To mark its first year, BioMed Central’s online magazine Biome has pulled together some of their highlights from the last 12 months.

Biome is designed for the research community, helping to catch some of the most interesting and significant publications across the breadth of medical and biological fields that our open access journals cover. Below are just a few highlights of what we’ve covered.

Delving into the research

Since launching in 2013 our research summaries have spanned biology and medicine, from the evolution of butterfly wing patterns, to newly found risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

We also provide a regular round-up of the best open access research elsewhere in ‘Open Reading Frame’, with weekly summaries alternating in focus between biology and medicine

Talking to authors

We’ve asked authors about the broader impact of their work; from the implications of Steve Horvath’s epigenetic clock to Munir Pirmohamed’s and Rosalind Smyth’s research on off label drug prescriptions.

And we’ve turned some of these interviews into podcasts giving an overview of different fields that we publish article series about.

Of course, speaking to authors often highlights different views in the field, which has given us the opportunity to publish debates and opinions. Whether that’s on when’s best to start antiretroviral HIV therapy, where the critical gaps are in breast cancer research, why single-molecule real-time sequencing hasn’t been well received (yet), or whether mobile phone technology has the potential to revolutionize healthcare.

Community features

Biome aims to cover issues of importance in the day-to-day life of both clinicians and academics, as well as looking at the research cycle itself. From peer review, to clinical trials transparency, to open data, we’ve covered some of the hot topics and events that have been absorbing publishers and researchers this year.

See the full highlights post for more examples of some of the content that’s been in Biome so far. And if you want to keep up with Biome, you can sign up for monthly highlights mailings on the website or follow the RSS.