From today scientists will be able to access a vast collection of biomedical research and to submit their own published results for inclusion in a new online resource. Based on a model currently used by the US National Institute of Health, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) will provide free access to a permanent online archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences.
A nine-strong group of UK research funders, including JISC and led by the Wellcome Trust, awarded the contract to develop UKPMC to a partnership between the British Library, The University of Manchester and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) last July....
Members of this group now require that articles describing the results of research they support are made available in UKPMC with the aim of maximising its impact. The UKPMC service will ensure that articles resulting from research paid for by any member of the funding consortium will be freely available, fully searchable and extensively linked to other online resources.
Initially UKPMC mirrors the American PubMed Central database (hosted by the NCBI at NIH). From today, UK scientists will also be able to submit their research outputs for inclusion in UKPMC. Through 2007, and beyond, the partners will develop innovative tools for UKPMC to further support biomedical research. In this way, UKPMC will grow into a unique online resource representing the UK’s biomedical research output.
For my timeline, I'd appreciate it if any readers could help me discover the dates of adoption for the OA mandates at the Arthritis Research Campaign and the Chief Scientist Office. (I do know that the ARC policy took effect on January 1, 2007.)
The ARC mandate is strong and detailed. Grantees must deposit a copy of their final, peer reviewed manuscript in UKPMC no later than six months after publication. If a grantee publishes in a fee-based OA journal, ARC will pay the fee. If a grantee publishes in a TA journal that doesn't give permission for OA deposit on ARC's terms, ARC offers some negotiating suggestions. But if the journal still doesn't budge, ARC takes the Wellcome Trust approach: "then the author should not proceed with the submission to that journal and should reconsider where to publish."
The CSO mandate fits into one sentence (Section 13.7): "A copy of the final, peer-reviewed version of all papers arising from the funded research and accepted for publication must be deposited in a publicly accessible repository (UK PubMed Central when this is established) and be made freely available within 6 months."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/08/2007 11:57:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.