This post is by our guest, Dr Stephen Pinfield, a Senior Lecturer in the Information School at the University of Sheffield. In this post he introduces us to his recent paper ‘Medical research charities and open access’ where he reports on a survey he carried out to assess the Open Access (OA) policies and activities of […]

To start, I should say that all at Europe PMC support Open Access. This is just a short list of some issues that can be frustrating… 1.    The often incorrect definition of green and gold routes to Open Access I am a relative newcomer to Open Access having only been working in this area for a […]

In an exciting new development, Europe PMC now provides direct links from articles to relevant externally held information, and enables third parties to suggest relevant resources that enrich our existing content. The External Links Service is a mechanism for people to publish links from articles in Europe PMC to related information or tools. It could be […]

Imagine, if you will, open access as a train, running up and down the length of the country, travelling anywhere track is laid, delivering papers, books, ideas to all and sundry. Research funders have the opportunity to man the signal boxes and set the open access movement’s direction of travel. That is what the Wellcome […]

The Wellcome Trust has joined with the Public Library of Science and Google to launch the Accelerating Science Award Program (ASAP) to recognise the use of scientific research, published through open access, that has led to innovations in any field that benefit society.This new, innovative programme recognises individuals who have used, applied or remixed scientific […]

On May 1st 2013 Yorkshire Cancer Research (YCR) became the newest member of the Europe PMC Funders’ Group, and we’re delighted to have them on board. YCR fund cancer research that is carried out by world-class scientists and clinicians across Yorkshire, and provide information to help local people beat cancer. Closing the gap between the […]

By Claire Sand, Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, King’s College London The Access to Understanding competition had instant appeal for me because it seemed to combine my two greatest interests – science and writing. I have always been fascinated with the human body (particularly in disease), and am currently working on my PhD in cardiovascular research, […]

Earlier this month HEFCE invited advice on developing their open access policy in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF). Both EMBL-EBI, who run the Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) service, and the UK members of the Europe PMC Funders’ Group, strongly support HEFCE’s movement towards requiring that all outputs submitted to the post-2014 REF are […]

On the 1st April 2013, both the Wellcome Trust and the Research Councils UK will require that any article which attributes their funding and incurs an Article Processing Charge (APC) must be licensed using the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY). This blog posting provides an update as to those publishers who publish high volumes of […]

Access to Understanding is a new science-writing competition, developed by Europe PubMed Central and The British Library, aimed at early career researchers and PhD students. The winner will receive an iPad and have their entry published in eLife. Read on for more… For more information: http://EuropePMC.org/ScienceWritingCompetition Questions: Engagement@EuropePMC.org Follow us on Twitter: Europe PMC news and […]

The European Research Council (ERC) announced today that it will participate in the UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) open access repository service, joining 18 existing UK and European funders[i].The ERC becomes the third European funder to join UKPMC, following Telethon Italy and the Austrian Research Fund.  As a result of this participation, the existing funders have […]

The report of the Working Group chaired by Dame Janet Finch about Expanding Access to Published Research Findings has been published. This recommends a programme of action to enable more people to read and use the publications arising from research. Better, faster communication of research results will bring benefits for public services and for economic […]

A previous post on this blog showed how the proportion of open access content in UKPMC was increasing. By open access, we mean “free to read AND free to reuse”, at least for non-commercial purposes, although all the content on UKPMC is free to read. At that time the trend reported showed that the proportion […]

Last month, the wettest April in the UK since records began, there was also a deluge of articles in the popular press about open access.  This is a round-up of some of the articles (and perhaps notable by their absence are any articles that are behind a paywall!).   Harvard backs open access in face of […]

The graphic above shows articles available in UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) – read-only articles: green; Open Access articles: blue – compared to the number of abstracts in PubMed. For articles published in 2010, using the ~925K articles in PubMed published in 2010 as 100%, UKPMC is about 18% of the size of PubMed, with Open […]

SpringerPlus, the new Open Access journal from Springer (and based on the PLoS One model) is now accepting manuscripts from all disciplines of science.   The journal will accept manuscripts describing original research as well as case descriptions and methods.  The submission of data reports and large datasets is actively encouraged. All articles accepted for publication […]

Yesterday the UK OAIG released research reporting on the benefits of open access to commercial companies and findings from a JISC Collections consultation on the practicalities of paying for open access publication. Links Benefits to the Private Sector of Open Access to Higher Education and Scholarly Research Open Access Fees Report OAIG press release (24 […]

Today is the official launch of the Royal Society’s first wholly open access and online journal – Open Biology. The new journal is publishing research in cell biology, developmental and structural biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, neuroscience, immunology, microbiology and genetics. It is overseen by a team of academic Subject Editors with support by an international […]

Dr Mark Patterson, director of publishing at the Public Library of Science (PLoS), has been named managing executive editor of a new open-access research journal that the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust are launching next year. Further details are available at the Wellcome Trust web site.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust announced today that they are to support a new, top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life sciences research. The three organisations aim to establish a new journal that will attract and define the very best research publications from across these fields. […]

Papers published under the Royal Society of Medicine’s open access option (RSM Open) are now deposited in PubMed Central and mirrored to UKPMC. The open access option is available to all authors and applies to all RSM journals. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for RSM Open is $3000.  All papers published under this model are licenced using the […]

A new online open access journal from Nature Publishing Group, Scientific Reports, is now live. The journal is a primary research publication covering all areas of the natural sciences. The APC for UK articles has been set at £1,112 (from January 2012). Scientific Reports will apply to be indexed in all relevant databases and repositories, […]

Analysis of the content in UKPMC shows an increasing proportion of articles are fully open access and thus can be downloaded, and re-used, typically for non-commercial purposes.  To be clear, all content in UKPMC can be accessed without any restriction, but only a subset of this content is fully open access. In 2001, just 7% of […]

A report published today looking at how to improve access to academic literature suggests that open access is likely to have the greatest benefits to the UK scholarly communications system. Open access, whereby research outputs are made freely accessible to the widest possible audience, is an issue to which the Wellcome Trust is firmly committed. […]

BMJ Open – BMJ’s new online-only, open access journal – has been launched. The journal will publish “all research study types, from study protocols to phase I trials to meta-analyses, including small or potentially low-impact studies”. In a move to promote greater transparency in the peer review process, all published articles include the reviewers reports, […]