Wellcome trust backs open access scholarship

“IT wasn't new news but there was online exultation yesterday over The Guardian's report the Wellcome Trust is creating an open access scholarly journal. This is a big win for the grassroots ‘academic spring’ movement which opposes the way an oligopoly of companies publishing peer reviewed scholarly journals charge libraries top dollar so scholars can read research. According to Wellcome Trust Director Sir Mark Walport... ‘many scientists believe that publishers are not adapting quickly to the opportunities offered by today’s technology. They feel that the interests of research may have been placed second to the interests of a profitable status quo.’ That’s cap P for profit. According to The Economist, the largest (2000 titles) journal publisher Reed Elsevier made a 36 per cent operating profit on sales of stg2 million in 2010. And so some of the researchers who write, review and edit the articles that appear in the journals for free are demanding high quality open-access alternatives of the sort the Wellcome Trust is now setting up. Sir Mark emphasises the scientists who will edit the new online scientific journal eLife will pick up the publishing pace, having ‘the authority and responsibility to use their judgement and to decide on a case by case basis to publish papers without the authors necessarily having to address every criticism raised in the peer review process.’ Reed Elsevier has not responded to yesterday’s furore, but a February statement denied its business model made access to research expensive... The Wellcome Trust plan extends the committment to open access publishing by other philanthropic and public research funders. From mid year Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council will require reports of all research it funds to