UK scientists have started work on the creation of a free online digital archive of peer-reviewed medical research in the UK.

The site, due to be launched at the beginning of next year, will hold more than 500,000 research articles. An estimated one million unique users are expected to visit the site every month, accessing about three million full-text medical articles.

Led by the Wellcome Trust, with support from a group of major UK biomedical research funding bodies, the UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) project aims to mirror a similar repository in the US, while also accepting UK research material.

‘The implementation of UKPMC represents the creation of a significant resource for the life sciences community,’ said Robert Terry, senior policy adviser at the Wellcome Trust.

‘It is about a subject-based repository for life sciences that is freely available with the internet. It is part of a movement in research to improve access to peer-reviewed published literature.’

The process of finding a supplier to develop, host and manage the service started this month.

The appointed contractor will host and manage three separate components, comprising a UK-hosted mirror of the USPMC, a local author manuscript submission and tracking system, and a system to provide authenticated login services for manuscript submission.

‘We are making a standalone UK portal of the US version. It mirrors US material and takes UK material,’ said Terry.

Information on the database will be archived in XML format, which will allow for more complex searches.

An estimated 25,000 manuscripts will be submitted to the UKPMC in the first five years of its operation.

No costs have been specified for the project, as the organisation hopes to use the tender process to determine the best possible cost.

A contract is expected to be awarded in July.