Updated 1 June, 2009

NEWS (26/2/09): Faculty of 1000 and The Scientist are splitting from BioMed Central and now have their own dedicated sales teams.  We will honour the discounts and terms which BioMed Central set out for you.  LICENCES: We will need to get a new licence agreement at the renewal stage and for new subscribers between F1000 and client, but on the same terms they had with BMC. Please be reassured that there is no change aside from the license being between them and F1000 rather than BMC.
RESOURCES: This affects the following resources: Faculty of 1000 Biology (www.f1000biology.com), Faculty of 1000 Medicine  (www.f1000medicine.com) and The Scientist print & online  (www.the-scientist.com)
CONTACTS:  Your new contact dealing with day to day queries including orders and  renewals is:   Georg Reimer   Tel (dir): +44 (0)20 7079 4883

NEWS:  BioMed Central is pleased to announce a new series of blogs to go with the BioMed Central website. (3/3/07)
BioMed Central's own blog is: <http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/blogs/bmcblog/> and covers all the latest news from BioMed Central, as well as analysis and comment on the latest developments in open access publishing.
BioMed Central's sister sites, Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central, have also launched their own new blogs:
Chemistry Central blog:   <http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/ccblog/>
PhysMath Central blog:   <http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/pmcblog/>

Current Reports journals, Current Treatment Options journals and images.MD ownership change (18/11/05)
As you may have already heard, Springer Science + Business Media has recently acquired Current Medicine Group (CMG). CMG is the parent company of Current Medicine LLC and Current Science Inc which publish Current Reports journals, Current Treatment Options journals and images.MD. As you are a subscriber to one or more of these products through BioMed Central, we are writing to inform you that BioMed Central's customer service and sales team will continue to service your sales and customer support needs for these products up until January 1st 2006. From this time Current Medicine LLC will manage your account and will provide ongoing sales and customer service support.

Institutional Statistics.
User Guide for New Online Membership Reporting System (1/6/09) BioMed Central has announced the introduction of the Online Reporting System for its open access Prepay and Postpay Membership accounts. The new system provides members with greater account control, allowing for management of published and 'in progress' articles and detailed, customisable statements, which should assist with publication budgeting and reduce the administrative costs associated with managing open access publications.
Trial access form
CAUL agreement re BioMed Central membership 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
CAUL agreement re BioMed Central collections 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
BMC Site License (academic)

Technical Contacts
Technical Support Feedback (13/11/06)
When sending emails regarding any technical issues, please also cc to the CAUL Office

Content / Products.
Request a quote or place an order for BioMed Central online products for institutions (13/11/07)

2009 Academic Pricing Structure for CAUL (25/9/08)  NB. ....as of 2008 we offer a 10% discount on this Membership. .... All our discounts are discretionary so no announcement was made in this regard. (16/10/08)

2008 Academic Pricing Structure for CAUL (29/8/07)
Institutional Membership - Description (7/8/06)
Subscription Products - Description 2006 (7/8/06) updated for 2007 (3/9/07)

2007 Prices for CAUL
Current pre-pay memberships (3/8/06)
BioMed Central 2007 Academic Pricing Structure for CAUL (3/8/06)
 

Prepay Membership - £5000 qualifies institutions for discount on APCs [article processing charge] and pays 100% of APC for the authors. Discount is determined on the sum of advanced payments - the greater the payment the greater the discount.
With Prepay Membership, Instead of basing our prices on the number of users at the institution, we now base it on the number of papers published. This is because our costs are accumulated per paper so we must charge our Members an article processing charge each time they publish.
This pricing model means that the member institution pays us an advanced payment at the beginning of the year which is put into an account. Each time a member of the institution publishes with us, we take money out of the account which is equivalent to the price of the article processing charge for the journal that they have published in less a membership loyality discount. Please click on the link below to see the pricing for the different journals:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apcfaq  If the money in the account falls below £2,000, I would contact the member institution and find out whether they would like to deposit some more money at the time or wait until renewal time to settle up with us. If there is any money left over at the end of the year, this will be carried over to the next year.
The greater the advanced payment the greater the discount on each article processing charge.  And in a consortium situation we take the sum of the institution's advanced payments to reward the loyality discount to all institutions.  Discounts range from 5-20% off the APCs and each institution must deposit £5000 to qualify for the discount. Please note that if the institution deposits less than £5,000 there will be no discount on article processing charges taken from the account.   ...the link  for more information regarding Prepay Membership: http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/prepaymembership

Supporters membership - based on FTE and gives authors a 15% on APCs (author pays 85% of APC). CAUL discounted Supporters Membership includes a 10% discount.
Another option to consider would be Supporters Membership.  Supporter members pay a flat fee, which would be determined, as with the old Membership type, on the size of the institution.  This would entitle users to receive a 15% discount on each article processing charge that they are asked to pay. This means that the responsibility of payment lies with the researchers rather than the library. To read more about the Supporter's Membership, please click on the link   http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/supportersmembership

Update 22/9/05:
With Supporters Membership, the author is responsible for paying 85% of the article processing charge but for Prepay Membership, the author does not need to pay any of the charge. With Supporters Membership the institution pays a flat fee which entitles authors at the institution to a 15% discount off the APC charge.  The authors are then responsible for paying their APC, minus the 15% given to them as part of an institution with supporter’s membership.

Prepay Members have an account from which each full APC is deducted.  The discounts applied here work in the following way, e.g. If a 20% discount is applied, only £600 would be deducted from the account instead of £750 (average APC).  This means that more money is left in the account and the original amount deposited will cover a higher number of APC's.

2005 Offer to CAUL

2004 Offer to CAUL

2003 Offer to CAUL

2002 Pricing
Responses of CAUL members to survey on BMC 25/3/03.

From BioMed Central: ..... ensure the widest possible distribution of their peer-reviewed research articles. Article processing charges, levied for publishing in one of BioMed Central's 80 peer-reviewed journals, are waived for researchers from member institutions. The full text of all published research is immediately and freely available through the web to readers worldwide. For each university member we create a special BioMed Central institutional membership page - for an example of this, please see Harvards at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/inst/1754

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF BMC MEMBERSHIP?

Membership gives institutions:

1) The right for researchers to automatically qualify for a waiver on article-processing charges. This applies to any of the journals that currently have article-processing charges and which would otherwise charge US$500 per published article.

2) The right to a 15% discount on institutional subscriptions to any of the paid-for products BioMed Central publishes (see http://www.biomedcentral.com/libraries/product_info.asp for a list of these).

3) The right to list all the relevant research papers generated at the institution on a specially created member's page on the BioMed Central web site, customized with the institution's name and logo. The publications listed will be included in any searches performed on the BioMed Central web site and will be linked to the full text of the articles.

MEMBERSHIP FEES:

Fees for Academic Institutional Membership in 2002 are based on the total number of graduate, postgraduate students and faculty members in the relevant departments, i.e. biology and medicine.  The fees start at $1500 for up to 500 such researchers, rising to $3000 for up to 1500 researchers, and so on upwards.  Full details are available at http://www.biomedcentral.com/libraries/i_member.asp.

In addition to this, BioMed Central has a number of other well established and successful STM journals and review databases. I particularly wanted to draw your interest to Faculty of 1000 (www.facultyof1000.com) which is an online research service that comprehensively highlights and evaluates the most interesting papers published in all the biological sciences, based on a faculty of well over 1400 selected leading researchers. Launched just over a year ago Faculty of 1000 is a highly popular online research tool which a number of the world's leading life science faculty libraries are now subscribing to.

This site's URL is http://www.caul.edu.au/
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This site is written, compiled and maintained by Diane Costello, Executive Officer, CAUL.