NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Ontario Genomics Institute has started a new fund that will be used to make genomics research papers available as open access from the date of their publications in journals.
The OGI Genomics Publication Fund (GPF) will contribute up to C$3,000 ($2,900) per publication to genomics researchers in Ontario who want to make their papers available.
The GPF will be open to researchers at Ontario-based academic, industry, or government institutions, and its goal is to maximize access to important genomics publications and to increase the visibility and citations of genomics research conducted in the province.
OGI expects to support up to 35 open access publications over the next 12 months, and it will either reimburse special fees charged by traditional publishers to make individual manuscripts open access or to defray publication costs for manuscripts published in open access.
"OGI's program is targeting those publications with the greatest potential reach. Open sharing of knowledge should help to foster cross-disciplinary collaborations and to catalyze further research," James Till, university professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said in a statement.
"The general public also doesn't have easy access to publications, which is incredibly unjust considering it's their tax dollars that are often funding research and indirectly paying for the literature through grants," Richard Roberts, who is CSO of New England Biolabs, said.
Roberts also said that greater access to such genomic research information "will help the public understand what the current treatments are, what trials are taking place, and what new medicines might be available to them."