WebmedCentral is a unique post publication peer review based publishing platform that publishes biomedical scientific content without any pre-publication peer review. That there was a need for such a platform became obvious when within 16 months of its launch, it has thousands of registered users and more than 800 articles. This is in addition to hundreds of academicians and professors who have already come forward to join and support us. WebmedCentral is actively building a community of scientists, who believe in its publishing model, to support and facilitate a vibrant culture of post publication peer review.

While WebmedCentral continues to report healthy growth, we have observed that a significant body of scientists feel uneasy about publishing their work on our portal. Their reluctance stems from a perceived lack of quality control on WebmedCentral. Quality assessment of published articles is clearly important for academic and career advancement and the ability to attract grants and carry out research.

We at WebmedCentral have noted all these concerns and have felt the need to address them robustly by launching a quality layer WebmedCentral plus. The research papers on Webmedcentral judged to be of sufficient quality by post publication peer review will be assessed by the plus editorial team for inclusion on our plus platform. This will enable research published on WebmedCentral to find entry into mainstream "published" science until such a day when the scientific community can develop better metrics to assess an article's importance/contribution to science than to rely solely on flawed measures like publication in a journal of particular repute.

plus will also consider submissions directly. These direct submissions will undergo pre publication peer review before publication. This is to provide an all inclusive platform which accommodates all scientific views. plus will function in parallel to our main portal WebmedCentral. We will continue to work to ensure that that WebmedCentral has a robust multi layered "post publication peer review" system. Scientists who want the independence of publishing without prior peer review will continue to be able to use WebmedCentral as they currently do.

• 1 WebmedCentral plus will be the quality control layer for WebmedCentral
• 2 We will allow WebmedCentral articles considered suitable for publication on WebmedCentral plus a special "free" status.
• 3 WebmedCentral plus will also accept submissions directly for consideration of publication after peer review. There will be an "Article Publishing Charge" for articles published on plus. However the charges will be significantly lower than the industry standard and assistance will be available for scientists in need of financial support.
• 4 Prof. George Perry is going to be the Editor-in-Chief of WebmedCentral plus.
• 5 The plus will have a team of Speciality Editors for each speciality. The Speciality Editor will act as the handling Editor for manuscripts submitted to his/her section. Number of Speciality Editors for a particular speciality will depend on the submissions it attracts but will be typically around 4-5. They should be scientists of considerable standing in their field, run their own lab, and be tenured. They should have published over 20 articles in good journals, and been invited to speak at national and international conferences.

  The Speciality Editor will make the initial evaluation of the submitted manuscript, and if suitable, send the manuscript to two Editorial Board members to review. Once the reviews are returned, the Speciality Editor will evaluate these, and make an initial recommendation (reject, accept, request minor revisions, request major revisions). The manuscript, with reviewer comments, and the decision from the Speciality Editor will then be sent back to the author. If a revision has been required, the Speciality Editor will receive the revised manuscript and then reach a decision on the manuscript. S/He may send the manuscript back to the reviewers for.

  The Speciality Editor should have had some experience as an Editor in the past either serving on Editorial Boards or acting as a Section or Associate Editor for other journals.

• 6 Members of the plus Speciality Editorial Board will be specialists in their area. They would have published widely in the field, and have had some experience of reviewing manuscripts in the past.

  The constitution of the Speciality Editorial Board will reflect all aspects of the Speciality. Numbers on each Speciality Editorial Board will depend on the complexity of the speciality and number of submission we get but we expect the strength to be at least 15-20 per speciality. Editorial board members should be familiar (and comfortable) with the concept of open peer review. Reviews will be published with the articles, if articles are found suitable for publication on plus. Authors whose manuscripts would not be found suitable for publication on plus will have an option of publishing it on WebmedCentral and in such an eventuality reviews by our editorial team would be published with the manuscript.

• 7 The criteria used for acceptance of a given manuscript will be determined by the reviewer reports, but will broadly be based on whether a manuscript is deemed "scientifically sound".
• 8

  Articles directed to plus from the WebmedCentral site will follow the same pathway. However, articles from WebmedCentral will either be free or incur a significantly reduced processing charge.

  Every article on WebmedCentral that has attracted at least two reviews will be considered eligible for submission to Lead Faculty in that speciality for decision regarding submission to WebmedCentral plus. Lead Faculty can either solicit more faculty/external reviews or submit the article to plus for consideration. Lead Faculty may also decline to submit the article to plus, citing reasons openly. WebmedCentral articles published in plus will receive a new citation. However, the previous versions will all be available for viewing as history of the article and the previous page links will be maintained.

• If you would like to join WebmedCentral plus for any of the above roles please click here.