Solid start for open access21 February 2008 |
Just eight months after launching its new open access publishing policy, the Wellcome Trust has found that over a quarter of published, Trust-funded papers are freely available through the online repositories PubMed Central and UK PubMed Central.
This is one of several key findings of a study by the Trust that were presented at the 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting in Boston, USA by the Trust's Head of e-Strategy, Robert Kiley.
The study, which focused on Trust-funded papers published in May 2007, showed that 27 per cent of papers published in this month complied with the Trust's open access policy, by being made available through the online databases PubMed Central and UK PubMed Central within six months of publication. This is an increase on the 15 per cent figure for research published in December 2006.
Encouragingly, over 90 per cent of papers published in May 2007 were published in journals that comply with the Trust's open access policy - a result of close cooperation between the Wellcome Trust and the major scientific, technical and medical publishers.
While these findings represent a solid start for the open access policy - which only became mandatory for grantholders in October 2006 - Mr Kiley emphasised that the Trust is continuing to work closely with research authors and publishers to increase the proportion of papers made fully accessible.
Open and unrestricted access to published research is a key part of the Wellcome Trust's mission. As well as expecting authors to make their papers accessible to others, the Trust encourages authors and publishers to licence papers so that they can be read, used, copied and built upon by others, to build a richer research culture.