BMC Research Notes, an open access journal from BioMed Central, will re-focus on its original mission of accepting submissions for short publications, incremental updates to previous work, results of individual experiments and similar material that lacks a suitable publication outlet. While returning to its roots with a focus on publishing null results, dark data and micropublishing, the journal will also expand its scope to cover all scientific and clinical disciplines.
The core belief of BMC Research Notes is that all scientifically sound research has value and should be made freely and openly available to the research community, including those observations which would not be written up as a full research article.
The phrase 'dark data' describes research outputs that are not usually considered in traditional research journals. As a result, these research outputs often never see the light of day and remain hidden in researchers' lab books or buried as some extra data to be considered further one day in the future. There are many datasets, field observations, null results and small experiments, which would potentially give useful information to other researchers but which may never be shared.
BMC Research Notes is also expanding its scope and will now accept submissions from all scientific and clinical disciplines including health sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics and all engineering disciplines. All research must be scientifically valid. Articles which will be considered include single observations, replication studies, method validations and null results. The journal will also accept submissions of 'side data' that scientists may have collected during their experiments.
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