The National Library of Medicine and two Canadian health institutes are teaming up to provide  free access to Canadian health research.

The NLM entered into a three-way partnership to establish PubMed Central Canada (PMC Canada), a national digital repository of peer-reviewed health and life sciences literature. The Web-based repository will be searchable, permanent, and freely accessible. It is expected to launch in the Fall of 2009.

PMC Canada builds on the successful PubMed Central digital archive developed by the NLM and will join the United Kingdom PubMed Central (UKPMC) as a member of the broader PMC International network. The network uses software developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), the division of NLM that created and administers PMC

PMC Canada is a partnership between NLM and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the National Research Council’s Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI).

“We are pleased that Canada is joining the PMC International family, further strengthening this effort to share life sciences literature across the world,” says NLM Director Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD, a long-time proponent of international collaboration in data sharing to help drive scientific advances.