Wellcome Trust wins First SPARC Europe Award

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

*Apologies for cross posting*

Press Release
April 24th, 2006

For more information, contact:
David Prosser, SPARC, david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk

THE WELLCOME TRUST RECIEVES FIRST SPARC EUROPE AWARD FOR 
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS IN SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATIONS

Lund, Sweden - As part of the Third Nordic Conference on 
Scholarly Communication: Beyond Declarations - The Changing 
Landscape of Scholarly Communication held in Lund, Sweden, the 
Wellcome Trust was presented with the first SPARC Europe Award 
for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications.

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) 
Europe initiated the Award to recognise the work of an individual 
or group within Europe that has made significant advances in our 
understanding of the issues surrounding scholarly communications 
and/or in developing practical means to address the problems with 
the current systems.  In making the Award to the Trust the 
judging panel noted the Trust's truly groundbreaking work in 
scholarly communication, from the commissioning of incisive 
research into the market, through to the formulation and 
implementation of clear policy in support of the widest 
dissemination of the research outputs funded by the Trust.

Dr Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust said 'We are very 
honoured to receive this award from SPARC Europe which recognises 
our activities in the promotion of the 'open-access' model of 
science publishing.  Ensuring that the outputs of research are 
freely available and shared as widely and as rapidly as possible 
is vital in order to facilitate the translation of research into 
practical improvements in health.'

Dr Bas Savenije, Chair of the SPARC Europe Board, praised the 
Wellcome Trust's 'major contribution in implementing strategies 
for open access towards the widespread availability of research. 
They have shown the way for funding bodies and we hope that 
others internationally will emulate them.'

Following the success of the first Award, SPARC Europe has 
decided to make this an annual event and it is expected that the 
second Award will be presented at the CERN Workshop on 
Innovations in Scholarly Communications (OAI5) to be held in 
Geneva in 2007.


***

About SPARC Europe SPARC Europe is an alliance of 110 
research-led university libraries from 14 European countries. 
It is affiliated with SPARC based in Washington, DC, which 
represents over 200 institutions internationally.  SPARC Europe 
and SPARC work to develop and promote new models of scholarly 
communication that increase the access to and utility of the 
research literature.  SPARC Europe is located on the web at 
www.sparceurope.org <http://www.sparceurope.org/> .

________________
David Prosser
Director, SPARC Europe
david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 7974 673 888