Publishers Discuss European E-Print Site

While U.S. organizers were putting the finishing touches on a new Web site known as PubMed Central, a group of scientists and publishers met in Heidelberg last week to plan a European counterpart called “E-Biosci.” The U.S. project, due to go online within a week, is billed as a free archive of biomedical papers. It catalyzed the European initiative but will not be exactly the same. E-Biosci, according to organizers, is likely to require tougher peer reviewing for nonpublished articles and may allow publishers to charge some fees for access to their papers.