International Nurses Day, celebrated on 12th May each year and coinciding with Florence Nightingale’s birthday, marks the important contributions nurses make to society. As the single largest group of health professionals, nurses care from the first moments of life right through to the final days. To show our appreciation of the work that nurses […]
Category: Open access
OA Journals and Wikipedia: Open for collaboration
The theme of this year’s Open Access week is Open for Collaboration, with the aim of highlighting “the ways in which collaboration both inspires and advances the Open Access movement”. Recently BMJ Open published an article by Samy Azer and colleagues investigating whether articles in Wikipedia relating to cardiovascular disease were accurate enough to function as a suitable learning […]
Thank you to our reviewers – 2014
After a very busy year at BMJ Open, in which over 1100 papers were published, we would like to say a big thank you to all of our reviewers who contributed in 2014. All that we achieved last year would not have been possible without the help of the many referees who gave thorough and […]
Erik Martin: Author Profile
We are happy to introduce a new feature called Author Profiles where we interview BMJ Open authors to find out more about them and their work. For our first author profile, we spoke to Erik Martin from Deakin University, Australia, to find out more about his research and his thoughts on Open Access. Erik is […]
Open Access Week: the next generation
Open Access Week, a global event now entering its eighth year and running from the 20th – 26th October, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to […]
Comparing the results from two surveys of BMJ Open authors
BMJ Open authors were among those surveyed by Professor David J Solomon of Michigan State University for a study recently published in the journal PeerJ. Needless to say we read this with great interest (we were unaware of the survey until the results were published). The survey reported a generally positive response to BMJ Open […]
Thank you to our reviewers – 2013
Peer review is a fundamental part of publishing. Perhaps nowhere more so than in the open access field, which is often more scrutinised than other traditional publishing routes. Recognising this, the BMJ Open team would like to thank all 2725 peer reviewers who refereed for the journal in 2013 – your advice and considered remarks […]
Exploring open access in higher education
BMJ Open will be taking part in the The Guardian’s Higher Education Network’s live blog/debate tomorrow on Exploring open access in higher education. Discussion kicks off at noon, BST and will run until 2 pm. There is a large panel, drawn from publishing, academia, industry and policy. The event will ‘consider the various ways in which higher […]
Open Access Week is here
BMJ Open is proudly sponsoring Open Access Week 2011. A global event, now in its fifth year, Open Access Week promotes open access as a new norm in scholarship and research. The website currently lists 119 upcoming events so have a look to see what is happening near you or browse their back catalogue […]
UK universities minister helps UK research councils affirm OA commitments
The Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) and Research Councils UK (RCUK) – which includes the Medical Research Council – recently put out a joint statement reinforcing their open access commitments (here). This announcement came in a speech by David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, showing the extent to which the principles of open access are […]