Five OA mandates now at work in the UK

October 1st 2006: a big day for open access, a press release from BioMed Central, October 1, 2006.  Excerpt:

October 1st 2006 is a major milestone for the open access movement. There are now five major UK research funders that require open access to the published results of all the research that they fund.

The Medical Research Council (MRC), Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) and National Environmental Research Council (NERC) have all introduced policies requiring deposition in an open access repository, which took effect on October 1st 2006. These new policies come into effect on the anniversary of the introduction of the Wellcome Trust's policy on open access, on October 1st 2005.

The mainstream acceptance of the need for open access means that there has never been a better time to publish with BioMed Central, the pioneering open access publisher. BioMed Central journals offer high quality, rapid publication, and great value for money. All our journals offer full open access to all research articles with no strings attached, and meet the criteria of the Wellcome Trust, MRC, BBSRC, ESRC and NERC open access policies, automatically depositing articles in PubMed Central on behalf of the author....