Large Medical Research Funders Committed To Open Access Publishing

Staff Writer | The Economic Voice | October 24, 2013

But smaller medical charities, although keen, fear impact on budgets and funded researchers

Large medical research funding bodies are fully committed to open access publishing. But although smaller charitable funders back the principle, they worry about the impact open access will have on their budgets and their funded researchers, reveals a qualitative study published in the online journal BMJ Open.

The findings come as Open Access Week (October 21-27), a global annual event to promote open access as the norm in scholarly publishing and research, celebrates its seventh year in business.

The premise of open access is that it provides free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and ideally, the right to use and reuse those results as desired, rather than restricting access behind a subscription pay wall. The UK leads the world on open access.