We have updated our instructions for authors to show that we now encourage the use of the SPIRIT statement.

SPIRIT (Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials) is ‘an international initiative that aims to improve the quality of clinical trial protocols by defining an evidence-based set of items to address in a protocol’. Its creation was funded by four Canadian health research institutions.

The full statement has been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the explanation and elaboration in the BMJ. BMJ Open’s editor-in-chief, Dr Trish Groves, is a member of the SPIRIT group.

BMJ Open published 17 protocols in 2011 and 79 in 2012, though not all were for interventional trials. We require ethics approval and registration in an ICMJE-approved registry for trial protocols, and encourage registration of systematic review protocols in PROSPERO, led by BMJ Open editorial board member Prof Lesley Stewart.

Publishing protocols provides a valuable service by allowing researchers to publicise ongoing work and hopefully facilitating cooperation and reducing duplicated efforts. By making the intended methods fully available the chances of a study’s replication may be enhanced. Protocol publication should also ensure that any changes to methods adopted during a trial are reported as such in results papers.

As the SPIRIT authors write, ‘High quality protocols facilitate proper conduct, reporting, and external review of clinical trials.’ We will be encouraging authors to use SPIRIT to help meet these goals.

2012 was a hugely successful year for BMJ Open. We published four times as many papers as in 2011. Credit for this must go, first and foremost, to the hundreds of reviewers who have given their time to assess manuscripts. We are also grateful that so many authors have chosen to publish with us.

2013 has begun promisingly with the news that Thomson Reuters are now tracking BMJ Open for inclusion in the Web of Science. Indexing begins soon.

We received over 1200 submissions in 2012 and published 654 papers, making a total so far of over 800 papers published since launch. Seventy-nine 2012 papers were protocols, helping promote the transparency in research that comes from publishing research plans in advance of the work being carried out.

Authors from 74 countries submitted their work to us and we accepted papers from 49 countries. Twenty-six studies now have associated datasets in the Dryad repository. The majority of these submissions came straight to BMJ Open. However, authors whose work is turned down by another BMJ Group journal can transfer it to BMJ Open, along with any peer reviewers’ reports, and many have chosen to take advantage of this. We now also have a panel of dedicated statistical reviewers to help expedite review of those papers where a statistical assessment is required.

So we are confident that our proposition – open peer review, open data, open access – is popular with authors, many of whom have published more than once in BMJ Open. Many reviewers, after first-hand experience of the review process from that side, have subsequently submitted papers too.

In September 2012 we launched the BMJ Open Editions – six channels to showcase BMJ Open papers from the key areas of dermatology, HIV/Aids, infectious diseases, neurology, obstetrics & gynaecology and oncology. 

As our scholarly profile grows, so does our public profile. BMJ Open papers have featured regularly in the news during 2012, and we will be posting about that separately. Of particular note, though, was a paper published in February by Kripke, Langer & Kline, on mortality and cancer risks associated with specific currently popular hypnotics. This paper received almost 50 000 full-text and PDF downloads in 2012 and was the most downloaded paper of the year. All articles have usage statistics available online.

This paper received widespread media coverage and some robust online responses. We would love to see more of this kind of debate in 2013. We welcome e-letters or less formal comment and we always encourage authors to respond. Many of the comments we have received have been perceptive and passionate and one or two have led to us publishing corrections and even to the posting of further data in Dryad – post-publication peer review in action.

2012 was a watershed year for open access, and while it is strongly supported by high-profile grant-awarding institutions, many researchers do not have this backing and cannot pay article-processing charges (APCs). They may be working in countries with severely limited resources, students/early-stage researchers without access to institutional funds, unaffiliated or simply working without a grant.

Despite relying on APCs to run the journal, we still welcome all research and in 2012 waived the publishing fee for over 100 papers. This amounts to over £120 000 of APCs waived. By subsequently submitting papers, many of our reviewers were able to take advantage of the reviewer discount we offer as well.  

Thank you again to our reviewers for their hard work, our authors for placing their trust in BMJ Open, and our editorial board for their support. We look forward to continuing to work with you and many new colleagues in 2013.

Since launch in 2011, BMJ Open has published more than 600 open access original research articles and protocols on a wide variety of subjects in medicine and healthcare. An increasing number of these papers have linked datasets in the Dryad repository.

We are hugely grateful to the authors, peer reviewers and funders who have made all of this possible.

Now, we are delighted to announce the launch of the BMJ Open Editions. We’ve developed these editions to showcase and aid the discoverability of BMJ Open’s specialist research, initially from oncology, neurology, obstetrics and gynaecology, infectious diseases, HIV/AIDS and dermatology.

Our new editions demonstrate our commitment to these particular areas of research but BMJ Open remains committed to publishing research from all areas of medicine and healthcare.

High impact studies published to date include a technique to pick up outbreaks of hospital acquired infections more quickly from Oxford University; the potential link between sleeping pills and cancer from California’s Scripps Clinic; and unique research on the wellbeing and quality of life of people with locked-in syndrome.

BMJ Open is a natural home for research funded by organisations and institutions such as the US National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, because it allows authors to comply with their mandates to make all research openly accessible. In addition, we deposit all articles in PubMed Central without embargo and ensure that authors retain copyright for their work.

We hope you will consider BMJ Open when publishing your next paper and we look forward to receiving your manuscript.

BMJ Open research has made the news again. The paper by Peter T Katzmarzyk (Pennington Biomedical Research Center) and I-Min Lee (Harvard) on the impact of sitting and television viewing on life expectancy in the USA has received widespread coverage, from the BBC in the UK, through numerous US news outlets, and as far as the New Zealand Herald. At the time of writing it has also received over 5500 views.

To give visitors to the site an idea of where BMJ Open papers are being discussed our homepage now includes a news feed – click on the ‘In the news’ tab on our homepage and you will discover links to sites covering the latest BMJ Open research.

It is a year today that BMJ Open published its first papers: prompting donuts all round!

We have now published over 230 open access research articles, covering niche topics and major public health issues alike.

Several articles have received plenty of press coverage. Some have prompted considerable national debate, such as this paper suggesting that there would be major benefits to the rest of the UK if their diets improved to the level of England’s. Others, such as this paper on locked-in syndrome, have received widespread international coverage. Many articles now have thousands of downloads.

Wider exposure can bring closer scrutiny and some articles have received plenty of robust critique after publication. Everything we publish has received peer review, quite often including statistical review. We publish reviews of accepted articles so the justification for acceptance is clear. But research thrives on debate and we would be delighted to receive more comments – positive or (constructively) critical.

After just a year of publication we feel the journal is already making its mark. We have published papers from first-time authors and experienced researchers, offering a straightforward route to publication via fair, transparent peer review.

Many authors have also benefited from our willingness to waive article payment charges for those without the means to pay.

In our next year we look forward to publishing an even wider range of papers, hopefully with more authors taking advantage of our partnership with the Dryad repository to share their research data.

Here’s to the next 12 months …

BMJ Open will be taking part in the The Guardian’s Higher Education Network’s live blog/debate tomorrow on Exploring open access in higher education.

Discussion kicks off at noon, BST and will run until 2 pm. There is a large panel, drawn from publishing, academia, industry and policy.

The event will ’consider the various ways in which higher education can become – and is becoming – more open. We will consider what the challenges ahead might be and what policy shifts, as well as cultural shifts are needed’.

If you can’t follow the discussion then, you can leave a comment or question in advance. Comments made during the chat will be shared on Twitter. The hashtag is #HElivechat

BMJ Open is proudly sponsoring Open Access Week 2011.

A global event, now in its fifth year, Open Access Week promotes open access as a new norm in scholarship and research. The website currently lists 119 upcoming events so have a look to see what is happening near you or browse their back catalogue of presentations and videos.

BMJ Open is the BMJ Group’s latest involvement with open access publishing, following the BMJ’s long-standing commitment to making its research open access and our specialty journals’ well-established Unlocked programme.

All BMJ Open articles are open access under a Creative Commons licence. As well as Open Access Week, BMJ Open and the BMJ Group also supports the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and deposits all its open access content with PubMed Central.

Confirmation that BMJ Open satisfies the open access criteria for the Wellcome Trust and other UK PMC funders (including Arthritis Research UK, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, NIHR and MRC) can be found here, at the UK PMC blog. 

BMJ Open will automatically deposit published articles with PMC on authors’ behalf without embargo.

This week BMJ Open received confirmation the journal has been accepted for inclusion in the NLM collection and so may deposit articles in PubMed Central (PMC). This means that by publishing in BMJ Open authors will meet the requirements of major funders such as the Wellcome Trust by making their articles open access and ensuring their deposition in PMC.

Another reason to publish in BMJ Open!

Keep your analytical skills sharp, receive public acknowledgement of your efforts and save money on publication charges!

BMJ Open is now reviewing articles for publication. Peer reviewing is a good way to hone your analytical skills and to get a ‘first look’ at forthcoming research. Our system of open peer review – publishing reviewers’ comments – provides public acknowledgement of your input. It is also helpful if you need to demonstrate your reviewing activity for continuing professional development purposes.

You can register as a reviewer at our submission site; once you have registered, drop us an email and let us know.

In recognition of your support, as a BMJ Open reviewer you will receive a 25% discount on article processing charges if you are the corresponding author of a paper submitted to the journal within a year of returning your review.

Our instructions for reviewers are here.