Clinical Research Information Now More Freely Available on the Internet.

Good news for all those interested in the free exchange of medical research information in the last few days.

According to the Financial Times (FT) of the 10th of January, 2007

“UK PubMed Central yesterday went live offering 600,000 biomedical digital articles from leading academic journals, with financial support from the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and medical research charities.”

This new source of medical research information can be found at the following URL:

http://www.ukpmc.ac.uk

The FT says that it is operated by the British Library in conjunction with the University of Manchester and the European Bioinformatics Institute.
It will receive about $A10m in funding over five years from about 10 different sponsors.

What is most interesting is that, despite the complaints of the academic publishing interests, any medical research that is funded in whole or in part by the UK Government is to be made available, for free, on the internet within six months of its publication in final peer reviewed form.

Given that apparently 90% of medical research in the UK has an element of Government funding this is a major step forward for access to the clinical research literature.

The site is a twin of a site run by the US National Institutes of Health which can be found this URL:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/

This site has similar content and also publishes research which is funded in whole or part by the US Government under similar rules. It has been operational for a few years and has proved invaluable.

The concept of making freely available medical literature funded from the public purse is an idea whose time has surely come. Researchers like their work to be easily accessible so it can be used and we all, as interested citizens, can see what our dollars are funding!

Let us hope Australia quickly follows suit.

David.