Press releases

03 December 2002

New partnership between INIST-CNRS and BioMed Central will create new national archive of open access research

BioMed Central (the open access publisher) and INIST (the highly specialized documentation centre of French government-funded scientific research organization CNRS) have come together to create a new archive of open access research. In addition, all researchers at CNRS will be able to submit their work, free of charge, to any of BioMed Central’s journals as part of the publisher’s institutional membership program.

This partnership fits in with the INIST policy of providing the research community at large with up-to-date technology and improving access to and dissemination of scientific and technical information. It is also consistent with BioMed Central’s efforts to increase the visibility of the peer-reviewed articles it publishes through widespread indexing and archiving initiatives.

Currently, all the research articles published in BioMed Central’s journals are archived, without delay, at the United States National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central site (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov). The INIST national archive will be a further way in which the information published in the BioMed Central journals is securely archived and by which it can be accessed in the long term. In addition to these online archiving initiatives, BioMed Central will also be making archival print versions of the BioMed Central journals. These will be available on demand for libraries that require a printed copy of the research articles published by BioMed Central.

The decision of CNRS to join BioMed Central’s membership program is an endorsement of the company’s innovative publishing model, which funds open access by charging a fee for managing peer review and formatting manuscripts. Article processing charges, as these fees are known, are paid by an author or by the institution with which they are affiliated.

Jan Velterop, Publisher at BioMed Central is delighted by the creation of this new archive, “We are, at BioMed Central, very excited by this partnership and we are confident that it will bring the expected benefits for all parties concerned, but especially for the scientific communities in the life and medical sciences.” 

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For further information about BioMed Central visit
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info

For further information about CNRS visit
http://www.cnrs.fr/

For further information about INIST visit
http://www.inist.fr/

BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com) is an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate free access to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science. In addition to open-access original research, BioMed Central also publishes reviews and other subscription-based content.

INIST - Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique du CNRS (http://www.inist.fr) is a leading player in the production and the dissemination of scientific and technical information (STI) in Europe, INIST has been developing advanced information access tools for several years, tailoring these to the specific requirements of scientific and academic communities. Drawing mainly on new technologies for information and communication (NTIC), INIST tests and provides new dedicated platforms for electronic publishing, current awareness services, training and scientific communication.

CNRS is the main French government-funded research organization, carrying out scientific research. CNRS laboratories vary in size and structure and work in close co-operation with the French University system and specialized French government organizations, as well as other international research organizations throughout the world.