Grantholders e-newsletter

Issue 3, February 2006

1. Influenza research

If you haven't visited our website recently you may not be aware of our response to current concerns about the spread of the H5N1 virus. We are currently actively seeking high-quality research proposals that aim to further the understanding of avian and human flu via the project grant and programme grant schemes. Research proposals addressing questions that are particularly urgent and timely will be fast-tracked through our assessment procedures. We must stress, though, that all applications will be assessed on the basis of the excellence of the science presented.

Scientific priorities

Research proposals would be particularly welcome in the following areas:

molecular basis of virulence
molecular architecture and evolution of influenza viruses
interspecies transmission
genetic susceptibility to infection
diagnostics
approaches to prevention and treatment.

To find out more, visit our Influenza research funding page.

2. Open Access: another update

Policy summary

From 1 October 2006 all Trust-funded researchers will be required to deposit in PubMed Central - or UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) once established - all research papers, accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals, that have been funded in part or in whole by the Trust. This grant condition is already in force in relation to grants awarded after 1 October 2005.

All papers deposited in PMC/UKPMC must be made freely available no later than six months after the date of final publication.

Facilitating change

To facilitate this change – and to ensure that there is unrestricted access to the research we fund – the Trust is working on a number of supporting policies.

First, we will make additional funding available to cover costs incurred by researchers who wish to publish their research in open access journals.

Secondly, we are actively discussing the implications of this policy with a number of major publishers. To date, publishers Springer, Blackwell, and Oxford University Press have all introduced hybrid open access models, which are compliant with our policy, as announced before Christmas. In return for paying an open access, article processing fee, the publisher makes the final published manuscript freely available on the day of publication and takes responsibility for depositing this paper in PMC.

Finally, though we hope that we can reach agreement with most publishers whereby they will deposit the published manuscript in PMC, in cases where this does not occur authors will themselves be required to deposit the final version of the manuscript. The final version includes all modifications from the peer review process. In order to facilitate this for authors, we have – with support from the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institutes of Health – developed a manuscript submission system for Trust-funded researchers.

3. Application forms – a reminder

Many versions of our forms will no longer be accepted after 1 April 2006. A list of application forms and their status may be found on our website.

4. Research resources

Scientists funded by the Wellcome Trust have built up valuable resources to support their biomedical research, and we are now able to bring these together and provide access to them for other researchers, via our website.

Areas covered so far include:

E. coli and salmonella isolates – this Wellcome Trust-funded collaborative multidisciplinary venture, involving institutions from the UK, Europe and North America aimed to understand the epidemiological relationships between enterobacteria in different hosts and host populations.

The Cambridge Resource Centre for Comparative Genomics – providing 'ready-to-use' chromosome-specific DNA from more than 100 species.

The Human Developmental Biology Resource – a collection of embryonic tissue to help developmental biologists increase knowledge of a large number of serious diseases and conditions.

If you think that your Trust-funded resources could help the wider research community, get in touch with us at publishing@wellcome.ac.uk.

5. Public engagement

The Wellcome Trust's Public Engagement Development Group has teamed up with the National Science Learning Centre to provide opportunities for researchers to engage with schools. A series of two-day training courses is being developed that will equip researchers to work alongside teachers on an ad hoc basis, perhaps during Science Week, to enthuse school pupils about the science that researchers do. Training will involve understanding the school curriculum, workshops with teachers to understand what is appropriate, and the opportunity to 'practise' on their future audience. The programme has been developed as part of a suite of training activities that is available for researchers to further their public engagement interests. For further details email petraining@wellcome.ac.uk.

6. Biomedical Image Awards

The Wellcome Trust's Medical Photographic Library contains over 60 000 biomedical images, which have been created by scientific researchers from all over the world. Once available in our collection, we give contributors a royalty for any photographs that are used by commercial clients.

All images are also eligible for the Biomedical Image Awards and associated exhibition, which are widely reported in the scientific and national press. If you would like to be considered for this year's Awards you will need to submit your images as soon as possible. Our panel of judges will be looking for interesting and visually striking images from your research, created using a variety of techniques. Contact Jenny Whiting for more information.

7. Open access papers: recent highlights

Recognising the benefits of open access, a number of Trust-funded researchers are already publishing their research in journals that support this model. Below, we provide a summary of some recent highlights.

Spontaneous brain activity during silence
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging on healthy people, Michael Hunter and colleagues found that the speech-sensitive auditory cortex has a propensity to spontaneously ‘activate’ during silence. This may help to explain why auditory hallucinations occur in both healthy and diseased brains.

Hunter MD et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2006;103(1):189–194. Full text

MHC variation
James Traherne and colleagues present a detailed analysis of the human major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region from three individuals with differing susceptibility to disease. Although the MHC region on chromosome 6 is the most genetically variable region in the genome, the analysis identified a region of remarkable stability.

Traherne JA et al. PLoS Genet.2006;2(1):e9. Full text

Heritability of malaria in Africa
A five-year study of over 3500 children living in eastern Kenya has found that just under a quarter of the variation in malaria fevers between the children was linked to genetic differences, while 29 per cent of variation was linked to differences in household conditions.

Mackinnon MJ et al. PLoS Med. 2005;2(12):e340. Full text