The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, founded by the famous aviator, engineer, industrialist and film producer, have agreed with Elsevier to make author manuscripts of articles published in Elsevier and its Cell Press journals freely available within six months of publication if the research was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

Open Access commentator Peter Suber has today described HHMI as the Wellcome Trust of the US and greets the deal, but with reservations.

"This agreement speaks to our shared commitment to making research results freely available to the public and the international scientific community, as well as the significance of Cell Press and Elsevier journals to the communication of research discoveries," said Thomas R. Cech, president of HHMI in a statement.

Elsevier will deposit author manuscripts of the original article as well as supplementary data with PubMed Central and HHMI will pick up the tab for this service. Scientists will not be charged for their articles in the typical Open Access sense, instead HHMI will pay Elsevier quarterly instalments based on the number of articles published. Suber describes this as building on the Elsevier hybrid journal program.

HHMI is about to adopt a new policy that will require scientists it funds to publish their original research in journals that allow their content to be freely accessible through PubMed Central within six months of publication.

What concerns Suber most is that Elsevier retain copyright of the article and do not have to make the final article that has received peer review freely available.