Open access: A global movement - Open Access Week

"The open access (OA) movement is gaining worldwide consensus as more and more countries are joining the effort to make research freely available.  China has recently joined the ranks of the nations that are making a shift to OA. On May 15, 2014, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), a major basic-science funding agency, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), one of China's most prestigious research institutions, announced that researchers associated with these institutions would need to give u.... Interestingly, more research-funding agencies in China are expected to follow a similar policy. While OA has been gradually gaining support in China in the past few years, this move might bring a major change to academia in China. The research output of China has multiplied over the years—the country’s contribution to the total global articles has increased from 5.6% in 2003 to 13.9% in 2012, according to the data calculated using the Science Citation Index (...—and thus, the most significant upshot of this move to OA is that a wealth of scientific knowledge would become available to the world. However, a downside is that while studies in the natural sciences will gain public access, the humanities will not benefit from this newly declared policy. Nevertheless, in the wake of the OA movement, China is making new forays, one of which is a growing interest in partnerships to start new OA journals as reported in BioMed Central."