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| Hinxton, 8 January 2007 |
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| UK PubMed Central launched
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New online resource to promote free access to research and further biomedical
discovery
Press
Release 8 January 2007 [PDF]
From today scientists will be
able to access a vast collection of biomedical research and
to submit their own published results for inclusion in a
new online resource. Based on a model currently used by
the US National Institute of Health, UK PubMed Central
[UKPMC] will provide free access to a permanent online
archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical
and life sciences. See: www.ukpmc.ac.uk.
A nine-strong group of UK research funders, led by the
Wellcome Trust, awarded the contract to develop UKPMC
to a partnership between the British Library, The
University of Manchester and the European
Bioinformatics Institute [EMBL-EBI] last July.
Members of this group now require that articles describing
the results of research they support are made available in
UKPMC with the aim of maximising its impact. The
UKPMC service will ensure that articles resulting from
research paid for by any member of the funding consortium
will be freely available, fully searchable and extensively
linked to other online resources.
Initially UKPMC mirrors the American PubMed Central
database [hosted by the NCBI at NIH]. From today, UK
scientists will also be able to submit their research outputs
for inclusion in UKPMC. Through 2007, and beyond, the
partners will develop innovative tools for UKPMC to further
support biomedical research. In this way, UKPMC
will grow into a unique online resource representing the
UK's biomedical research output.
Richard Boulderstone, Director of e-Strategy and
Programmes at the British Library, said: "UK PubMed
Central will offer a sophisticated and exciting new means
of scholarly communication for biomedical researchers.
Building on the complementary strengths that the Library
and its partners, the University of Manchester and EMBL-EBI,
bring to this project, we expect to create a platform
for the development of a whole range of new services for
the UK and European biomedical research community."
Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust commented:
"Medical research is not complete until the results have
been communicated. The development of UKPMC provides
a great opportunity for this research to be made
freely available, and I am very pleased that a first class
partnership of the British Library, the University of
Manchester, and the European Bioinformatics Institute
will be running it."
He added: "This is only the start, however, and over the
next few years the challenge will be to develop UKPMC so
that it becomes the destination site of choice for the international
biomedical research community and all those who
are interested in discovering the results of groundbreaking
research first hand."
The British Library will run the service, promote it to
researchers, as well as offering support for those who want
to include their research papers in UKPMC. The
University of Manchester hosts the service – on servers
based at MIMAS [Manchester Information and Associated
Services] – and will support the process of engaging with
higher-education users. EBI, which is part of the European
Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL], will contribute its
biomedical domain knowledge and state-of-the-art textmining
tools to integrate the research literature with the
underlying bioinformatics databases.
The UKPMC funder group consists of: Arthritis Research
Campaign, The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences
Research Council, The British Heart Foundation, Cancer
Research UK, The Association of Medical Research
Charities, The Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish
Executive Health Department, the Department of Health,
The Joint Information Systems Committee, the Medical
Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.
Press Contact
Cath Brooksbank PhD
EMBL-EBI Scientific Outreach Officer
EMBL-EBI Hinxton
Tel: +44 1223 492 552,
Email: cath@ebi.ac.uk
Anna-Lynn Wegener
Press Officer
EMBL Heidelberg
Tel: +49 +6221 387-8452
Email: wegener@embl.de |
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