Open Access a Must for Wellcome Trust Researchers

Next week (October) the Wellcome Trust becomes the first scientific research funder to insist that papers emanating from its grant awards are placed in an open access repository.

From the 1st October it will become a condition of funding, that papers will have to be posted on PubMed Central (PMC)– the free-to access, life sciences archive developed by the National Institutes of Health – and made accessible within 6 months of publication.To facilitate this, the Wellcome Trust has – with the help of NIH – established a manuscript submission system, through which papers accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal can be deposited in PMC.

From the 1st October next year all existing Trust grant holders will have to deposit future papers into PubMed Central. This delay will allow existing grant holders time to adjust to the new policy and let us know what problems – if any – they may experience, affording ustime to overcome them.During this time the Trust, working in partnership with other UK life sciences funders, plans to establish a UK version of PubMed Central – UKPMC.

This latest move comes as part of a drive from the UK’s biggest medical research charity to push forward open access publication of scientific literature, making findings freely available to those who want to see them.

The Wellcome Trust is the UK’s biggest non-governmental funder of biomedical research, spending £400 million a year. The work it funds results in around 3,500 papers being published annually.

Dr Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, said:

“Digital archives such as PubMed Central add enormous value to research. Everyone, everywhere will be able to read the results of the research that we fund. PubMed Central provides a link from research to other papers and sources of data, and greatly improves the power and efficiency of research.

”Digital archives are only as good as the information stored in them. That’s why we feel it’s important to encourage our researchers along this path – one I hope others will follow.”

ENDS

Media contact:

Media Office :- 0210 7611 8612

Media.office@wellcome.ac.uk

Notes to editor:

1. The Wellcome Trust is an independent research funding charity established in 1936 under the will of the tropical medicine pioneer Sir Henry Wellcome. The Trust’s mission is to foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health and it currently spends over £400 million per annum.

2. PubMed Central can be accessed at: http://www.pubmedcentral.gov

3. The NIH Manuscript Submission sytem can be accessed at: http://www.nihms.nih.gov/db/sub.cgi