'Academic Spring' calls for free research sharing online - Public Service

“The Wellcome Trust has added its support to a campaign to break traditional academic journals and allow free online access to research papers. The Guardian reported that an estimated 9,000 researchers have already signed up to a boycott of journals with restricted sharing to help revolutionise the spread of knowledge and promote an ‘academic spring’. Sir Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, told the newspaper that public and charity-funded scientific research should be freely available to anyone who wants to read it and for whatever purpose they need it. Walport added that his organisation was in the final stages of launching a high calibre scientific journal called eLife, whereby unlike traditional journals, articles in eLife would be free to view on the web as soon as they were published. Publishers of journals including Elsevier- who charge up to £16,000 a year for access- argued prices were necessary to sustain a high quality peer review process. However, the government's has shown support for open access. Science minister David Willetts said he aspired for all government funded research to be in the public domain.”