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SpringerOpen and BioMed Central

A guide to publishing with Springer Open and BioMed Central

About

Publishing work open access allows for increased accessibility to scholarly publications while still respecting the rights authors.  To learn more about open access, check out our Open Access LibGuide or Open Scholarship website.  SpringerOpen and BioMed Central are both open access publishing platforms that are a part of Springer Nature, a leading global academic and educational publisher.  Through IU Library's supporting membership with these platforms, all IUB affiliates now qualify for a 15% discount on article processing charges for any of their journals.

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SpringerOpen logo that links to SpringerOpen homepage BMC logo that links to BMC homepage
Science, technology, medicine,  humanities, and social sciences Biomedicine, physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering
 ~300 Journals  200+ Journals
 General Submission Guidelines  General Submission Guidelines
Indexed with SpringerLink, Google Scholar, PubMed Central, Medline, Scopus and all other major full-text repositories

                                                                            

Images from springeropen.com & biomedcentral.com

APCs

In order to make articles freely available online, publishers like SpringerOpen and BioMed Central require publishing authors to disburse a one-time article processing charge (APC).  Charges vary by journal and are agreed upon as part of the manuscript submission process, so don't forget to take advantage of IUB's supporting membership discount at this stage. IU Bloomington has also implemented an Open Access Fund to help subsidize APCs for open access journals.

Benefits of Using SpringerOpen and BioMed Central

SpringerOpen and BioMed Central articles are subject to high-level peer review, editorial, author and production services, ensuring the quality and reliability of published work. Open access research is free to access from anywhere in the world, and licensed for reuse. Your published research will be available on SpringerLink, Google Scholar, PubMed Central, Medline, Scopus and all other major full-text repositories, with journals indexed in these repositories as early as possible. By publishing open access, you are participating in building a sustainable academic community.

For the majority of SpringerOpen and BioMed Central journals, once an article is accepted, it becomes immediately and freely available and reusable without restriction. Open access publishing translates to increased visibility and readership of your work. With increased visibility comes increased impact; research suggests that open access publications often acquire higher citation rates than those behind a paywall. Both SpringerOpen and BioMed Central have journal and article specific metrics to assess impact factor.

 

Box inspired by Sarah Hare @ Indiana University

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