Recently BMJ launched a publishing portal intended to help Chinese authors publish in BMJ’s portfolio of more than 60 journals, including BMJ Open. To help understand the motivations surrounding the portal, along with some of its content, we asked BMJ China’s Business Development Manager Huili Chen and the Deputy Editor of BMJ’s new journal Stroke […]
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OA Journals and Wikipedia: Open for collaboration
The theme of this year’s Open Access week is Open for Collaboration, with the aim of highlighting “the ways in which collaboration both inspires and advances the Open Access movement”. Recently BMJ Open published an article by Samy Azer and colleagues investigating whether articles in Wikipedia relating to cardiovascular disease were accurate enough to function as a suitable learning […]
Peer Review Week: An analysis of peer review style and quality
This week celebrates the first ever Peer Review Week; a collaborative concept from ORCID, Wiley, Sense About Science and ScienceOpen, to highlight and celebrate the invaluable role peer review plays in scientific and medical publishing. Here at BMJ Open we are, of course, advocates of open peer review and as such are pleased to be publishing […]
Introducing ‘How to write and publish a Study Protocol’ using BMJ’s new eLearning programme: Research to Publication
Study protocols are an integral part of medical research. They provide a documented record of a researcher’s plan of action, detailing in advance a study’s rationale, methodology and analyses. Publication of study protocols ensures greater transparency in the research process and protects the wider community against a number of damaging research practices. These include the […]
Depression and personality disorders most common diagnoses in psychiatric patients requesting euthanasia
Most common diagnoses among those requesting help to die, due to unbearable suffering Depression and personality disorders are the most common diagnoses among Belgian psychiatric patients requesting help to die, on the grounds of unbearable suffering, finds research published in BMJ Open today. Drugs, given either by mouth or administered intravenously, are used to perform euthanasia […]
Should we stop talking about ‘negative’ results?
BMJ Open recently published the results of a major EU-funded project (OPEN) investigating the problem of dissemination bias. Also know as publication bias, this is the distortion of the evidence base caused by selective or non-reporting of results. The authors concluded: ‘Despite various recent examples of dissemination bias and several initiatives to reduce it, […]
Many teens try e-cigarettes, but few become regular users
E-cigarettes are popular with teens, including those who have never smoked, but few of those who try them become regular users, while most of those who do so are also smokers, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open. The researchers base their findings on the results of two nationally representative surveys of primary […]
BMJ Open’s fourth anniversary
Today is the fourth anniversary of BMJ Open publishing its first papers. Since 23 February 2011 we have published over 3000 open access papers with our open peer review process. One hundred of these papers have accompanying datasets in the Dryad data repository. We are still one of very few medical journals integrated with Dryad […]
UCL Qualitative Health Research Symposium 2015
The UCL Division of Psychiatry’s Qualitative Researchers Working Group is working together with the UCL Department of Applied Health Research and the UCL Health Behaviour Research Centre on a one day symposium to discuss questions, and to generate constructive commentary on the contributions that qualitative inquiry can make to understandings of health, illness and care. […]
Alcohol vs semen quality, Tamiflu trials and mindfulness: The Most Read Articles in October
October’s most read articles include a cross-sectional study by Jensen et al. on the association of habitual alcohol consumption and reduced semen quality in young men. We also have a report on the risk of bias in industry-funded oseltamivir (Tamiflu) trials by Jefferson et al., and the ever popular paper on a web-based mindfulness course for the relief of anxiety and […]