Open access

The UK government has said that it plans to make publicly funded scientific research available for anyone to read for free by 2014. It is adopting the main recommendations of the French Group that looked into how to expand access to research publications. Research papers that describe work paid for by the UK taxpayer will be free online for universities, companies and individuals to use for any purpose. The funding model will change from one of universities paying subscription fees to journal publishers, to one of authors paying an article processing charge to have their papers peer reviewed, edited and made openly available online. The change will have to be funded from within existing science budgets.