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What is PhysMath Central and what is its relationship to BioMed Central?
PhysMath Central is an independent publishing platform committed to providing immediate free access to peer-reviewed research in all fields of physics and mathematics. PhysMath Central will be launching a range of journals to cover the fields in depth.
All articles published by PhysMath Central are open access, which means they are universally accessible online without charge. Authors retain copyright to their work and grant any third party the right to use the article freely.
PhysMath Central is a division of BioMed Central Ltd, the largest open access publisher in the world with over 170 journals in its portfolio. As such, BioMed Central's institutional membership scheme covers PhysMath Central and its journals.
PhysMath Central and BioMed Central are parts of the Science Navigation Group.
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Why publish in PhysMath Central?
High visibility
PMC Physics A's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience. Articles that have been especially highly accessed are highlighted with a "Highly accessed" graphic, which appears on the journal's contents pages and search results.
Speed of publication
PMC Physics A offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Manuscripts are published with their final citation immediately upon acceptance in a provisional PDF form. The paper will subsequently be published in both fully browseable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through PMC Physics A, BioMed Central and arXiv.org.
Flexibility
Online publication in PMC Physics A gives authors the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to other databases and papers).
Promotion and press coverage
All articles published in PMC Physics A are included in article alerts and regular email updates.
Some may be included in abstract books mailed to academics and highlighted on PMC Physics A's pages and BioMed Central's homepage.
In addition, articles published in PMC Physics A may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in PMC Physics A.
Copyright
Authors of articles published PMC Physics A retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the PhysMath Central copyright and license agreement.
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Should anything happen to PhysMath Central, how is continued Open Access availability of my articles guaranteed?
BioMed Central has taken steps to ensure that all Open Access articles published by BioMed Central & PhysMath Central are deposited in a number of safe Open Access archives. Should BioMed Central be sold, or fail, Open Access to the articles published is guaranteed to continue via those archives. If and when a change of ownership should be considered, PhysMath Central's Advisory Board will be asked to judge and advise whether sufficient guarantees to continue a policy of unconditional open access for research articles are being offered and agreed by any prospective new owner. BioMed Central will not enter into a change of ownership agreement unless the Advisory Board accepts these guarantees.
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Are PhysMath Central's journals peer-reviewed and what is their copyright policy?
Yes - all articles are peer-reviewed with the exception of Editorials.
The copyright policy of PMC's journals states the following
- Copyright on any research article in a journal published by PhysMath Central is retained by the author(s).
- Authors grant PhysMath Central a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
- Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.
- The PhysMath Central Copyright and License Agreement (identical to the Creative Commons Attribution License) formalizes these and other terms and conditions of publishing research articles.
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How can one cite articles published online in PhysMath Central journals?
Articles in PMC Physics A should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number. Because the journals are online-only, they do not have issue numbers; each volume corresponds to a calendar year.
Article citations follow this format:
Authors: Title. PMC Phys A [year], [volume number]:[article number].
e.g. Lenahan C, Avigan D: Manuscript title in full. PMC Phys A 2006, 8:101
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What does it cost to publish in PhysMath Central journals?
Open access publishing is not without costs. PMC Physics A therefore levies an article-processing charge of £750 (€1,075, US$1,515) for article accepted for publication. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. Generally, if the submitting author's institution is a BioMed Central member the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are supporter members of BioMed Central, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author.
We offer a £30 discount for manuscripts formatted with EndNote 5 (or later versions) or Reference Manager 10. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.
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