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MUSC, BioMed offer alternative to publishing dilemma by Laura Cousineau and Teri Lynn Herbert MUSC Library  Until recently, a scientist had two routes for publishing the results of their research: publish in a professional society/organization journal or publish in a journal sponsored by a for-profit company.  Both routes have drawbacks.  The length of time from peer review to publication can exceed a year in some cases. Researchers may have to pay page and reprint charges. An article may be submitted to many different journals before it is accepted for publication. After writing the grant to do the research and paying to have the results published, a researcher’s own university library has to pay again (yearly) to subscribe to the journal, or worse yet, cannot afford to subscribe to it. The unkindest cut of all is that the author must give up his or her copyright to the publisher. MUSC faculty members now have an alternative. The MUSC Library has just joined BioMed Central (BMC), a partnership that seeks to change the current model of scholarly publishing.  The library’s membership in BioMed Central allows MUSC faculty, staff and students to publish in BMC journals without paying the $500 article processing charges.  They retain full copyright for their publications in these journals.  As the articles are published, they are immediately indexed in the PubMed database and archived at PubMed Central.  Citations to individual articles are covered in the ISI Web of Science/Science Citation Index  databases. Already, MUSC faculty have published 10 articles in recent BMC journals—http://www.biomedcentral.com/inst/46862. BioMed Central also provides a way for professionals to start their own journals—under their own editorial control. For details on creating your own journal, see http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/startajournal. BioMed Central is one of many groups involved in “Open Access” publishing. Open access publication means that: Articles are peer reviewed in a reasonable time period (average six weeks) Scientific papers are available online, many free of charge, increasing visibility There are no usage restrictions on the articles The author retains his or her copyright A permanent archive is maintained Other players in the no-barriers, open-access arena are the Public Library of Science, PubMed Central, and SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resource Coalition. Two Web sites that list open access journals, including BMC journals, are http://FreeMedicalJournals.com and DOAJ, the Directory of Open Access Journals at http://www.doaj.org/.  The MUSC Library purchased BioMed Central membership through CONBLS, the Consortium of Southern Biomedical Libraries.  MUSC faculty, staff and students have complete access to more than 75 percent of the BMC journals and all research articles in the remaining 25 percent. BioMed Central can be accessed through the library Web site at  http://www.library.musc.edu/otherind.html or directly at http://www.biomedcentral.com. These full text articles are also linked from Ovid MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, SciFinder Scholar and PubMed. Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.