BioMedCentral Membership
BioMed Central is an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate and free access to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This commitment is based on the view that open access research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science.
BioMed Central’s Membership Program enables academic and research institutions, societies, groups, funders and corporations to actively support open access in scholarly publishing, and help to ensure the most widespread dissemination of the research published by their investigators or members.
To meet the cost of publishing, authors who publish in one of BioMed Central’s open access journals are asked to pay an article processing charge per published paper. This article processing charge varies from journal to journal, ranging from £330 to £950. Alternatively, and to remove this burden from the individual authors, institutions can join BioMed Central’s Membership Program.
What are the benefits of BioMed Central Membership?
• The convenience for researchers of not having to pay the full article processing charges directly each time their paper is accepted for publication.
• A BioMed Central membership offers a cost-effective solution for organizations and their researchers when publishing in BioMed Central's open access journals. The different types of membership offer various solutions to ensure organizations benefit from the most suitable and cost-effective pricing plan to fit with their requirements and budgets.
• A 15% discount on all institutional subscriptions to any of the paid-for value-added products that BioMed Central publishes, such as Faculty of 1000 Biology and Medicine.
• A customized member’s page, featuring:
• A list of articles generated at the institution and published in BioMed Central’s journals
• The institution’s own logo and a link to their homepage
• Titles included in all relevant searches on BioMed Central
• Linking of these titles to the full text of the article on BioMed Central
Types of BioMed Central Membership
BioMed Central offers different types of membership, tailored to our different types of customers:
• Prepay Membership
This is an advance payment system whereby customers pay upfront for a number of articles to be processed and published. Upon publication, the full article processing charge for the BioMed Central journal in question, minus a loyalty discount, will be deducted from the account. The higher the amount paid in advance, the greater the discount given. This option is particularly suited to groups that receive funding once a year and can’t deal with more frequent invoice schedules.
• Supporters Membership
Supporter members pay a flat rate annual membership fee based on the number of biological and medical researchers and graduate students at their institution. Members of the institution are then given a 15% discount on the article processing charge when publishing in BioMed Central's journals.