Open Access in Biomedical Research

Open access is crucial, not only for funding agencies and research performing organisations but to the research community and society as a whole.  It was identified by the ESF and EUROHORCs in their landmark publication, 'EUROHORCs and ESF vision on a globally competitive ERA and their road map for actions' as one of the ten actions required to build the ERA.  Open access to the output of publicly funded research has also been an important issue for the field of biomedical research.  Indeed, biomedical research holds a special place in this area because of, for example, the extremely short readership half-life of biomedical publications, the fast growing proportion of biomedical research articles published with author-side payments, or the large involvement of biomedical research publishers in license extension.  Biomedical research also holds a specific position through the PubMed free database to which the MRC and Wellcome Trust open access initiative in the UK is closely linked.  In the near future, the European Medical Research Councils (MED (formerly EMRC)) wishes to focus on this important issue by publishing a policy briefing on this topic that was brought to our attention by Professor Josef Syka, MED (formerly EMRC) core group member representing the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) and the central and eastern European countries.  The MED (formerly EMRC) wishes to contribute to the ESF/EUROHORCs road map by helping tackle this specific action by helping identify at a European level, the gaps and opportunities, avoid duplication and encourage appropriate prioritisation for open access in biomedical research.  

Documents

EUROHORCs and ESF Vision

FLIP Report

ESF-MED (formerly EMRC) Position Paper

Investigator-Driven Clinical trials