Hidden species present conservation challenge; a new Journal of Biology minireview

DNA studies are revealing the true extent of hidden or ‘cryptic’ biodiversity. Cryptic species are difficult to distinguish morphologically but the importance of what is revealed by DNA data is discussed in a recent minireview for Journal of Biology by Luciano Beheregaray and Adalgisa Caccone. The minireview highlights two recent papers that challenge the commonly held view that cryptic species are rare and recent occurrences.

In an article published in BMC Biology, a team led by Robert Wayne reports the discovery of at least six cryptic species in the giraffe, with distinct evolutionary and genetic traits. This finding challenges the view that cryptic biodiversity is rare in large mammals that are expected to travel, mix and avoid reproductive isolation. A separate study, published in BMC Evolutionary Biology by Stephen Lougheed and colleagues describes previously unknown cryptic species in the upper Amazonian leaflitter frog (Eleutherodactylis ockendeni); extraordinarily this speciation event is predicted to have occured millions of years ago. The reports of ancient species in this frog imply that species richness in the tropics has been significantly underestimated using morphological characteristics alone.

These studies also demonstrate the importance of using historical and biogeographical information in conjuction with DNA analysis in order to estimate species biodiversity and avoid overestimating the true size of the potential breeding pool of a species. Accurate information on past and future biodiversity can be gained with important consequences for conservation management.

Posted by Matt Hodgkinson at 14:15    Comments (0)

 

Society journals take a fresh look at open access publishing

A notable trend at BioMed Central during 2007 has been the increasing number of inquiries from scientific societies interested in starting new open access journals or transferring their existing journals to BioMed Central, in many cases converting to open access from a previous subscriber-only model.

Society journals that have recently signed transfer agreements with  BioMed Central include Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition and the Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance. Several further such transfers are in the pipeline.

This surge in interest seems to result from a combination of factors. Firstly, the so-called 'serials crisis' continues to bite, in that subscription costs are rising faster than library budgets, and so many libraries find they need to cancel journal subscriptions each year. This has hit smaller society journals hard – especially those which do not form part of one of the major commercial publisher 'Big Deal' arrangements.

Secondly, open access publishing has now established itself as a viable and attractive alternative to the traditional model – it is no longer a new-fangled experiment. Learned societies are rightly cautious about change, and wish to avoid risk, but the risk of moving to the open access model now seems more and more attractive compared to risks of sticking to what is in many cases the increasingly unsustainable subscription-based model.

Lastly, but not least, there is the underlying mission of scientific societies, which is typically to support and promote research and researchers in a given field. As the open access publishing model becomes more familiar, it is more and more widely recognized that open access journals can provide a natural and financially sustainable means for societies to achieve their objectives, and increasing numbers of societies are seizing that opportunity.

Of course, change does not happen overnight, not least because societies are often signed-up to multi-year publishing arrangements with their existing publishers. But a recent study by Peter Suber and Caroline Sutton has revealed the surprisingly large number of scientific society journals (collated here as a spreadsheet) that already operate on an open access or hybrid open access model. BioMed Central looks forward to working with many more societies in 2008, to bring the benefits of open access to their society journals.

Posted by Stefan Busch at 12:39    Comments (1)

 

Canadian TV provides excellent coverage of open access research on superbug afflicting soliders in Afghanistan

It's always nice to see research from BioMed Central journals covered in the mainstream media, and  Soldiers bringing superbug back from Kandahar from Canadian broadcaster CTV is an excellent example, featuring research recently published by Dr Homer Tsien and colleages in BMC Infectious Diseases.

It is currently the top story on the CTV website, and the story includes a video of the newscast concerned, along with a more in-depth interview with Dr Tsien.

Perhaps most impressively, CTV have done a great job of providing a route for readers to find out more by linking directly to the open access research article concerned. It's surprisingly rare that news outlets provide such links, but kudos to the CTV team for doing so. BioMed Central is working with other news organizations to encourage them to do the same.

Posted by Matthew Cockerill at 13:19    Comments (0)

 

JMCR launches a blog

Journal of Medical Case Reports has launched a blog to keep readers up to date with news from this exciting new journal.

JMCR publishes open access case reports across all medical disciplines, which will be aggregated into an online, fully searchable database, creating a valuable resource for clinicians and researchers.

The journal welcomes submission of any case report that expands general medical knowledge. Visit the journal website to view the broad range of cases published to date.

Posted by Elizabeth.Slade at 15:54    Comments (0)

 

Open access and the developing world - read the latest

The South African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) recently held its Open Access Leadership Summit in Botswana, 20-21 November. The Minister of Education in Botswana, the Honorable J. D. Nkate, opened the event, noting:

“We recognise that the internet and associated digital technologies are creating new opportunities for developing alternative models of publishing and disseminating scholarly work. Limited access to publicly-funded scientific research resulting from the traditional models and roots of disseminating this research is no longer tenable in the African environment. There is a widening gap in research output and consumption relative to the rest of the world. Open Access approaches and models promote universal unrestricted free access to full-text scholarly materials and scientific research via the internet, which in turn accelerates knowledge transfer.

The public good requires us to remove and prevent barriers to this research and its publication. This new knowledge has to inform not only our scientists and great thinkers, it must also be a resource for all our citizenry, for rich and for poor, for decision-makers and planners, and for an informed and creative general population.”

The program is now available online.

Eve Gray attended the SARUA summit and briefly summarises the proceedings in her blog:

“Promoting Open Access for increased quality research, enhanced collaboration, and the sharing and dissemination of knowledge, is a central principle for SARUA’s work. The Association is already engaging with groups and networks of expertise and good practice locally and globally in order to support the development of Open Access benefits for HE.”

Alma Swan also attended the summit, and in her blog, OptimalScholarship, she notes that “University leaders are starting to understand the messages about the new opportunities for science and scholarship now that we have the web.”

Meanwhile, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) in India, again, calls for open access to publicly-funded research. In a recent letter published in Indiaedunews.net, to the Prime Minister Dr. Mammohan Singh, the Chairman of the NKC, Mr Sam Pitroda, suggests that India should use the broadband internet in order to disseminate high quality educational resources on a global scale.

Among his recommendations, Pitroda suggests that all research articles published by Indian authors who receive financial assistance from the government should be available under the open access format. The government should also invest in the digitization of books and journals, which are outside copyright protection....

The United Nations Environment Program, Yale University, International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publishers, and over 340 international publishers and prestigious scientific societies and associations announced on November 6, 2007, recently launched the second phase of ‘Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), providing developing countries with access to one of the world’s largest collections of environmental science research online, and for little or no cost.

The Open Society Institute-supported electronic Information For Libraries (eIFL) network has helped establish almost one hundred open access Institutional Repositories in developing and emerging countries. These repositories are now moving towards linking up with the EU DRIVER project. One of the objectives of DRIVER is to organize and build a virtual, European scale network (portal) of existing institutional repositories from the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Belgium.

In the New York Times, Donald McNeil looks at a new online medical journal, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He notes the editors’ decision to focus on neglected diseases such as visceral leishmaniasis in war-torn Somalia and a perplexing leptospirosis outbreak in Thailand. The journal, which is being funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is openly accessible to anyone and excludes ads from pharmaceutical and medical companies. The journal also allows those scientists with financial difficulties to publish their research.

The wave of low-cost laptops continues, with Everex recently launching the Zonbu notebook. It is hoped that this will encourage those living in developing countries to get online.

Posted by Charlotte Webber at 14:35    Comments (0)

 

Open access over the airwaves

Help is at hand for those whose thirst for all things open access is not fully satisfied by BioMed Central's website and YouTube channel. Last month I was interviewed by Sundar Raman, host of the "Open Views" slot on KRUU, which describes itself as an "Open Radio" station, in Fairfield, Iowa. 

The podcast of the interview, is now available from the KRUU website. 

Posted by Matthew Cockerill at 11:39    Comments (0)

 

Hot paper in BMC Bioinformatics

A 2006 article from BMC Bioinformatics has just been highlighted as a Hot Paper by Thomson Scientific's Essential Science Indicators.

Posted by Matt Hodgkinson at 19:52    Comments (0)

 

BioMed Central journals relevant to nursing and allied healthcare now indexed by Cinahl

We are pleased to announce that 9 BioMed Central journals have recently been accepted for indexing by Cinahl, which indexes titles relevant to nursing and allied healthcare.

The journals are:

• BMC Nursing
• BMC Oral Health
• BMC Women's Health
• Breast Cancer Research
• Chinese Medicine
• Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation
• International Breastfeeding Journal
• Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation
• Osteopathic Medicine and Primary Care

 

In addition, all of these titles are included in PubMed, PubMed Central and Scopus. Full details of all indexing services which cover BioMed Central journals are available from our website. 

Posted by Charlotte Hubbard at 19:16    Comments (0)

 

Karen Beemon wins the 2007 M.Jeang Retrovirology Prize

It was announced today that Dr Karen Beemon has been awarded the third annual M.Jeang Retrovirology Prize. Dr Beemon, Professor and Chair of the Biology Department, Johns Hopkins University, will receive a $3000 cheque and a crystal trophy, and is interviewed in an article published today in Retrovirology.

The M.Jeang Retrovirology Prize, awarded annually, recognises an outstanding mid-career retrovirologist aged 45 to 60. The prize, supported by the Ming K. Jeang Foundation, alternates between HIV and non-HIV research. The winner is selected by Retrovirology’s Editors, from nominations submitted by the journal’s Editorial Board. Retrovirology’s Editor-in-Chief, Kuan-Teh Jeang explained why they awarded Dr Beemon with the Retrovirology prize:
“Professor Beemon has made tremendous contributions to our understanding of how retroviruses transform cells.  She was instrumental in establishing that one of the important transformation mechanisms is the aberrant phosphorylation of cellular proteins on tyrosine residues.”

We wish Dr Beeman many congratulations!

Posted by Charlotte Hubbard at 15:30    Comments (0)

 

Human Resources for Health launches a blog

Human Resources for Health this week launched its own journal blog.  Items already posted include details of a forthcoming special issue, the first Global Forum on Human Resources for Health (due to be held early in 2008),  and a request for feedback on some future developments for the journal.  In launching the blog, the Editors of Human Resources for Health hope to be able to provide a forum for further comment and discussion of items relevant to the journal and its field.

Human Resources for Health is overseen by the Editor-in-Chief, Mario Dal Poz (World Health Organization), and was launched with BioMed Central in 2003.  The journal covers all aspects of planning, producing and managing the health workforce - all those who provide health services worldwide.

Posted by Charlotte Hubbard at 20:34    Comments (1)

 

Forest fires and their impact on CO2 - global press coverage for open access research

A recent article published in Carbon Balance and Management entitled ‘Estimates of CO₂ from fires in the United States: implications for carbon management’ has received widespread, global coverage in the media.

The article by Christine Wiedinmyer and Jason Neff focuses on CO₂ emissions from fires across the US, how these emissions compare to anthropogenic emissions of CO₂ and Net Primary Productivity, and the potential implications for monitoring programs and policy development.

The article was press released by BioMed Central, and has since been highlighted in news coverage around the world including USA Today, Forbes, The Sydney Morning Herald, CBS News, The Times of India and Pollution Online, and more. With the recent forest fires in California, and significant public interest in the effects of carbon emissions on climate, this is a great example of the benefits of open access in making research accessible to all who are interested.

Posted by Charlotte Hubbard at 20:18    Comments (0)

 

BMC Research Notes - completing the scientific record

BioMed Central is pleased to announce the forthcoming launch of the newest addition to the BMC series of journals, BMC Research Notes, which will begin to accept submissions in early 2008.

Journals are increasingly concerned with citations and impact factors, and it can be difficult for researchers and clinicians to publish valuable work that may not be highly cited.  At the same time, science and medicine are becoming increasingly evidence-based and transparent.

The goal of BMC Research Notes is to provide a home for short publications, case series, incremental updates to previous work, results of individual experiments and similar material that currently lack a suitable outlet.  The intention is to reduce the loss suffered by the research community when such results remain unpublished.

In clinical research, the prospective registration of randomized controlled trials has become a reality, whilst in the field of genomic research, scientists deposit large volumes of data into publicly accessible databases for the entire community to use.

A key objective of BMC Research Notes is to ensure that associated data files will, wherever possible, be published in standard, reusable formats and are exposed to ensure that they are searchable and easily harvested for reuse. We are working with researchers across the full spectrum of biomedical research to define appropriate recommendations for domain-specific data file standards, and we aim to provide detailed 'Additional data file' preparation guidelines, to complement our current detailed figure preparation guidelines.

BMC Research Notes will publish scientifically sound research across all fields of biology and medicine, enabling authors to publish updates to previous research, software tools and databases, data sets, small-scale clinical studies, and reports of confirmatory or ‘negative’ results.  Additionally the journal will welcome descriptions of incremental improvements to methods that as well as short correspondence items and hypotheses. Submissions will be fully peer-reviewed, and will be handled by an international board of academic Associate Editors spanning all biological and medical disciplines.

We are looking for enthusiastic researchers who would like to have an editorial involvement with BMC Research Notes.  We are particularly keen to hear from researchers who have a special interest in data sharing and data format standardization.

Please let us know if you would like to play a role with this important new journal, and do tell us if you know of any other researchers who you feel should be involved.

Posted by Matt Hodgkinson at 16:40    Comments (3)

 

Parasites & Vectors; a new open access journal now accepting submissions

We are pleased to announce a new, broad-focus journal, Parasites & Vectors.  Overseen by Editor-in-Chief Chris Arme, Parasites & Vectors is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal dealing with the biology of parasites, parasitic diseases, intermediate hosts and vectors.  Manuscripts addressing broader issues, for example economics, social sciences and global climate change in relation to parasites, vectors and disease control, are also welcomed.

Parasites & Vectors expands upon the scope of two former BioMed Central publications, Kinetoplastid Biology and Disease and Filaria Journal, which will cease publication in December 2007, and are no longer accepting submissions.  Authors working in these areas are encouraged to submit their work to Parasites & Vectors. 

David Molyneux, Editor-in-Chief of Filaria Journal, and Kevin Tyler, co-Editor-in-Chief of Kinetoplastid Biology and Disease, have been appointed to the Advisory Board of Parasites & Vectors, and together with an international Editorial Board, are working closely with Chris Arme to ensure the success of this new journal.  Chris joins Parasites & Vectors  after serving for almost 20 years as an Editor of Parasitology.

Parasites & Vectors launches in January 2008, and will offer an invaluable resource to the community.  To keep abreast with the latest developments of this exciting new journal, please register to receive regular alerts.

Posted by Anna Webb at 13:16    Comments (0)

 

BMC Proceedings - a new open access journal for conference publications

Later this month, BioMed Central will be launching a companion journal to the BMC-series called BMC Proceedings. This open access journal has been created in recognition of the need for a journal specialising in publishing proceedings, including (but not limited to) large collections of articles, meetings of specialised interest and conferences of a cross- or multi-disciplinary nature.

BMC Proceedings will accept a variety of conference-related content from peer-reviewed research or review articles to collections of meeting abstracts.  Conferences on any topic within biology or medicine will be considered.

The journal will be published online but also offers a competitive print service for production of hard copies of conference proceedings, and can offer a print on demand service to make content available via online bookshops. An example of a print on demand supplement from Genome Biology was recently announced.

All proceedings will be published without barriers to access and content will be indexed/included in PubMed and PubMed Central.

The first content, to be published in December, will be a collection of articles from the Genetic Analysis Workshop 15: Gene Expression Analysis and Approaches to Detecting Multiple Functional Loci Proceedings held in St Pete's Beach, Florida, USA, 11-15 November 2006.

Further information is available at http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcproc

Conference organisers wishing to find out more about publishing proceedings should contact us with brief details of their conference (including title, place, date, website, expected number and type of submissions).

Posted by Bryan Vickery at 17:31    Comments (1)

 

World AIDS Day: Retrovirology's Editor-in-Chief reflects on 26 years since AIDS was first recognised

Coinciding with World AIDS Day today, the Editor-in-Chief of Retrovirology, Kuan-Teh Jeang has published an editorial commenting on the progress made and challenges that still remain, 26 years after AIDS was first recognised.

The editorial presents startling statistics on the state of AIDS more than a quarter of a century after it was first characterised – approximately 33 million people are infected with HIV worldwide, with roughly 10,000 individuals becoming HIV positive each day. Dr Jeang comments on the progress made with antiretroviral drugs (despite significant problems with resistance), the emergence of a new class of drugs in the past year, the pitfalls encountered and challenges still faced with vaccine development, as well as the significant problems with access to treatment. On the theme of this year's World AIDS Day, leadership, Dr Jeang looks ahead to the future for AIDS research and therapy, and who will be the global leaders in this.

Read the full article on the Retrovirology website.

 

Posted by Charlotte Hubbard at 10:30    Comments (0)