PubMed Canada to Store Government-Funded Studies

Canada has started a national online archive that will house papers and data coming from government-funded research, and will be funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Modeled on the National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central, the PubMed Central Canada resource was launched to provide Canadians with a free and open national digital repository of peer-reviewed health and life sciences literature, including research funded by CIHR.

PMC Canada was developed through a partnership between the National Research Council's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), which will build the infrastructure and manage the repository, the US National Library of Medicine, and CIHR.

The resource supports the Policy on Access to Research Outputs, which requires that CIHR grant recipients make their peer-reviewed publications freely accessible online within six months after they are published.

"The global movement to provide barrier-free access to research is gaining strength and with good reason, said Ian Graham, CIHR's VP of Knowledge Translation, in a statement.

"Having desktop access to a searchable, permanent and freely accessible archive of Canadian health research will serve as a valuable resource for researchers, enabling them to translate that knowledge into solutions to important health issues," NRC-CISTI Director General Pam Bjornson added.

The first phase of PMC Canada includes development of a bilingual interface and help desk and a manuscript submission system. The planned second phase of the repository will incorporate a customized web front-end and enhanced reporting and alerting features for system funders and users.

PMC Canada's future development will be guided by an advisory committee that will include health researchers and other stakeholders.