the first such article to appear in the journal.
Posted by Anna Webb at 17:18 Comments (0)
ENCODE E-GASP gene prediction workshop supplement now available in print via Amazon
We are pleased to
announce that a collection of articles based on presentations made at the
ENCODE E-GASP 2005 gene prediction workshop, originally published as an open access online supplement in Genome Biology, is now available to purchase as a print edition from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. At E-GASP, a two day workshop held in
Cambridge, UK, the results of a competition between 18 different labs to
improve gene-prediction software for the human genome were discussed. The results and their implications are
reported in this supplement, which was edited by Roderic Guigó and Martin
G Reese.
Posted by Anna Webb at 16:46 Comments (0)
A recent article published in BioMed Central's open access Nutrition Journal concerning the usage patterns of dietary supplements and the health and nutritional status of their users has been downloaded from the journal's website over 16,000 times since publication on October 24th.
These remarkable access statistics demonstrate the extent to which open access journals can enhance the dissemination of
research, and emphasize the readiness of members of the public to dig behind the media coverage to read original research articles when they are accessible.
Ben Goldacre, on his excellent Bad Science blog, recently discussed the contrasting case of a research article, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and widely covered in the popular media, which reported on the relative effectiveness of acupuncture, "sham acupuncture" and standard medical treatment in the treatment of lower back pain.
Lower back pain, like nutritional supplement usage, is an issue of relevance to a large fraction of the general population. Despite this, however, Goldacre's attempts to persuade JAMA to make the article freely available so that the public could read it for themselves were unsuccessful - particularly problematic considering that, as discussed by Goldacre, much of the media coverage failed to convey the key result of the research, which was that there was no statistically significant difference in the effectiveness of 'real' and 'sham' acupuncture.
Public access to relevant medical research is not the only benefit of open access publishing, but it is a significant one. For other examples of recent articles that have attracted a wide readership, see BioMed Central 'Most viewed' page.
Posted by Matthew Cockerill at 16:59 Comments (2)
BMC Systems Biology is just 11 months old, but has already achieved some impressive milestones.
Not only has it just published its 50th article, but it has also recently been accepted for tracking by Thomson Scientific and is due to receive an official Impact Factor in June 2009. The journal is also now indexed by MEDLINE, BIOSIS Previews and Zoological Record.
The 'word cloud' below, based on article abstracts, gives a sense of the scope of the articles that the journal has published so far.
Publications have looked at network modules and patterns, cellular signalling networks, modelling and designing genetic regulatory networks, cell cycle control and genetic oscillators, cell motility and cell proliferation kinetics, reconstructing metabolic pathways and networks, metabolic flux analysis, matching gene expression networks to phenotypes, spatial co-expression and connectivity in the brain, a gene search engine, and a model of the connective tissue network.
Whether you are working in one of these areas, or in another area of systems biology, you can submit your manuscript online.
Posted by Matt Hodgkinson at 16:31 Comments (0)
Drosophilid genome studies published
BioMed Central's journals are publishing seven open access companion papers analyzing these genome sequences. The papers in Genome Biology, BMC Genomics, BMC Evolutionary Biology and BMC Bioinformatics span a wide range of topics, including genome-wide surveys of RNAs, codon usage, comparative genomics of gene families and the evolution of gene order and sequences.
The sequencing of the Drosophila melanogaster genome at the turn of the millennium was a landmark in genome research, acting as a stepping stone to the human genome, and furthering understanding of this favourite model organism. The publication of the Drosophila pseudoobscura genome built upon this. As the Drosophila genus has over 2,000 known species, there is enormous scope in sequencing further members of this genus to study the molecular evolution of closely related genomes.
D. simulans and D. yakuba
were sequenced by the Washington University Genome Center, D. erecta, D.
ananassae, D. virilis, D. mojavensis and D. grimshawi were
sequenced by Agencourt, Inc., D. willistoni was sequenced by the J.
Craig Venter Institute, and D. persimilis and D. sechellia were
sequenced by the Broad Institute.
Among the articles published by BioMed Central, a trio of papers studies global genomic patterns, looking at codon usage, sequence evolution and the evolution of gene order and chromosome rearrangements.
Two papers study the conservation of sequence motifs to uncover novel microRNAs and other non-coding RNAs.
On a smaller scale these sequences allow comparative studies of the evolution of gene families, and two papers analyze oxidative phosphorylation genes and the Odorant-Binding Protein family.
The addition of these 10 genomes to the roster of
completed genomes is a further milestone in comparative genomics. As
demonstrated by these companion studies, these sequences, along with the
already well-annotated genome of Drosophila melanogaster, are an
extremely useful tool in exploring speciation, evolution and development, and
should be indispensable for biologists.
Posted by Matt Hodgkinson at 17:44 Comments (2)
Patient Safety in Surgery - a new journal from BioMed Central
We are pleased to announce the launch of Patient Safety in
Surgery, a new open access, independent journal, which
covers all aspects of safety and quality of patient care in surgery and
surgical subspecialties.
Morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing surgical procedures may largely be preventable. The key to improving the management of adverse events in surgery is understanding their causes. Patient Safety in Surgery aims to provide a scientific platform for specialists from all surgical fields, and other healthcare professionals to report, discuss, debate, and critically review all aspects related to errors, complications, and other safety issues in the management of patients undergoing surgical procedures.
Professor Philip Stahel (Denver Health Medical Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine) and Professor Pierre-Alain Clavien (University Hospital Zurich) Editors-in-Chief of Patient Safety in Surgery, are supported by an international Editorial Board.
Please read the launch editorial for further information about the journal.Posted by Charlotte Hubbard at 04:53 Comments (0)
Six more BioMed Central journals accepted for inclusion in MEDLINE
We are pleased to announce that the following six BioMed Central titles have recently been accepted for inclusion in MEDLINE:
- Head and Face Medicine
- Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation
- Journal of Translational Medicine
- Radiation Oncology
- Substance Abuse, Treatment, Prevention and Policy
- World Journal of Surgical Oncology
The journals were accepted for inclusion following review by the Literature Selection
Technical Review Committee, an NIH-chartered advisory committee of external
experts. The inclusion of these titles
is a strong indicator of their growing stature in their respective fields, and the quality of the articles they have published to date.
In addition, a number of BioMed Central journals have recently been accepted for inclusion in BIOSIS and Zoological Record. For more information, see BioMed Central's journal indexing information page.
Posted by Charlotte Hubbard at 18:52 Comments (0)
Proteome Science accepted for tracking by Thomson Scientific
We are delighted to announce that Proteome Science has been accepted for tracking by Thomson Scientific
and is now on course to receive its first impact factor in 2009. The journal is one of 57 BioMed Central journals
that are already tracked by Thomson Scientific and either have, or are on course to
receive an impact factor.
Proteome Science was launched at the start of 2003 and has published articles on all aspects of proteomics, with a specific interest in the integration of functional of structural proteomic analysis with cell of developmental biology. This achievement is an important recognition of the growing reputation of this journal in its field.
Congratulations to the Editor-in-Chief, Martin Latterich!Posted by Charlotte Hubbard at 09:45 Comments (0)