Engagement Manager UK PubMed Central British Library St Pancras, London UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) is a unique, innovative online resource offering free access to full text journal articles, abstracts, clinical guidelines, theses and biological databases for biomedical and health researchers.

A core strategy of the development of UKPMC has been to help users access, (through a single search interface), a range of relevant information, in addition to peer-reviewed journal articles, that could prove useful in their research.  Since the launch of the new service in June 2010, we have provided links to an increasing number of PhD theses and clinical guidelines, as well as a range of research reports.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust announced today that they are to support a new, top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life sciences research. The three organisations aim to establish a new journal that will attract and define the very best research publications from across these fields.

Papers published under the Royal Society of Medicine’s open access option (RSM Open) are now deposited in PubMed Central and mirrored to UKPMC. The open access option is available to all authors and applies to all RSM journals. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for RSM Open is $3000.  All papers published under this model are licenced using the Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial licence.

A new online open access journal from Nature Publishing Group, Scientific Reports, is now live. The journal is a primary research publication covering all areas of the natural sciences. The APC for UK articles has been set at £1,112 (from January 2012). Scientific Reports will apply to be indexed in all relevant databases and repositories, and all content will be archived in PubMed Central.

We are looking to recruit experienced developers to join the Literature Services Team at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) to help deliver UK PubMed Central. This is a great opportunity to contribute to a core resource for biomedical researchers. The positions involve a range of activities, depending on where your experience lies. We require people who can demonstrate excellence in a variety of technical skills.

Text mining features in databases are an increasingly popular way to extract useful information that could otherwise remain hidden. A new resource has become available to allow researchers to search for particular chemical compounds in biomedical literature. This task is often confounded by multiple names for particular chemicals being used in publications.

Competition in open access publishing is increasing with the launch of two similarly named online open-access journals. Open Biology (Royal Society Publishing) will start receiving submissions this July whilst Biology Open (BiO; The Company of Biologists), discussed in the previous post, is set to launch in the autumn of 2011.

The Company of Biologists has announced BIOLOGY OPEN (BiO), a new online only, Open Access journal publishing original research across all aspects of the biological sciences including cell science, developmental biology and experimental biology. Launching in Autumn 2011, BiO aims to “ provide rapid publication for peer reviewed, scientifically sound observations and valid conclusions in these allied fields.

A report published today looking at how to improve access to academic literature suggests that open access is likely to have the greatest benefits to the UK scholarly communications system. Open access, whereby research outputs are made freely accessible to the widest possible audience, is an issue to which the Wellcome Trust is firmly committed. The Trust provides funding to its researchers to cover open access publishing costs.