Researchers extend online access to findings of UK life sciences

Eight leading biomedical research funding organisations, including Government bodies, research councils and charities, have approved funding to develop further the UK PubMed Central website over the next three years.

The British Library along with the University of Manchester and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) will be carried out in close consultation with the UK's biomedical and health researchers.

Since being launched in January 2007, UKPubMed Central has expanded to offer 1.3 million full-text, peer-reviewed research papers through its online digital archive. The new and improved features will include direct links to the 18 million records currently available on the US version of PubMed as part of the European Bioinformatics Institute's CiteXplore bibliographic tool. There will be new ways to extract biological information from research papers using text analysis and data-mining tools and access to content not included in traditional journal literature - clinical guidelines, technical reports and conference proceedings.

Richard Boulderstone, the British Library's director of eStrategy, said: "These developments will significantly boost UK PubMed Central's accessibility and make it an invaluable first point of call for the UK's life sciences researchers. The British Library is excited to be involved in a programme that provides such a wealth of freely available information for the benefit of this research community."

Dr Tony Peatfield, chair of the UK PubMed Central funders group and Head of Policy at the Medical Research Council, said: "This work really provides us with an opportunity to augment the highly popular US version of PubMed Central with resources and features which are adapted to the needs of the UK's biomedical and health sciences researchers."