UK Government Earmarks £10m For Open Access Publishing [UK]

The government has announced £10m in funding for UK academics to publish their research in journals that allow free public access to the material online without a subscription. The funding, which is a response to the recommendations of a report led by Professor Dame Janet Finch, is not new money but will be taken from the science budget. It will be apportioned by Research Councils UK, the body that disseminates government research funds.

Calls for "open access publishing" have been steadily growing in academic circles, with Dutch commercial publishers Elsevier being boycotted by thousands of academics in protest at perceived profiteering through journal access costs. The government is adopting a funding model proposed by Finch called "gold" open access, where – instead of university libraries subscribing to journals – researchers pay commercial publishers or learned societies to publish their research, but access to their results is immediate and unrestricted...