Several British funding organizations say they are seeking proposals from groups interested in running a new free-access archive of papers arising from research they have supported.
The idea is to establish a UK version of PubMed Central, which is a service run by the US National Institutes of Health. The new site would include material from the United States as well, and would create a searchable facility containing all papers from both versions. UK PubMed Central would also have links to online resources, such as databases for genes and chemical compounds.
The venture is being developed by the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the British Heart Foundation, and the Arthritis Research Campaign, with support from the Joint Information Systems Committee. A briefing document outlining the requirements for interested parties is available on the Wellcome Trust's Web site.
Tony Peatfield, head of ...
