BioMed Central is an open access publisher specializing in science, technology and medicine (STM) publishing. BioMed Central recently announced the signing up of  the National Institute of Oncology in Rabat, Morocco as the 10th member to the Foundation Membership.

BioMed Central Foundation Membership

Foundation Membership is an initiative from BioMed Central that enables institutions in developing countries to demonstrate their commitment and support for open access publishing. For an institution to be  accepted to the Foundation Membership it should have expressed explicit public support for open access - for example, via open access deposit mandates or adopted policies recommending open access publication. Additionally, the institution should have published in either BioMed Central, Chemistry Central or SpringerOpen journals.

The benefits of Foundation Membership include a branded webpage on the BioMed Central website, member's welcome pack, publicity and marketing of the institution's Membership to a global audience and complimentary subscriptions to a selected journal titles.

BioMed Central and Open Access

Besides the Foundation Membership, BioMed Central supports other Open Access endeavors, these include,

• Open Access Publishing- provides full text access to  more than 200 OA Journals, see the list of journals here.
• Open Access Waiver Fund - BioMed Central provides an automatic waiver to authors based in  countries which are classified as low-income economies or lower-middle-income economies. This fund allows eligible authors to publish their research without incurring the usual article-processing charge (APC).
• Open Access Africa Conferences -These yearly conferences discusses the benefits of open access publishing in the African context and brings together researchers, librarians, university administrators, funders and other key decision-makers. The 2012 edition of the Open Access Africa conference has been announced.
• Open Access Advocate of the Year Award - This award recognizes institutions or individuals who have done the most to show leadership in taking steps to expand access to the published results of scholarly research.Current Recipient , Award 2010

For more information regarding BioMed Central and the Foundation Member scheme visit http://www.biomedcentral.com/developingcountries/libraries#oapackage