BioOne is an online, full-text database of 167 peer-reviewed

Peer review

Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...

 scientific journal

Scientific journal

In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...

s and books in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. Included publications are published by 126 scientific societies, museums, and independent presses. Nearly half of BioOne's corpus of titles are published online exclusively by BioOne and 70% are ranked by the Institute for Scientific Information

Institute for Scientific Information

The Institute for Scientific Information was founded by Eugene Garfield in 1960. It was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992, became known as Thomson ISI and now is part of the Healthcare & Science business of the multi-billion dollar Thomson Reuters Corporation.ISI offered...

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BioOne was established in 2000 in Washington, DC, as a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization by five scholarly collaborators: the American Institute of Biological Sciences

American Institute of Biological Sciences

The American Institute of Biological Sciences is a non-profit scientific association that is dedicated to advancing biological research and education.-Overview:...

, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition is an international alliance of academic and research libraries developed by the Association of Research Libraries in 1998 which promotes open access to scholarship. They currently have over 800 institutions in North America, Europe, Japan,...

 (SPARC), The University of Kansas

University of Kansas

The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...

, Greater Western Library Alliance, and Allen Press

Allen Press

Allen Press is a printer and publisher of scientific, academic and scholarly journals as well as commercial trade publications. Founded by Harold Allen in 1935, the company is located in Lawrence, KS...

. The main impetus for BioOne's creation was the common desire amongst key scholarly stakeholders for an alternative to commercial scientific, technical, and medical (STM) publishing

Publishing

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...

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Half of the subscription fee revenue is divided between the participating publications.

In 2008 BioOne provided over 1,200 global subscribing institutions with access to over 500,000 pages of content, receiving 40.7 million user hits. Through participation in philanthropic programs HINARI

HINARI

HINARI is the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative. It was set up by the World Health Organization and major publishers to enable developing countries to access collections of biomedical and health literature. There are over 7000 journal titles available to health institutions in 109...

, OARE, AGORA

AGORA

AGORA is the acronym for the Access to Global Online Research on Agriculture program. It was started by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations with a number of publishing partners to provide developing countries access to scientific information on food, agriculture,...

, and eIFL, BioOne is also made available at no cost to over 2,500 institutions in the developing world.