Apologies for cross-posting. We hope that this will be of interest to this
list. Please feel free to contact me for more information.

Kind regards

Grace Baynes
BioMed Central

Press release: 18 October 2004, For immediate release

NATIONAL OPEN ACCESS AGREEMENT FOR NORWAY
Editorial Board member pushes for Open Access support

Norway has made a nationwide commitment to Open Access for the biomedical
research it funds. All universities, polytechnics research institutes and
hospitals in Norway became BioMed Central members on 1 October 2004. 

The Norwegian Health Services Research Centre (NHSRC) has secured a national
deal with BioMed Central that covers the cost of publication, in BioMed
Central's 120 Open Access journals, for all publicly funded researchers,
doctors and teachers in Norway. The membership agreement will initially run
until the end of December 2005.

Arild Bjørndal, Medical Director of the NHSRC, formerly professor of public
health and a long-term spokesman for evidence based health care, is on the
Editorial Board of BMC Public Health, one of BioMed Central's journals. He
has also published a number of his own research articles in BioMed Central's
journals. Dr. Bjørndal was instrumental in securing the national membership
agreement, 

"Open access is the way forward in medical publishing. We must put a stop to
the way that scarce public resources are used; first to fund research and
then again to pay to be able to read the results of that same research. Our
institution is striving to improve access to reliable and relevant research
for everybody; hence we want to encourage Norwegian researchers to publish
through open access solutions like BioMed Central."

The NHSRC is a new institution in Norwegian health care, set up to support
well-informed decisions about health care both at the individual and
societal level, according to Dr. Bjørndal.

"The NHSRC is committed to supporting services and government with the best
available evidence about effects of health care. Creating better access to
research information is one of the means to stimulate a more evidence based
health service in Norway. Open Access, and the BioMed Central membership are
a key part of this."

Natasha Robshaw, Head of Marketing and Sales at BioMed Central, said:

"We are extremely pleased to welcome all Norway institutions on board as
members of BioMed Central.  Support for BioMed Central membership continues
to grow at an incredible rate and we are especially excited that this
agreement has been championed by researchers, including our own Editorial
Board member, Arild Bjørndal.  We look forward to this research community
support continuing and seeing manuscript submissions to our journals
increase."

Norway's decision is another landmark in the move towards Open Access for
all biomedical research. Two other European countries have already taken out
nationwide BioMed Central membership for the majority of their publicly
funded researchers. In May 2004, BioMed Central announced that FinELib (the
National Electronic Library of Finland) had agreed membership for all 25000
publicly funded researchers and teachers in Finland.  In the UK, all UK
universities have been members since March 2003 thanks to an agreement with
JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee). The JISC membership agreement
was renewed in September 2004 for a further year. The NHS in England agreed
a 3-year membership deal in March 2003. 

# # #

Press Office Contacts:
Grace Baynes for BioMed Central
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7631 9988
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

Nina Husom,  Information Officer, for Norwegian Health Services Research
Centre
Telephone: + 47 91 39 56 08 / +47 23 25 51 34
E-mail: [log in to unmask] 
Alternatively please contact Arild Bjørndal
[log in to unmask]

About BioMed Central

BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com) is an independent online
publishing house committed to providing immediate access without charge to
the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This
commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential to
the rapid and efficient communication of science. In addition to open-access
original research, BioMed Central also publishes reviews and other
subscription-based content.

BioMed Central's business model is based on charging authors to publish, and
then making the content free to readers. Under membership agreements,
authors from member institutions will not be asked to pay an article
processing charge when publishing research. The charge is instead covered by
the institution's BioMed Central membership. This applies to all of BioMed
Central's journals 120 peer-reviewed journals. Upon acceptance, the article
becomes available online without charge to readers worldwide.

BioMed Central's Institutional Membership Program was launched in January
2002 and now has over 450 members, including some of the world's most
prestigious academic institutions.

Grace Baynes
BioMed Central
Middlesex House
34-42 Cleveland Street
London W1T 4LB
T: +44 (0)20 7631 9988
F: +44 (0)20 7580 1938
http://www.biomedcentral.com/