Apologies for cross posting. Of possible interest to this list.

Kind regards

Grace Baynes
BioMed Central



Press Release: 24 May 2005

BioMed Central applauds Wellcome's leadership on Open Access, but emphasizes the need for immediate access to research

Publisher BioMed Central today congratulated the Wellcome Trust on its move to require researchers receiving Wellcome funding to deposit copies of resulting research articles in an Open Access archive. The Trust announced its Open Access policy on 19 May.

"For too long, funders have stood by as the results of scientific and medical research have been handed over to traditional publishers, who have then put those research articles behind subscription barriers," said Matthew Cockerill, Director of Operations at BioMed Central. "Subscription-only access to research does not meet the needs of researchers, funders, or the general public, all of whom benefit from the widest possible access to research findings, which is what Open Access delivers."

"Following on from the National Institutes of Health's similar initiative in the USA, Wellcome's move shows that the funders who spend hundreds of millions of pounds to carry out the research in the first place are no longer prepared to see their research results remain inaccessible."

The Wellcome Trust is the UK's biggest non-governmental funder of biomedical research with an annual spend of £400 million. The recipients of Wellcome's funding produce almost 3500 scientific articles each year. With such a major funding body backing Open Access, it is now expected that other funding bodies around the world will follow suit.

Wellcome's policy specifies that articles must be made freely available within, at most, six months of initial publication, but BioMed Central called on researchers to go further and to make their research accessible immediately on publication, by choosing an Open Access journal."

"Six months is a long time in science - with the rapid pace of research, quick access to the latest results is vital. So, the best way for researchers to meet the spirit of the Wellcome policy is to publish in fully Open Access journals, such as those published by BioMed Central."

Publishing in any of BioMed Central's 130 Open Access journals will also make life easier for Wellcome-funded researchers: "BioMed Central already deposits a copy of the official final version of every research article that it publishes with the appropriate Open Access archive. As a result, authors publishing with BioMed Central will automatically meet the requirements of the Wellcome policy, saving themselves the effort of having to deposit a separate copy of their research article."


For more information, contact:
Grace Baynes Tel: +44 (0)20 7631 9988
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

About BioMed Central
BioMed Central is an independent online publishing house committed to providing open access to peer-reviewed research. This commitment is based on the view that immediate free access to research and the ability to freely archive and reuse published information is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science.

Wellcome's announcement of its policy on Open Access: 
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX025191.html

Grace Baynes
Marketing Communications Manager
BioMed Central
Middlesex House
34-42 Cleveland Street
London W1T 4LB
T: +44 (0)20 7631 9988
F: +44 (0)20 7631 9926
http://www.biomedcentral.com/ 
This email has been scanned by Postini.
For more information please visit http://www.postini.com