Procurement process for UK PubMed Central launched

A tender process to find a supplier to host, manage and develop a UK version of PubMed Central has been announced in the Official Journal of the European Union today.

The Wellcome Trust is working with a group of major UK biomedical research funding bodies - including the Medical Research Council, Department of Health, Scottish Executive, British Heart Foundation, Arthritis Research Council, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Joint Information Systems Committee – who are supporting this project.

Based on the US National Library of Medicine's (NLM) PubMed Central (PMC) the aim of this initiative is to create a stable, permanent, and free to access online digital archive of the full-text, peer-reviewed research publications and datasets that arise from the research funded by these organisations. UKPMC will be fully searchable and provide context-sensitive links to other online resources, such as gene and chemical compound databases.

It is anticipated that the site, which should be fully operational by the beginning of next year, will handle around one million unique users per month and contain more than 500 000 high quality research articles, which will increase daily.

The Wellcome Trust has been a leading advocate in improving online access to the research it funds. From last October it became a condition of Wellcome Trust funding that research papers had to be deposited in PubMed Central- eventually moving towards the UK version when it comes online - so they are free to access either immediately and no later than six months after the publication date.From this October all existing Trust grant holders will have to deposit future papers there.

Robert Terry, Senior Policy Advisor at the Wellcome Trust, said: "The implementation of UKPMC represents the creation of a significant resource for the life sciences community. We are seeking a contractor who has a good track record of high quality service provision and experience of collaborative working."

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The Wellcome Trust is an independent research-funding charity established in 1936 under the will of tropical medicine pioneer Sir Henry Wellcome. The Trust's mission is to promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health and it currently spends more than £400m p.a.

Further details about this initiative

Media enquiries: Contact Wellcome Trust Media Office, T 0207 611 7329/ 8866.