Parent company | Springer Nature |
---|---|
Status | Active |
Founded | 2000 |
Founder | Current Science Group |
Headquarters location |
London, WC1 United Kingdom |
Distribution | Open access |
Publication types | Scientific journals |
Nonfiction topics | Science |
Official website | www |
BioMed Central (BMC) is a United Kingdom-based, for-profit scientific open access publisher. BioMed Central publishes over 250 scientific journals. All BioMed Central journals are only published online. BioMed Central describes itself as the first and largest open access science publisher. It is owned by Springer Nature.
BioMed Central was founded in 2000 as part of the Current Science Group (now Science Navigation Group, SNG), a nursery of scientific publishing companies. SNG chairman Vitek Tracz developed the concept for the company after NIH director Harold Varmus's PubMed Central concept for open-access publishing was scaled back. The first director of the company was Jan Velterop. In 2002, the company's business model evolved to include article processing charges, and these have since been the primary source of revenue.
In October 2008, it was announced that BioMed Central (along with Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central) had been acquired by Springer Science+Business Media, the second largest STM publisher.
In 2007 Yale University Libraries stopped subsidizing page charges for affiliates of Yale who are using BioMed Central as the publisher of their works.
In November 2008, BioMed Central became an official supporting organisation of Healthcare Information For All.
The flagship journals produced by BioMed Central include Genome Biology, BMC Medicine, and BMC Biology. It also produces the BMC journal series of 68 journals covering the fields of biology and medicine. Chemistry Central and the PhysMath Central series of journals are also produced by the company. Most of the other journals published by BioMed Central are owned and produced independently by societies and academic editorial boards, with BioMed Central providing the hosting, publishing platform and marketing.