Press Release The Wellcome Trust Receives First SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications April 24, 2006 For more information, contact: David Prosser, david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk 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. Robert Terry of the Wellcome Trust receives the SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Contributions to Scholarly Communications from Bas Savenije, Chair of the SPARC Europe Board SPARC Europe is an alliance of 110 research-led university libraries from 14 European countries. It is affiliated with SPARC based in Washington, D.C., which represents over 200 institutions, mainly in North America. 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. .