PubMed Central:
An NIH-Operated Site for Electronic Distribution of Life Sciences Research Reports
- Facilitating the input of SGML-tagged content from submitters;
- Developing technology for enhanced retrieval, presentation, and navigation;
- Improving the access to and utility of the content in PubMed Central for other information resources, publishers, and database groups;
- Coordinating with the repository efforts of international partners in the system; and
- Archiving the content and working to guarantee accessibility in the future.
An international advisory committee will be constituted by learned societies interested in fostering the development of PubMed Central and the collaborating international repositories. One of the important functions of the advisory committee will be to establish criteria for certifying groups that may submit peer-reviewed or screened material to PubMed Central. In the meantime, the initial criteria will be:
- Any journal currently indexed by the major abstracting and indexing services: EMBASE, Biosis, MEDLINE, Science Citation Index, Agricola, PsycINFO, and Chemical Abstracts.
- Any organization with at least three members who are principal investigators on research grants from major funding agencies and foundations (for example, NIH, NSF, DOE, NASA, or HHMI in the United States, and equivalent organizations abroad).
In order to facilitate participation in this initiative, some of the expenses associated with publication may shift from readers to authors. As they do with journal subscriptions, page charges, and reprints, NIH grantees (and those of other funding agencies) may choose to use funds to pay any additional expenses, e.g., submission and document preparation charges.
Participating journals and other organizations will submit complete research reports to PubMed Central and access to the entire report will be free to individuals through PubMed Central. The status of all reports peer-reviewed or screened and the identity of the contributing organization will be clearly indicated. The PubMed Central staff will work with the publisher to establish an efficient data flow and make this content available as soon as possible. They will also work to satisfy publishers' needs to preserve the distinctive appearance of their journals' contents in PubMed Central without compromising the overall utility of the repository. Appropriate links to the publisher's site will also be included. PubMed Central will solicit the views of participating publishers to best serve their needs and enhance the value of the overall resource.
We now invite the scientific community to engage in this exciting new venture. We plan to be ready to make reports accessible through PubMed Central by January 2000. Publishers, societies, editorial boards and other organizations interested in depositing content in PubMed Central are urged to contact us at PubMedCentral@nih.gov.
August 30, 1999
Go to: [Original Proposal for E-biomed (Draft and Addendum)][Archived Comments on Original Draft and Addendum] [Citation list of published editorials, letters, and articles concerning the E-biomed proposal]