Open access for the people | Science | guardian.co.uk

"The world of academia is in ferment over open access — the idea of making research articles freely available to everyone. Open access is widely believed to be "a good thing" but no-one is quite sure how to bring it about.  From April 1st this year anyone in receipt of public funding from one of the UK research councils will be required to publish their findings by an open access route. The new policy is causing an almighty row, with researchers complaining about the cost, humanities scholars railing against an agenda set by scientists, publishers and learned societies fretting about lost of income and the House of Lords criticising the haste with which the new rules have been brought into play.  Despite this noisy argument, few would disagree that open access is the wave of the future and not just in the UK. Already a significant fraction of the research literature is available for free, if you know where to look (hint: Google Scholar is a good place to start).  But who is going to look? ..."