JISC

JISC is jointly funding an initiative which will enable scientists to access a vast collection of biomedical research at the touch of a button. Based on a model currently used in the United States, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) will provide free access to an online digital archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences.

The Wellcome Trust, as part of the nine-strong group of UK research funders which includes JISC, today announced that the contract to run UKPMC has been awarded to a partnership between the British Library, The University of Manchester and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI).

Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, said:

“Medical Research is not complete until the results have been communicated. I am delighted that such a strong consortium has been appointed to run UK PubMed Central. This is a partnership with the National Library of Medicine in the United States and will provide the best repository of the biomedical research literature in the world. ”

UKPMC will ensure that the digital archive of published articles resulting from research paid for by any of the funding consortium will be freely available, fully searchable and extensively linked to other online resources.

The University of Manchester will host the service – on servers at MIMAS – 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 text-mining tools to integrate the research literature with the underlying bioinformatics databases.

The first phase of the implementation will involve mirroring the American PubMed Central database. The partners will then establish the technical infrastructure of the service, including the facility for ingesting articles, and will also begin to engage more widely with the user communities. Launch of the service is scheduled for January 2007.

The UKPMC Funders 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, JISC, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.

For the full announcement, please go to: UK PubMed Central