UK Dept for Business Innotation & Skills, Our plan for growth: science and innovation

"We will use our participation in the European Research Agency, the G7, G7+5, G20 and our Presidency of the EU in 2017 to demonstrate our leadership on topics such as open access and infrastructure where the UK is at the forefront....Technology allows openness and public scrutiny of research that was not possible until now – going far beyond the ability to share a published paper through open access; the data and the information behind the paper can be made available to all. The public fund research through their taxes and, without public support, many technologies and scientific ideas would not fulfil their potential. Researchers and innovators must be prepared to engage in discussion with all those who support their work. These changes open up science to democratic scrutiny in new and exacting ways. Science can benefit from coming under challenge....We are pushing through open access to publicly funded research in response to the 2010 Finch Review and as part of the wider government agenda on open data....We will continue to push forward on implementation of open access to research publications and the underlying data. HEFCE will be considering how to reward open data as part of future REF assessments subject to the evaluation of the REF 2014....The government remains fully committed to open access to research publications in line with the recommendations of the Finch Group Report, and whilst our ultimate objective remains gold open access, we will continue to work, nationally and internationally, with partner organisations and other research funders on the implementation of open access to achieve a sustainable and affordable model. HEFCE will be considering how to reward open data as part of future REF assessments subject to the evaluation of the REF 2014. Further, access to underlying research data and meta-data is recognised as a complementary need to access to research papers. We will take forward cross-sector discussions on implementation through the Research Sector Transparency Board."