Library Announcements
We are in the New Building!
The Medical Library move into the new building began on Thursday, October 21,
and we already have the library furniture in place and the books on the shelves ready for use.
Some systems are up and running, and soon we will have everything back online. Please come visit us in
our new space.
New Resource - Clinical Evidence & BMJ Journals
The trial for
Clinical Evidence went so well, we have licensed it for the use of the College of Medicine
as well as the entire FSU community. Bundled with it is the full set of 24
BMJ Publishing Group
periodicals, including BMJ, Evidence Based Medicine, Evidence
Based Mental Health, Gut, Journal of Clinical Pathology, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health,
Medical Humanities, Quality and Safety in Health Care, and others. Links
to each of these from the library web site will be
posted soon.
New Resource - BioMed Central
See the following article for details about
BioMed Central, a truly innovative online publisher.
Special issue for October:
Medical Library to test open access journals from BioMed Central during 2005
Many of you have probably heard the buzz for the last couple of years about open access journals.
In brief, open access journals make articles freely available to the entire global community
via the Internet.
There are a few high profile examples of open access publishing initiatives:
SPARC, the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and BioMed Central.
BioMed Central is an open access publisher of research journals, review journals,
and other electronic resources such as Faculty of 1000 and Images.MD.
Review journals, Faculty of 1000, and Images.MD are fee-based subscription services.
In fact, the FSU Medical Library already subscribes to Images.MD and is previewing
the rest of the products until November 5.
Please see the screen capture below to see the entire list of fee-based subscription
products under review.
We would like your feedback soon especially if you would like for us to add any of these selections beginning 2005.
Figure 1. College of Medicine Library Home Page
More about the FREE open access BioMed Central research journals
The group of BioMed Central journals that are free
(as opposed to the fee-based subscription titles we have on trial)
are termed "research journals" and are free to everyone in the world.
They are all peer-reviewed and searchable via PubMed.
To name a few more reasons to publish in BMC journals:
- your articles are published quickly and receive high visibility;
- you retain copyright over your own content and may post it freely on the web;
- you can track use of your manuscript by the number of times it is viewed or downloaded; and
- you have the knowledge that you are taking one small step in helping to give large publishers
some much needed competition.
Why participate?
If the journal information is free, one might wonder who/what pays for the infrastructure
required by BioMed Central to review manuscripts and maintain the BioMed Central website and server. Initially, academic libraries such as ours are becoming members for a minimal annual fee.
The idea is that once you begin to publish in the journals and experience the positive benefits
of appearing in the BioMed Central journals, you will be willing to fund via grants and other sources approximately $600/each for your published BioMed Central articles.
This means that large publishers who currently publish your content and then charge high subscription rates
to your academic library will have some competition.
The fact is we don't know if this new model will be highly successful, fill a niche or fail completely.
But we are willing and eager to explore new models and help create a new, more equitable future
for content creators (you) and content subscribers (you and your library).
What your peers are saying about BMC publishing:
"The quality and format of the reviews is exceptional. I anticipate continuing to support the BMC series of journals in the future."
Dave Morgan
University of South Florida
USA
BMC Neuroscience
"My experience of the electronic submission process for our papers was delightful. The review process was unbelievably fast and the comments were useful in strengthening the contents of our papers. It took only 2 - 4 weeks to publish our papers, which is a record in itself."
Satya Narayan
University of Florida
USA
Molecular Cancer
"The manuscript that we submitted was reviewed very promptly, and the turn-around time was just staggering. To top it off, the paper looks great, and I can even keep track of how many people looked at the article!"
Dennis Maddox
Medical College of Georgia, Augusta
USA
BMC Developmental Biology
"The traditional forms of publishing in biomedicine leave much to be desired especially delays in manuscript processing, publication bias and restricted access in expensive and often arcane print publications. BioMed Central is a bold venture to solve these problems."
Professor Brian Haynes
McMaster University, Ontario
Canada
BMC Medicine, BMC Public Health
Find out for yourselves by going to PubMed and searching one of the
Figure 2. UAB Page at BioMed Central
Please help us join The University of Alabama at Birmingham,
Figure 2. MCG Page at BioMed Central
The Medical College of Georgia,
Figure 2. USF Page at BioMed Central
The University of South Florida,
and 135 other institutions in the US, including Johns Hopkins, Emory, Jefferson, University of Iowa and many others.
Why this is a trial vs. a subscription
This is a trial because we are creating a new cost model with BioMed Central
for publication of and access to scholarly publications via the BioMed Central website.
Initially, BioMed Central planned on charging libraries
at an annual rate based on the number of publications published the previous year by their institutional authors.
However, this was not practical because libraries are not budgeted to absorb these costs.
As a result BioMed Central has agreed to work with us on the following basis:
-
Membership year 2005: The Medical Library pays the membership fee on behalf of FSU authors.
The $600/manuscript fees are waived for FSU authors.
- Membership year 2006: The Medical Library pays the membership on behalf of FSU authors.
However, beginning in 2006 FSU authors will pay $600/manuscript (with some exceptions up to $1,000 per manuscript)
directly to BioMed Central.
These 2006 fees will comprise the total cost of the 2007 membership.
- Membership year 2007: Payment has been made based on FSU author payments during 2006.
Manuscript payments during 2007 will pay for membership year 2008 and so on for upcoming years.
What is success and what can YOU do to help make our trial a success?
-
First, success is trying a new model by participating for the next year.
If we find after a year or two that you are not interested in continuing,
we can drop our membership without penalty.
- Consider publishing in BioMed Central in 2005.
- Please talk with me if you have any questions
or if you would like to explore other benefits of BioMed Central membership
(subscription to Faculty of 1000, starting your own open access journal,
or subscription to the “review” journals published by BioMed Central).
