Four European research funders have mandated that life sciences research outputs made possible with their funding be made freely available through open access repository UK PubMed Central (UKPMC). Launched in January 2007, UKPMC is a free-to-access digital archive of full-text, peer-reviewed biomedical and life sciences research. As of February 2010, it held over 1.7 million full text articles. The repository aims to become the information resource of choice for the UK biomedical and health research communities and eventually to expand to become the 'Europe PubMed Central'.
The four European research-funding organisations that have agreed to participate in UKPMC are: the Health Research Board Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, Telethon Italy and the Austrian Science Fund. The funders will mandate that all biomedical research outputs that arise from their funding are made freely available - within six months of publication - from the UKPMC repository. The development has been welcomed by the Wellcome Trust, one of the principal funders of UKPMC.
As participants in the first phase of UKPMC, the four European funders will be provided with a fully-managed repository service, along with a manuscript submission system to allow their researchers to archive their papers in the repository. Access to the Grant Reporting System is also enabled, allowing researchers to report on the outputs of their grants.
Funders will also benefit from the developments being made to the UKPMC service. Key developments include providing the functionality - through text and data mining technologies - to integrate research articles with a range of other online sources, such as gene, protein and chemical compound databases, and to integrate a range of bibliographic databases - including Medline, Patents and Agricola - into a single, seamless discovery tool.
Phase I funding is based on a simple 'pay-as-you-go' model in which a small fee is charged for each author manuscript that is deposited in the UKPMC repository (to cover the cost of converting a manuscript to XML). All ongoing infrastructure costs will continue to be met by the existing UKPMC funders. It is anticipated that Phase I will run until Summer 2011, to be followed by Phase II, a fully fledged Europe PubMed Central with a range of additional, value-added services.
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