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Wellcome Trust Announces Open Access Plans
May 26, 2005, 18:58, Reviewed by: Dr.
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The Wellcome Trust has announced that from 1st October 2005, all papers from new research projects must be deposited in PubMed Central or UK PubMed Central � once it has been formed - within 6 months of publication.
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By Wellcome Trust, UK,
The 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 has also announced that from 1st October 2006, all existing grant holders must deposit any future papers produced from Trust funding into PubMed Central or UK PubMed Central. This delay in extending the grant condition will allow existing grant holders time to adjust to the new policy and let us know what problems � if any � they may experience, affording us the time to overcome them.
The Wellcome Trust is the UK�s biggest non-governmental funder of biomedical research spending �400 million producing almost 3500 papers each year.
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.�
Last week the Wellcome Trust, alongside MRC, BBSRC, British Heart Foundation, ARC and JISC, called for organisations interested in operating a UK PubMed Central to come forward.
Publisher BioMed Central congratulated the Wellcome Trust on its move to require researchers receiving Wellcome funding to deposit copies of resulting research articles in an Open Access archive.
"For too long, funders have stood by as the results of scientific and medical research have been handed over to traditional publishers, who have then put those research articles behind subscription barriers," said Matthew Cockerill, Director of Operations at BioMed Central. "Subscription-only access to research does not meet the needs of researchers, funders, or the general public, all of whom benefit from the widest possible access to research findings, which is what Open Access delivers."
"Following on from the National Institutes of Health's similar initiative in the USA, Wellcome's move shows that the funders who spend hundreds of millions of pounds to carry out the research in the first place are no longer prepared to see their research results remain inaccessible."
The Wellcome Trust is the UK's biggest non-governmental funder of biomedical research with an annual spend of �400 million. The recipients of Wellcome's funding produce almost 3500 scientific articles each year. With such a major funding body backing Open Access, it is now expected that other funding bodies around the world will follow suit.
Wellcome's policy specifies that articles must be made freely available within, at most, six months of initial publication, but BioMed Central called on researchers to go further and to make their research accessible immediately on publication, by choosing an Open Access journal."
"Six months is a long time in science � with the rapid pace of research, quick access to the latest results is vital. So, the best way for researchers to meet the spirit of the Wellcome policy is to publish in fully Open Access journals, such as those published by BioMed Central."
Publishing in any of BioMed Central's 130 Open Access journals will also make life easier for Wellcome-funded researchers: "BioMed Central already deposits a copy of the official final version of every research article that it publishes with the appropriate Open Access archive. As a result, authors publishing with BioMed Central will automatically meet the requirements of the Wellcome policy, saving themselves the effort of having to deposit a separate copy of their research article." 
- Wellcome Trust, UK
Wellcome Trust�s open access policy
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.
BioMed Central is an independent online publishing house committed to providing open access to peer-reviewed research. This commitment is based on the view that immediate free access to research and the ability to freely archive and reuse published information is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science.
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