UAMS Library Director appointed
to NIH PubMed Central National Advisory Committee

Mary Ryan, Director of the UAMS Library, has been appointed to serve a three-year term on the NIH PubMed Central National Advisory Committee (www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/nac.html). She is the only health sciences librarian on the Committee. The Committee will advise the NIH on the content and operation of the PubMed Central (PMC) repository of online journal articles, will establish criteria to certify groups submitting materials to PMC, monitor PMC operations, and ensure that PMC responds to the needs of researchers, publishers, librarians and the public.

Several months ago, Ms. Ryan was also one of four librarians from the US invited to participate in a BioMed Central consultation workshop held in London to discuss the crisis in scholarly publishing and potential pricing models for open access journal publishing. BioMed Central (www.biomedcentral.com) is currently the largest open access publisher of biomedical journals. Other participants in the workshop included librarians from several European countries and representatives of some European biomedical research funding agencies. For more information on open access journals, see the scholarly publishing updates and webliography on the UAMS Library’s website at www.library.uams.edu/schpub/schpublish.aspx.