Norway has made a nationwide commitment to Open Access for the biomedical research it funds

Norway has made a nationwide commitment to Open Access for the biomedical research it funds. All universities, polytechnics research institutes and hospitals in Norway became BioMed Central members on 1 October 2004.

The Norwegian Health Services Research Centre (NHSRC) has secured a national deal with BioMed Central that covers the cost of publication, in BioMed Central's 120 Open Access journals, for all publicly funded researchers, doctors and teachers in Norway. The membership agreement will initially run until the end of December 2005.

Arild Bjørndal, Medical Director of the NHSRC, formerly professor of public health and a long-term spokesman for evidence based health care, is on the Editorial Board of BMC Public Health, one of BioMed Central's journals. He has also published a number of his own research articles in BioMed Central's journals. Dr. Bjørndal was instrumental in securing the national membership agreement,

"Open access is the way forward in medical publishing. We must put a stop to the way that scarce public resources are used; first to fund research and then again to pay to be able to read the results of that same research. Our institution is striving to improve access to reliable and relevant research for everybody; hence we want to encourage Norwegian researchers to publish through open access solutions like BioMed Central."

The NHSRC is a new institution in Norwegian health care, set up to support well-informed decisions about health care both at the individual and societal level, according to Dr. Bjørndal.

"The NHSRC is committed to supporting services and government with the best available evidence about effects of health care. Creating better access to research information is one of the means to stimulate a more evidence based health service in Norway. Open Access, and the BioMed Central membership are a key part of this."

Natasha Robshaw, Head of Marketing and Sales at BioMed Central, said:

"We are extremely pleased to welcome all Norway institutions on board as members of BioMed Central. Support for BioMed Central membership continues to grow at an incredible rate and we are especially excited that this agreement has been championed by researchers, including our own Editorial Board member, Arild Bjørndal. We look forward to this research community support continuing and seeing manuscript submissions to our journals increase."

Norway's decision is another landmark in the move towards Open Access for all biomedical research. Two other European countries have already taken out nationwide BioMed Central membership for the majority of their publicly funded researchers. In May 2004, BioMed Central announced that FinELib (the National Electronic Library of Finland) had agreed membership for all 25000 publicly funded researchers and teachers in Finland. In the UK, all UK universities have been members since March 2003 thanks to an agreement with JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee). The JISC membership agreement was renewed in September 2004 for a further year. The NHS in England agreed a 3-year membership deal in March 2003.

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