The Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) and Research Councils UK (RCUK) – which includes the Medical Research Council – recently put out a joint statement reinforcing their open access commitments (here). This announcement came in a speech by David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, showing the extent to which the principles of open access are […]
Category: Open access
Open roads and closed sessions
A recent report on the next steps for increasing open access to UK research concluded that Green OA infrastructure (i.e. repositories) should be encouraged while an economically sustainable transition to Gold OA is worked through. ‘Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications’ by CEPA and Mark Ware Consulting, […]
BMJ Open and UK PMC
Confirmation that BMJ Open satisfies the open access criteria for the Wellcome Trust and other UK PMC funders (including Arthritis Research UK, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, NIHR and MRC) can be found here, at the UK PMC blog. BMJ Open will automatically deposit published articles with PMC on authors’ behalf without embargo. […]
BMJ Open in PubMed Central
This week BMJ Open received confirmation the journal has been accepted for inclusion in the NLM collection and so may deposit articles in PubMed Central (PMC). This means that by publishing in BMJ Open authors will meet the requirements of major funders such as the Wellcome Trust by making their articles open access and ensuring their deposition in PMC. Another reason […]
Press release
The official press release announcing BMJ Open can be found here. It includes a comment from Dr Fiona Godlee, BMJ Editor-in-Chief, that helps set BMJ Open in the context of the BMJ Group’s history of open access, and its mission to help improve patient outcomes worldwide. […]
Wider open access developments at the BMJ Group
By adopting an open access policy for research articles, BMJ Open follows in the footsteps of the BMJ itself. All research articles published in the BMJ are available open access, a policy that dates from 1998. A recent editorial in the BMJ talks about the launch of BMJ Open and the BMJ‘s new policy on […]