• Home
• Membership
• My PhysMath Central

Tools for authors

This page brings together details of software and other tools that may be helpful to BioMed Central authors when formatting manuscripts for submission.

PMC TeX/BibTeX templates

TeX/LaTeX users should use PhysMath Central's TeX template and associated BibTeX stylefile.

If you have used another template for your manuscript, or if you do not wish to use BibTeX, then please submit your manuscript as a DVI file. We do not recommend converting to RTF.

Reference management software

We recommend authors to use reference management software to ensure that their reference lists are correctly formatted.

BioMed Central's website allows references to be seamlessly downloaded and imported into the following reference management packages:

• EndNote
• Reference Manager
• RefWorks

Authors who use the latest versions of EndNote and Reference Manager to format their references also benefit from a US $50 discount on BioMed Central's Article Processing Charge.

Proofing tools

SciProof is a professional tool for scientific proofing, spell-checking and style-checking. It works with Microsoft Word, and although itis currently Windows only, a Mac version is under development.

Graphics conversion tools

The following tools may be useful if you need to convert figures into a format suitable for submission to BioMed Central:

• GraphicConverter (Macintosh-only, Shareware)
• ImageMagick (Cross-platform, Free)
• Paintshop Pro (Windows-only, Commercial)

For tips and advice on figure cropping issues, see our figure cropping FAQ.

Statistics tools

Graphpad software offers a selection of free online calculators for doing quick statistical calculations.

XML-based article authoring tools

Publicon is a powerful scientific authoring tool. Incorporating the equation-editing engine of Mathematica, a logical reference manager, and all the features you expect from a word processor - Publicon's WYSIWYG interface enables authors to submit their manuscript as XML and MathML to BioMed Central journals in the form of Publicon's native Notebook (.NB) file. See our Publicon information page.

Submitting in XML brings many benefits including:

• Faster manuscript processing
• Discounted Article Processing Charge
• Better handling of equations (with support for MathML)
• Avoidance of article mark-up errors

• Submit a manuscript
• PhysMath Central blog
• Start a new journal