BioMed Central (BMC) is a United Kingdom-based, for-profit scientific publisher specialising in open access journal publication in the domains of Science, Technology and Medicine. BioMed Central and its sister companies Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central publish over 200 scientific journals. Most BioMed Central journals are now published only online. BioMed Central describes itself as the first and largest open access science publisher. It is owned by Springer Science+Business Media.

PLOS (for Public Library of Science) is a nonprofit open access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journals and other scientific literature under an open content license. It launched its first journal, PLOS Biology, in October 2003 and publishes seven journals, all peer reviewed, as of April 2012.