Research | Researchers report | Open Access

"...These factors led to the development of new publishing approaches that sought to utilize the power of the Internet to make scientific information freely available to all. This culminated in the early 2000s with the launch of the PubMed Central repository, the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and Biomed Central. A series of influential statements and declarations in support of Open Access followed – including the Budapest initiative in 2002, the Bethesda statement in 2003 and the Berlin Declaration later the same year. The Berlin Declaration was the outcome of the Max Planck Society’s first Berlin meeting on Open Access, and the annual Berlin meeting has since become the premier international open access policy forum. As the Open Access movement grew, two main established routes developed through which scientific papers can be made available in Open Access form – commonly referred to as the 'gold' and 'green' models... Furthermore, an increasing number of funding agencies are establishing Open Access mandates for their funded research. The UK-based Wellcome Trust – a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving major improvements in human and animal health by supporting the brightest researchers in the biomedical sciences and medical humanities – has had one of the longest-standing policies of this type. The Wellcome Trust is fundamentally committed to ensuring that the outputs of the research it supports – including research publications and data – can be accessed and used as widely as possible, in order to maximize the public benefit resulting from its funding.  The Wellcome Trust Open Access guidelines were set out in 2005. Since then, all funding awards are subject to the condition that all articles funded in whole or in part by the Trust be freely accessible in the PubMed Central (PMC) and the Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) repositories as soon as possible, but no later than six months following their publication. Researchers receive dedicated funding for costs incurred for publishing through the Open Access model.  Wellcome provide block grants to around 30 UK universities to cover processing fees for articles produced by Trust-funded researchers, and Open Access costs incurred by researchers based at other institutions are covered through grant supplements.  Moreover, the Wellcome Trust developed UK PubMed Central as the central repository for full-text access to publications. There are currently 19 partner funders, the most recent addition being the European Research Council, which earlier this year became the third non-UK based funder, alongside the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Telethon Foundation in Italy. UKPMC changed its name to Europe PMC as of November 1, 2012.  Researchers have accepted the Open Access policies of the Wellcome Trust, and just over half of the papers generated by its funding are now freely accessible. This past June, it announced further measures to strengthen its policies; for instance, through withholding final grant payments until the researcher’s institution confirms that all publications are compliant with the policy.  Finally, Wellcome Trust will introduce a requirement from April 2013 that, where the Trust has paid an Open Access fee, the publisher must provide license for unrestricted commercial and non-commercial reuse. This will be implemented through a Creative Commons attribution license, which has become firmly established as the gold standard for Open Access.  Open Access is being more widely supported in political circles, as well, with the UK Government, for instance, having taken it up as part of its open data agenda..."