BMC Medical Research Methodology (ISSN 1471-2288) is an online journal publishing research articles after full peer review. All articles are published, without barriers to access, immediately upon acceptance. The journal is published by BioMed Central Ltd, Middlesex House, 34-42 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4LB, UK.

Scope

BMC Medical Research Methodology is an Open Access, peer-reviewed journal that considers articles on methodological approaches to healthcare research. Articles on the methodology of epidemiological research, clinical trials and meta-analysis/systematic review are particularly encouraged, as are empirical studies of the associations between choice of methodology and study outcomes. BMC Medical Research Methodology does not aim to publish articles describing scientific methods or techniques: these should be directed to the BMC journal covering the relevant biomedical subject area.

Criteria for publication

Publication of research articles by BMC Medical Research Methodology is dependent primarily on their validity and coherence , as judged by peer reviewers, who are also asked whether the writing is comprehensible and how interesting they consider the article to be. If an article is of broad interest, the authors may be asked if they would prefer it to be published in BMC Medicine, and the article may be highlighted in a variety of ways as a service to our readers and contributors.

Speed of publication

BMC Medical Research Methodology offers a very fast publication schedule while maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published electronically in manuscript form immediately upon acceptance. A fully structured web version, and accompanying laid out PDF, will be published within a few weeks of acceptance.

Flexibility

As an electronic-only journal, BMC Medical Research Methodology gives authors the opportunity to publish large data sets, large numbers of illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other papers).

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts must be submitted to BMC Medical Research Methodology electronically using the online submission system. Full details of how to submit a manuscript are given in the instructions for authors.

Indexing and archiving

Following publication in BMC Medical Research Methodology, the full text of each article is immediately and permanently archived in PubMed Central, the US National Library of Medicine's full-text repository of life science literature, and also in repositories at the University of Potsdam in Germany, at INIST in France and in e-Depot, the National Library of the Netherlands' digital archive of all electronic publications. BMC Medical Research Methodology is indexed/tracked/covered by PubMed, MEDLINE, CAS, Scopus, EMBASE, Current Contents and Google Scholar.

BMC Medical Research Methodology is included in Thomson Reuters Web of Science and other products.

Copyright

The authors are the copyright holders for all articles in BMC Medical Research Methodology and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the article, according to the BioMed Central copyright and license rules.

Citing papers in the journal

Articles in BMC Medical Research Methodology should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal, with one exception. Because articles in this journal are not printed, they do not have page numbers. Instead, they have a unique article number.

The following citation:

BMC Med Res Methodol 2000, 1:2

refers to article 2 from volume 1 of the journal.

As an online journal, BMC Medical Research Methodology does not have issue numbers. Each volume corresponds to a calendar year.

Contacting BMC Medical Research Methodology

Queries about content, submissions, or the review process should be directed to editorial@biomedcentral.com. All other enquiries should be directed to info@biomedcentral.com.