BMJ's August 2006 Newsletter is out and it contains information on 2007 subscription rates, impact factors, online user guides, changes to Clinical Evidence, BMJ Learning, Unlocked (open choice) institutional repositories.

2007 Subscription Prices:
Prices have increased on average 6%
The tier pricing structure has changed for online subscriptions to BMJ journals and Clinical Evidence
Small 1-400 relevant FTEs
Medium 401-1500 relevent FTEs
Large 1501-3000 relevant FTEs
Over 3001 relevant FTEs must contact BMJ for price quote.

Note: BMJ defines a relevant FTE:

• Academic Institutions: Total number of medical faculty (academic staff and students) and researchers.
• Hospitals: Total number of clinicians, pharmacists and researchers (excluding nurses).
• Corporate institutions: Total number of researchers and medical information employees.
• Government institutions, regulatory agencies, medical societies and all others: Total number of professionally qualified staff.

Impact Factors:
The majority of BMJ journals impact factors have increased, overall all 23 journals the average impact factor increased by 15%. For specific journals go to the newsletter.

Online User Guides:
New users guides for BMJ journals (including BMJ) and Clinical Evidence are available to download or order.

Changes to Clinical Evidence:

• Clinical Evidence now summarizes over 200 conditions and 2,000 treatments.
• Clinical Evidence print edition to discontinue, the last printed issue is June 2006 issue 15. The full text will only be available online.
• Pricing structure has changed to tier pricing (see 2007 pricing above)
• Improvments for the user: improved key messages and topic summaries,
  expert comment on clinical relevance of findings and strength of evidence,
  RSS feeds, chapters report results by clinical outcome

BMJ Learning:
Provides learning for professionals in primary care and hospital medicine and has been available for institutions to purchase since Feb. 2006.

Unlocked and Institutional Respositories -BMJ Journals:
Unlocked is an open choice option (available Jan. 2007) for authors who opt to apy a fee to make their papers freely available online upon publication. See the newsletter for fees for specific journals.

BMJ's policy for institutional repositories is that authors are permitted to deposit the author version of the accepted manuscript on their insitution's or a subject based respository immediately. HOWEVER they must abide by a 6 month embargo (from the date of print publication) before their manuscript can be free to all. ***Thanks BMJ that isn't confusing or anything.