Rebecca Withers shares an exciting new development about the Access to Understanding competition. Get involved now!

We are pleased to announce the launch of our first ever People’s Choice Award for the Access to Understanding science-writing competition! The competition is run by Europe PubMed Central in partnership with the Science team at the British Library.

This award gives you - the public - the opportunity to read our shortlisted entries and have your say. Our entrants rose to the difficult challenge of writing plain English summaries of research articles (all available from Europe PMC), which cover fascinating cutting-edge science including investigating alternative approaches to target tumours, clinical trials that aim to improve physical impairment associated with normal aging, using fruit fly models to understand human gene function and determining key factors in the development of Parkinson’s disease. Our rigorous judging process has ensured the scientific accuracy of the accounts, so now we want to know what you think!

The competition will remain open until 12.00 on 24 March 2014, and the winner will be announced that evening at our awards ceremony. You can vote for as many articles as you like, once a day. We encourage you to share any and all comments at any time.

When you have finished reading and voting, don’t forget to tell your family, friends and colleagues! We know these exceptional pieces will be of interest to all!