PubMed Central as an Open Access Resource.
Let’s take a look at PubMed Central, an online archive of journal content maintained at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Articles stored in PMC are available without charge and the service is available to anyone with a web connection and at all hours. Publishers contribute content to PMC and are allowed to impose access embargos, but many publishers submit content to PMC right away. Some of the journals are true Open Access (OA) publications, embracing the Bethesda (or Washington) Principles, the Berlin declaration or some similar expression of OA doctrine. Others are available under Creative Commons licensing. Some of the material in PMC consists of approved final manuscripts of articles published by authors working under NIH grants. PMC started slowly, but things are picking up, both as attitudes to accessibility of research materials change and as Congress seems to be getting more serious about mandatory deposit of articles describing research that was publicly funded. There was a recent announcement that PMC had deposited it one millionth item. It’s also interesting to note that NLM has stoked publisher interest in contributing to the archive by offering a program of retrodigitization. And, the items in PMC have been in many case enhanced by the inclusion of supplementary materials, such as original datasets and clips of motion media showing, say, cells in action. That’s not something to stir the juices of most people, but for cytologists and such like, it’s big stuff. In all, PMC is pretty impressive.
Connect to http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ and take a look.
