National Institute for Health Research funds supporter membership of BioMed Central

Under the terms of the NIHR's Supporter Membership arrangement, all NHS researchers supported by the NIHR and its partners will benefit from a 15% discount on publication fees when publishing in any of BioMed Central's 200 peer-reviewed open access journals. Researchers are expected to acknowledge NIHR support.

The NIHR is part of the Department of Health, which is a strong advocate of access to the results of research and a partner in the UK PubMed Central open access digital archive project. In 2007 it made a statement confirming official policy in support of open access.
http://www.nihr.ac.uk/files/pdfs/OpenAccessPolicyStatement.pdf

With support through the NIHR, researchers already publish hundreds of open access articles each year in BioMed Central's journals, and Supporter Membership will further encourage open access publication, increasing public access to the results of taxpayer funded research whilst saving money.

A list of open access articles by NIHR-funded researchers recently published in BioMed Central journals can be found on the institution's BioMed Central Member Page: http://www.biomedcentral.com/inst/37456

Matthew Cockerill, BioMed Central's Managing Director, noted "We have found that health researchers working within the NHS, funded by the NIHR, are passionate about sharing the results of their research widely and openly, and this new membership agreement makes it even easier for them to do so."

Source: BioMed Central