A group of British science bodies said today (May 12) they were seeking proposals from organizations interested in running a new free-access archive of papers arising from research they have funded.

The idea is to establish a UK version of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)–run service PubMed Central. The 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 gene and chemical compound databases.

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 (JISC).

Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, said in a statement that his organization was committed to achieving the maximum impact from the research it funds. "That means making the findings accessible to those who most want to see them. A UK PubMed Central will give users the widest access to information with an assurance of quality. It will provide a freely-accessible archive for researchers to deposit their papers."

"We want to make this happen, and it's a matter of thinking how we make it happen in practical terms," a spokesman for the Wellcome Trust told The Scientist. A briefing document outlining the requirements for interested parties is available on the Wellcome Trust's Web site.

Tony Peatfield, head of policy at the MRC, said that while the MRC was very supportive of the project, the cost of the exercise may be of concern. "At present we don't know what the costs would be or how they would be met," he told The Scientist.

The deadline for organizations interested in running the site is June 10. The spokesman said that there was no firm schedule in place for setting up the new service. "It's a case of the sooner the better, although we'll have a better picture after June 10," he said. Funding for the venture will come from the group involved in supporting it, although details of the level of that funding are not yet being made public.

In February, the NIH unveiled its final policy on publication of sponsored research results on PubMed Central, drawing criticism from both supporters and critics of open access.

The new policy became effective May 2 and "requests" that scientists voluntarily deposit electronic copies of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts with PubMed Central as soon as possible after acceptance for publication. Authors can specify when their manuscripts would be publicly released, anywhere from immediately to 12 months after publication. The policy also placed the burden on scientists to resolve any copyright disputes with journal publishers.

Research Councils UK, an umbrella group for Britain's eight science and technology funding councils, is currently formulating its own policy on open access. A spokesman said the plan was currently being consulted on by universities and would be made public "in weeks rather than days, but not months."

A person familiar with the content of the policy as it currently stands told The Scientist that it requires investigators to archive their papers in repositories where they exist, but not the creation of repositories.