Wellcome Trust Boosts NIH Plan
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) may have made its U.S. policy on archiving research it funds voluntary, but last week the policy got a big boost from overseas. The Wellcome Trust, the prestigious UK-based independent research funding body, announced that, beginning October 1, 2005, all papers from new research projects must be deposited in PubMed Central–or in a UK version of PubMed Central, when constructed, within six months of publication. The Wellcome Trust also announced that existing grant holders would have a year delay, to October 1, 2006, which will give them time to adjust to the new policy and address potential problems.
The news is a boost for the NIH policy. After the policy’s recent implementation, a number of journals had announced policies that would keep articles out of PubMed for the maximum recommended time allowed–up to a year–in direct contrast to what NIH director Elias Zerhouni had predicted. Wellcome, the UK’s biggest non-governmental funder of biomedical research, has now put some teeth back into the policy, by implementing on its own a policy that mirrors the NIH’s initial draft policy. Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, said the mandatory deposit policy was meant to maximize the value of archives like PubMed Central. "Digital archives are only as good as the information stored in them," Walport said. "That’s why we feel it’s important to encourage our researchers along this path, one I hope others will follow."
[Library Journal Academic Newswire (TM), May 24, 2005]
