Asia Pacific Family Medicine Moves to BioMed Central’s Open Access Platform

BioMed Central, the world’s largest publisher of online open access scientific journals, today announced that the journal Asia Pacific Family Medicine (APFM) will join BioMed Central’s family of independent, open access journals. The partnership between APFM and BioMed Central continues the expansion of the worldwide scope of BioMed Central’s peer-reviewed journal publishing activity.

APFM, the regional journal for the World Organization of National Colleges, Academies and Academic Associations of General Practitioners/Family Physicians (Wonca), is an academic society journal which publishes high quality, regionally-focused research aimed to enhance the standards of family medicine by focusing on best practices.

Family medicine is one of the fastest growing medical fields in the Asia Pacific region. By moving to BioMed Central’s open access publishing platform, APFM will widen the exposure of its family medicine research. While APFM’s articles were already freely available online, they were not widely indexed or available through open access archives. Under the agreement between APFM and BioMed Central, the society journal’s entire archive of back-issues will be archived in PubMed Central and other key global repositories. In addition, all new research published in APFM will be immediately indexed through BioMed Central’s partnerships with major indexing services.

The move to a fully open access platform will also help to integrate APFM’s excellent regional family medicine research into the worldwide body of medical knowledge. Editors at APFM expect to see more international submissions to their journal as a result of the increased exposure, leading to the greater globalization of the publication. Additionally, APFM expects the move to help increase awareness of the practice of family medicine in the region’s developing countries.

“We believe open access represents the future of academic publishing and BioMed Central provides the best platform,” said Dr. Tai-Pong LAM, co-editor of APFM. “The open access platform provided by BioMed Central will help to expose APFM to an international readership and authorship which will enhance the quality of publication in APFM. A better standard of research will help bring improved patient care which all APFM society members strive to achieve.”

The journal’s joint Editors-in-Chief, appointed by Wonca Asia Pacific, are Dr. LAM (Hong Kong), Dr. Lyn Clearihan (Australia), and Dr. Zorayda Leopando (Philippines).

“Wonca’s decision demonstrates that the proven success of the open access publishing model offers benefits for academic society journals. Moving to BioMed Central’s open access platform will allow APFM to raise the profile and visibility of the research it publishes,” said Dr. Matthew Cockerill, BioMed Central’s Publisher. “We are honored that Wonca has selected us to publish APFM, and we look forward to delivering a top quality open access publication service to its authors and editors. Thanks to BioMed Central’s open access publishing platform, APFM will be able to break down barriers to the latest research in family medicine, and increase access to regional knowledge and best practices.”

APFM is part of a growing stable of society journals now published by BioMed Central. The Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, the only nonprofit academic society journal dedicated to sports nutrition and growing the science of applied nutrition, has also recently moved to the publisher’s open access platform. Others include Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica, the official journal of the Veterinary Associations of the Nordic Countries, and Geochemical Transactions, the official journal of the Geochemistry Division of the American Chemical Society.