Today we have published the first trial prompted by the Restoring Invisible and Abandoned Trials (RIAT) initiative. Dr Tom Treasure from UCL, with colleagues from University of Sussex and Imperial College, have brought back from obscurity the results of the ‘CEA Second-Look’ trial. The study asked the question: in patients who have undergone a […]
Category: About the journal
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 […]
BMJ Open’s 2013 year in review
2013 was another successful year for BMJ Open. Credit and thanks as always goes to our editorial board and especially our peer reviewers for helping make this happen. BMJ Open’s status as a global journal was confirmed as we received over 2000 submissions from 89 countries and published papers from 60. We published 962 […]
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 […]
Journal policy on research funded by the tobacco industry
This article is being copublished as an editorial in the BMJ, Heart, and Thorax and as a blog in BMJ Open. Full references, competing interests, provenance and citation details can be read here. Fiona Godlee editor in chief [1], Ruth Malone editor, Tobacco Control [2], Adam Timmis current/outgoing editor, Heart [2], Catherine Otto incoming editor, Heart [2], Andy Bush coeditor, Thorax [2], Ian Pavord coeditor, Thorax [2], Trish Groves […]
First impact factor announced: 1.583
BMJ Open’s first impact factor has been announced: 1.583. We are delighted to have this further evidence that BMJ Open is considered a journal of credible, valued research. Does a journal’s impact factor matter? In short – yes. When we surveyed our authors earlier this year, we asked what improvements we could make to […]
Using the SPIRIT statement to improve trial protocols
We have updated our instructions for authors to show that we now encourage the use of the SPIRIT statement. SPIRIT (Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials) is ‘an international initiative that aims to improve the quality of clinical trial protocols by defining an evidence-based set of items to address in a protocol’. Its creation […]
2012 year in review
2012 was a hugely successful year for BMJ Open. We published four times as many papers as in 2011. Credit for this must go, first and foremost, to the hundreds of reviewers who have given their time to assess manuscripts. We are also grateful that so many authors have chosen to publish with us. […]
BMJ Open in the news
BMJ Open research has made the news again. The paper by Peter T Katzmarzyk (Pennington Biomedical Research Center) and I-Min Lee (Harvard) on the impact of sitting and television viewing on life expectancy in the USA has received widespread coverage, from the BBC in the UK, through numerous US news outlets, and as far as […]
BMJ Open’s first birthday
It is a year today that BMJ Open published its first papers: prompting donuts all round! We have now published over 230 open access research articles, covering niche topics and major public health issues alike. Several articles have received plenty of press coverage. Some have prompted considerable national debate, such as this paper suggesting that there […]