BioMed Central and Edanz Hold Author Training Workshops in China

Training seminars for authors, co-sponsored by BioMed Central and Edanz (known in China as Liwen Bianji), were recently held at Zhejiang University School of Medicine (ZUSM) on May 20, 2011 and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (SJTU-SM) on May 23, 2011. The seminars, titled "Open Access and Scientific Writing," were attended by over 140 Chinese scientists from ZUSM and SJTU-SM and their affiliated hospitals, and Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences.

During the 3-hour seminars, Ms. Diane Wang, Publishing Manager China for BioMed Central, and Dr. Warren Raye, Senior Life Sciences Editor for Edanz, gave lectures on ""BioMed Central: Making Scientific Findings More Open"" and ""How to Write and Publish Scientific Articles"", respectively. Ms. Wang introduced basic concepts about open access, BioMed Central's open access journals, and provided details about the submission and publication of scientific articles from its member institutions. Dr. Raye set out the key points for scientific writing and submission for peer review, including study design, journal selection, manuscript structure, and avoiding common language mistakes. Both sessions were highly interactive, with the audience raising a number of interesting questions on scientific writing and scholarly publishing. A post-workshop questionnaire showed that over 90% of the audience was satisfied with the seminars and nearly 80% expressed their interests in publishing their work in BioMed Central's open access journals.

BioMed Central currently has more than 360 member institutions worldwide. The Chinese Academy of Sciences became BioMed Central's first member institution in mainland China in December 2009. In May 2011, ZUSM joined BioMed Central and expressed its support for open access publishing. ZUSM is also the first college member of BioMed Central in mainland China. During the May 23 seminar, Mr. Zhang Wenhao, director of the of SJTU-SM library, announced that in early July SJTU-SM will become a supporting member of BioMed Central, thereby becoming the first Chinese library to financially support open access publishing.

The number of manuscripts BioMed Central receives from China has increased rapidly in recent years; however, the acceptance rate remains lower than the global average. The series of workshops co-sponsored by BioMed Central and Edanz will help Chinese authors become familiar with the knowledge and skills of scientific writing in English. With offices in Beijing, China and Fukuoka, Japan, Edanz is committed to providing language polishing and other relevant services for authors whose first language is not English and who wish to publish their articles in international English journals. With a team of more than 300 native English-speaking senior editors, Edanz serves authors from a wide spectrum of academic disciplines. Since 1995, Edanz has edited over 70,000 manuscripts for submission to over 4,000 journals. With more than 5,000 authors as clients in China and over 9,500 in Japan, Edanz understands the challenges faced by authors whose native language is not English. As the recommended editing service of BioMed Central, Edanz helps contributors from China and other countries improve the language of their manuscripts and to reach the language standards of BioMed Central journals. All authors referred to Edanz by BioMed Central receive a 10% discount on the Edanz services.