BioMed Central, the world’s largest publisher of online open access scientific journals, today announced that the journal Asia Pacific Family Medicine (APFM) will join BioMed Central’s family of independent, open access journals….
APFM, the regional journal for the World Organization of National Colleges, Academies and Academic Associations of General Practitioners/Family Physicians (WONCA), is an academic society journal which publishes high quality, regionally-focused research aimed to enhance the standards of family medicine by focusing on best practices.
Family medicine is one of the fastest growing medical fields in the Asia Pacific region. By moving to BioMed Central’s open access publishing platform, APFM will widen the exposure of its family medicine research. While APFM's articles were already freely available online, they were not widely indexed or available through open access archives. Under the agreement between APFM and BioMed Central, the society journal’s entire archive of back-issues will be archived in PubMed Central and other key global repositories. In addition, all new research published in APFM will be immediately indexed through BioMed Central's partnerships with major indexing services….
The move to a fully open access platform will also help to integrate APFM’s excellent regional family medicine research into the worldwide body of medical knowledge. Editors at APFM expect to see more international submissions to their journal as a result of the increased exposure, leading to the greater globalization of the publication. Additionally, APFM expects the move to help increase awareness of the practice of family medicine in the region’s developing countries.
“We believe open access represents the future of academic publishing and BioMed Central provides the best platform,” said Dr. Tai-Pong LAM, co-editor of APFM. “The open access platform provided by BioMed Central will help to expose APFM to an international readership and authorship which will enhance the quality of publication in APFM….”
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
