BMC (publisher)

BMC (publisher)
Name	BMC (publisher)
Type	Academic publishing imprint
Industry	Publishing
Founded	2000
Founder	Robert Laing
Headquarters	London
Owner	Springer Nature

BMC (publisher) is an imprint of Springer Nature specializing in open access academic journals and articles across biomedical and interdisciplinary sciences. Founded in 2000, it grew from an early online publishing initiative into a large portfolio covering medicine, biology, and related fields, intersecting with global research funders, universities, and professional societies. BMC operates within the ecosystem of scholarly communication alongside publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis, and interacts with indexing services like PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science.

History

BMC began in 2000 as part of an effort linked to pioneers of open access such as the Public Library of Science, the Budapest Open Access Initiative, and early adopters like BioMed Central, before becoming integrated into larger groups including Springer and later Springer Nature, which itself resulted from mergers involving Springer, Macmillan, and Holtzbrinck. Its timeline intersects with events such as the Berlin Declaration, the Finch Report, and policy shifts by funders like the Wellcome Trust, the National Institutes of Health, and the European Research Council. Over time BMC expanded its catalog amid developments involving CrossRef, ORCID, and the Committee on Publication Ethics while responding to debates exemplified by the Wakefield controversy, the reproducibility crisis highlighted by Nature and Science, and initiatives like Plan S.

Publishing Model and Open Access Policies

BMC uses an article processing charge model aligned with open access mandates from funders such as UK Research and Innovation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the European Commission; it implements licensing frameworks including Creative Commons licenses preferred in policies from the Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Its workflows integrate services from CrossRef, CLOCKSS, and Portico for preservation and metadata dissemination to PubMed Central, Europe PMC, and institutional repositories at universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford, and University of Tokyo. The imprint’s approach responds to policy instruments such as Plan S, the NIH Public Access Policy, and the Research Excellence Framework, while negotiating transformative agreements with consortia including Jisc, the Max Planck Digital Library, and the Association of Research Libraries.

Journals and Subject Areas

BMC’s portfolio covers a wide range of titles spanning biomedical subjects and interdisciplinary areas, including series and journals that parallel scopes of The Lancet, Nature Medicine, PLOS ONE, Cell Reports, and JAMA. Subject areas include clinical medicine, genetics, molecular biology, ecology, bioinformatics, public health, nursing, and chemistry, connecting to research communities at institutions like the Karolinska Institutet, University of California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Imperial College London, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Prominent journal families in the portfolio map onto indexing in MEDLINE, EMBASE, and BIOSIS, and intersect with professional societies such as the American Medical Association, the Royal Society, the European Society of Cardiology, and the International Society for Computational Biology.

Editorial and Peer Review Process

Editorial procedures at BMC involve editorial boards comprising scholars drawn from universities and research institutes including Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Imperial College, and ETH Zurich; peer review workflows engage reviewers who publish in outlets such as Nature, Science, Cell, The BMJ, and PLOS. The imprint employs single-, double-, or open-peer review models and uses submission platforms that interoperate with ORCID, Publons, and Crossref’s DOI assignment, reflecting standards promoted by COPE, DOAJ, and ICMJE. Editorial decisions are influenced by reporting guidelines such as CONSORT, PRISMA, STROBE, and ARRIVE and by data sharing expectations from repositories like Dryad, Figshare, GenBank, and the European Nucleotide Archive.

Business Structure and Ownership

BMC operates as an imprint under Springer Nature, a commercial publisher formed through mergers involving Springer, Macmillan Science and Education, and Holtzbrinck; corporate governance echoes structures found at Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, and Taylor & Francis. Revenue models combine article processing charges, institutional agreements, and transformative deals negotiated with library consortia such as Jisc Collections, DEAL, and Projekt DEAL, and contracting with funders like the Wellcome Trust and Gates Foundation. The imprint’s management interacts with standards organizations including CrossRef, ORCID, DOAJ, and infrastructure providers like Amazon Web Services and Digital Science.

Controversies and Criticisms

BMC has faced criticism similar to other open access publishers concerning article processing charges debated in shareholder and academic forums such as the Finch Report, the Plan S consultations, and statements by the European University Association. Concerns raised include predatory publishing debates associated with the term “predatory journals” popularized through discussions involving Jeffrey Beall, quality control controversies compared to incidents at Springer and Elsevier, and disputes over peer review and retraction practices echoing cases documented in Retraction Watch and by COPE. BMC has also encountered scrutiny during high-profile scientific disputes tied to reproducibility debates reported in Nature, Science, and The Lancet.

Impact and Reception

BMC’s imprint has influenced open access publishing norms and contributed to citation and dissemination metrics tracked by Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Altmetric; its open access model has been cited in policy analyses by the Wellcome Trust, Research Councils UK, the European Commission, and UNESCO. Reception among researchers varies: advocates cite increased accessibility similar to PLOS and BioRxiv’s preprint culture, while critics echo concerns voiced in the Times Higher Education, Nature, and Science about APC affordability and editorial standards. BMC’s journals continue to appear in institutional evaluation and funding considerations used by universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and national assessments such as the REF and ERC grant reviews.

Category:Academic publishing companies