Press releases

06 March 2003

NHS research accessible, for free, for everyone 
NHS England sign agreement for BioMed Central Membership

This week the National Health Service took steps to make their research freely available to both the taxpayers that fund it, and to other doctors around the world. Making the results of NHS research accessible will result in more information being available to doctors and patients and will aid the advancement of medical science. Publishing in freely accessible online journals will also make the NHS more cost-effective, and enable the Health Service to focus on the treatment of patients, by reducing the money spent on journal subscriptions.

NHS England signed a membership agreement commencing in April 2003 with BioMed Central, whereby article-processing charges are waived - for any of the 1.2 million NHS staff - for publication in BioMed Central's 90 peer-reviewed journals in which all the research content is free.

Founded in 1948, the National Health Service is now the largest health organisation in Europe. As well as providing free healthcare for the British public, the NHS also has a commitment to invest in developing future treatments and expanding medical knowledge. Between 2002 and 2003, The Department of Health will spend approximately £540 million on their Policy Research Programme and Research and Development in the NHS.¹

The need for continuing research has to be balanced by the NHS's number one priority - providing world-class healthcare. With NHS performance and spending constantly in the media spotlight, opportunities to save money, which can be ploughed back into improving services, are not to be missed.

Publishing in open access journals promises just this kind of efficiency, eliminating the need to buy costly licences from publishers or paying-to-view the same article multiple times. Scott Gibbens, Project Manager of the NHS Core Content Group, explains why open access is desirable to the NHS:

"This deal is really exciting for us as it gives us an opportunity to be leaders in free access electronic publishing. If someone from the NHS writes an article and publishes it in, say, The New England Journal of Medicine, our researchers then have to pay to access that article. The NHS will potentially pay many times to access research that it has funded and produced. We want our research to be freely available, to our researchers, and to everyone else."

The view that research should be freely available is shared by many eminent scientists around the world. Pat Brown, a leading researcher working at Stanford University, believes that: "When a woman learns she has breast cancer, she deserves to be able to read the results of research on her treatment options that her own [taxes] have funded. A physician in a public clinic in Uganda ought to have the same access to the latest discoveries about AIDS prevention as a professor at Harvard Medical School."²

The Department of Health has already stated that the results of research should be "readily available, open to critical examination, and accessible to health care professionals, patients, carers and the wider public" in their policy for reform Research & Development for a First Class Service.³ The NHS has now taken this commitment a step further by becoming a BioMed Central member.

BioMed Central's Institutional Membership Program was launched in January 2002 and now has well over 100 members, including some of the world's most prestigious academic institutions. Harvard, Yale and Princeton, Institut Pasteur, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and the World Health Organization are all BioMed Central Institutional Members.

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About NHS England's BioMed Central Membership:

BioMed Central's business model is based on charging authors to publish, and then making the content free to readers. Under the agreement, article-processing charges are waived - for any of the 1.2 million NHS staff - for publication in one of BioMed Central's 90 peer-reviewed journals. Upon acceptance, the article becomes freely available online to readers worldwide. Many NHS researchers have already published in BioMed Central journals.

Further Information:

For more information about the NHS Core Content Group, please contact Scott Gibbens Project Manager, National E-licensing Project Scott.Gibbens@trentconfed.nhs.uk Tel 0115 968 4445

For further information about BioMed Central or the NHS contract please contact Grace Baynes or Gordon Fletcher  (grace.baynes@biomedcentral.com) (gordon@biomedcentral.com or +44 20 7631 2988) or visit our website http://www.biomedcentral.com/)

To read further press releases from BioMed Central visit: http://www.biomedcentral.com/pressinfo/

To find out more about BioMed Central's Institutional Membership Program, please visit our website: http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/instmembership or contact Becky Fishman, Membership Director (institutions@biomedcentral.com)

Sources:

¹ Department of Health, Organisation of Research and Development - an overview (http://www.doh.gov.uk/research/rd1/overview/overviewindex.htm)

² Public Library of Science, Public Library of Science to Launch New Free-Access Biomedical Journals with $9 Million Grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Press Release, 17 December 2002 (http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/PLoS_Moore_PressRelease_17Dec2002.pdf)

³ Department of Health, Research & Development for a First Class Service, 2000 (http://www.doh.gov.uk/research/documents/rd3/first_class_service.pdf)

About BioMed Central:

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.