A (free) roundup of content on the Academic Spring

[Use the link above to access the full text which provides a list of articles covering the “Academic Spring” recently published by “the guardian” and suggestions for additional reading from around the web.] “As far back as 2004 the seeming contradiction of publicly-funded research made only available at prohibitive cost through journals, has attracted the attention of HE leaders and policy makers. In July of that year, journalist Donald MacLeod reported on what MPs were calling ‘a revolution in academic publishing, which would make scientific research freely available on the internet’. At the time, Sir Keith O'Nions, director general of the research councils, said: ‘I think it would be a pretty brave decision of the government at the present time to say it has sufficient confidence in the open access business model ... to shift rapidly from something it knows and trusts to an open access model.’ And there the case rested. Fast forward to present day, the near ubiquitous use of social media, the growth of the 'copyleft' movement which seeks to allow work to be shared more freely and a blog by a Cambridge mathematician announcing that he would no longer be submitting papers to Elsevier, the largest publisher of scientific journals, and the Academic Spring was born...”