Open Access Membership

> List of members    > Setting up a central open access fund

BioMed Central and its sister sites Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central are committed to providing immediate and free access to all the research they publish. To meet the cost of publishing, authors who publish in our open access journals are asked to pay an article-processing charge (APC) per published paper. To remove this burden from the individual authors, institutions can join our Membership Program.

The Membership Program enables academic and research institutions, societies, groups, funders and corporations to actively support open access in scholarly publishing, and help ensure the most widespread dissemination of the research published by their investigators or Members.

BioMed Central offers different types of Membership, tailored to our different types of customers:

• Prepay Membership is an advanced payment system whereby customers pay upfront for articles published by their authorised users to be processed and published. Upon publication, the full Article Processing Charge for the journal in question, minus the discount that applies, will be deducted from the account. The higher the amount paid in advance, the greater the discount given.
  
  
• Quarterly Postpay Membership is a system whereby scientific and medical societies and groups are invoiced in arrears for papers authored by their Members that have been published in our journals since the last invoice date. Invoice schedules are set on a monthly or quarterly cycle.
  
  
• Supporter Membership
  Supporter Members pay a flat rate annual Membership fee based on the number of science and medical researchers and graduate students at their institution. Members of the institution are then given a 15% discount on the Article Processing Charge (APC) when publishing in our journals.
  
  

If you and your organisation want to see a change in the way that research is published and disseminated, and wish to be a part of that change, you should seriously consider becoming a member.

If you are a researcher who would like your institution, company or society to become a member, simply fill out our recommendation form to suggest this to the relevant person in your organisation.

What are the benefits of Membership?

• Time Saving and convenient

Membership status removes the administrative burden, from individual authors, of having to pay the full APC directly each time one of their articles is accepted for publication. The convenience for researchers of not having to pay the full article-processing charges directly.

• Cost-effective

Membership offers a cost-effective solution for organizations and their researchers when publishing in our range of 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.

• 10% discount on BioMed Central products

Member organizations are entitled to a 10% discount on all institutional subscriptions to BioMed Central's additional products and services, such as Faculty of 1000 Biology and Medicine.

• Increased exposure for your organization

Members receive their own customized webpage with the following features:

• Branding with your institution's own logo and link to your homepage
• A list of articles generated at the institution and published in our journals
• Title included in all relevant searches on the BioMed Central, Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central websites
• Linking of these titles to the full text of the article

Note: BioMed Central, Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central journals publish supplements by special arrangement. Standard article processing charges and Membership payments or discounts do not apply for supplements. Authors from member organisations should note that their institution will not be expected to cover publication fees for supplement articles. For further information please contact us.