STM publishing meets NIH digital archive: librarian service on the PubMed Central National Advisory Committee Available to Purchase

The PubMed Central (PMC) National Advisory Committee was established by the National Institutes of Health in 1999 to guide the development of a new, open‐access digital repository of biomedical research reports. Headquartered at the National Library of Medicine’s National Center for Biotechnology Information, PMC has achieved significant technical accomplishments, including a recommended publisher document type definition for digital archiving, but little interest in the use of the new digital archive has been shown by the medical publishing community. This article chronicles the evolution of the initial concept from digital publisher to digital archive and includes issues related to technology and the culture of scientific communication.