WHO commits to open access by joining Europe PubMed Central

"The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today that it will become a member of the open access repository Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC), joining 25 other life sciences and biomedical research funders. The announcement is in preparation for the launch of the WHO open access policy on 1 July 2014 ... Europe PMC is managed and developed by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) on behalf of Europe PMC’s funders. Since 2006, Europe PMC has grown from being a simple mirror of the US National Center for Biotechnology Information’s PubMed Central database to being a standalone site, providing critical infrastructure for European funders who require open access for their research outputs. The decision of WHO to join the expanded Europe PMC resource comes at a time when providing free access to research outputs continues to be championed at the highest levels within the UK and Europe. Europe PMC is playing a vital role in realising these ambitions."