Bryan Vickery, Chief Operating Officer, BioMed Central

1. The BioMed Central Customer
Experience
Bryan Vickery
Chief Operating Officer

2. BMC Publishing System
 Customer responsiveness
– Authors
– Reviewers
– Editorial Boards
– Account admins
 End-to-end integration
 Flexibility to offer variations in journals
 Payment integration

3. Pu
bl
is
he
d
pr
ev
As R io
us
ea
d ly
0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
60.0%
70.0%
80.0%
ke
d a w
to pa ith
pe pe BM
er r lp C
r ev ub
ie li s
w he
a d
pa by
pe BM
R r
ec pu C
bi
om ls
m he
d
en by
de
d B
M
by C
co
l le
ag
R ue
ea
d Sa /f
rie
an w nd
ar an
tic ad
le ve
in
sc rti
ie se
nt m
en
R t
ific
or ec
ge ei
ve
ne d
a ra
R ca
ll
lp
re
ec
H ei fo ss
ea ve rp
rd d ap
pr a er
es ca s
en ll by
ta fo e-
tio rp
ap m
ai
n/
re er l
ce s
iv by
R ed di
ec vi re
ei si ct
ve tf m
d ro ai
in m l
fo Bi
rm oM
at
io ed
n C
fro en
Sa m tra
w m l
B y
io in
R M st
itu
ec ed
ei C te
ve en /li
br
d tra ar
an la y
ab ta
st co
ra nf
ct er
bo en
ok ce
of
jo
ur
Q2 How did you hear
na
la
rti
cl
es
Q3 What finally convinced you

4. O p e ra t io n s a t B io M e d C e n t r a l
B r y a n V ic k e ry
C O O
R u t h K in g T o m M o w la m
E d it o r ia l O f f ic e D ir e c t o r P r o d u c t io n D ir e c t o r
Customer E d it o r ia l O f f ic e r E d it o r ia l P r o d u c t io n P r o d u c t io n H ead of W eb
Services M anager M anager C o o r d in a t o r M anagem ent
Manuscript
Formatting
Author/reviewer Website front-end
Communication XML Markup management
Copy editing
management +
Peer review PDF creation Content updates
administration
Thematic Series
Article syndication Designs and usability
Waivers
Article publishing

5. BMC Publishing System: stages
feedback: author survey feedback: author survey
provisional version
final version
peer revise decision format pay 2 production post live
submit pay 1 decision
review
Editorial Office Editorial Production Production
Customer Services

6. Submissions

7. Excellent choice of file types
 Manuscript
– Word, Word Perfect, RTF, PDF, LaTeX, DVI, Publicon
 Figures
– EPS, PDF, PNG, Word, PPT, TIFF, JPG, BMP, CDX, TGF
 Reaction schemes
– TGF, CDX
 Additional files
– Any!
– Excellent support for video files
 Mini-websites
– Zip file containing an index.html file

8. Submissions
 BMC publishing system has successfully handled
90,000 submissions to date
 24,000 in the last 12 months
 User satisfaction is greater than ‘good’
Ease of use of submission system Trend in satisfaction over tim e
70.0% 5.00
60.0%
4.00
50.0%
40.0%
3.00
30.0%
2.00
20.0%
10.0%
1.00
Jun- Jul- Aug- Sep- Oct- Nov- Dec- Jan- Feb- Mar- Apr- May- Jun-
0.0%
08 08 08 08 08 08 08 09 09 09 09 09 09
Very good Good Neutral Poor Very Poor

9. Happy authors - submission
“I had a very good experience with the submission
process. Thank you for making so much effort in
preparing such a wonderful website” “Your online submission
process is the best I have
used”
“I appreciate the availability of
the LaTex option”
“It is better than most journals.
Greatly appreciate being able
to use PDF and power point
“The submission process is excellent files”
and better than any other journal I
have submitted to”
"The whole process of article submission is a
pleasure. Why doesn't everyone else do it like
you?"

10. Article tracking
 Authors can track their manuscript(s) through
the publishing process
– My BioMed Central combines information on manuscript you
are an editor, author and peer reviewer for
 BioMed Central’s integrated system maintains
single history files for all manuscripts
– Histories for transferred manuscripts are linked

11. Editorial/Peer review Tools
– PubMed suggestions
– Extracted references
– Invitation tracking/chasing
– Easy-to-use review submission forms
– Revision requests
– Decision making
– Copy editing
– In-house support for peer review admin

12. Full text

13. Final product
MathML

14. Full text
Video Mini-websites

15. PDF

16. Article statistics
 Author can track downloads
– Via My BioMed Central
– receives email x months after publication,
detailing download statistics
 Highly accessed articles are flagged
with
 Coming soon …
– cited by, Citeulike, blogged

17. Would you publish with us again?
Would you
recommend the
journal to a
colleague? Yes
Maybe
No
Would you publish in
the journal again?
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Would you publish in the Would you recommend the
journal again? journal to a colleague?
No 1.6% 2.4%
Maybe 12.0% 8.3%
Yes 86.4% 89.3%

18. Happy authors – overall experience
“The speed at which the article could be found on PubMed
was especially good. It impressed a number of colleagues
… This was a real advantage in their eyes” “This was the best experience
I have ever had with BMC
journals.”
“Overall a great experience,
great support.”
“This was the best experience I
have ever had with any journal,
“Overall, a tremendous job by the even among the BMC series.
journal.” Keep up the good work.”
"Outstanding editorial and publishing staff. You
helped us improve the quality of manuscript
significantly. Look forward to submit more our
papers to your Journal.”

19. “I am really impressed by your quality
management, it is seldom that an
author receives such detailed feedback
after a small note in [an author
survey].” (June 2009)