September 7, 2012

expert reaction to announcement from David Willetts on open access funding

David Willetts, the Minister for Universities and Science, announced the government would be providing £10m of extra funding for UK academics to publish in open access journals.

Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, said:

“It is good news that the Government has managed to find an additional £10 million to help aid the transition to open access publishing of publicly funded science. The move towards making research results as widely available as possible is the right thing to do but it will take time. It will be important that during the transition years funds are not drained from actual research and this £10million is a step in the right direction.”

Dame Janet Finch, author of a government commissioned report into open access, said:

“I am delighted that the government has been able to allocate some start-up funding to support the implementation of our report’s recommendations. I am confident that this will encourage other interested parties – funders, publishers, universities – to commit to taking it forward.”

Deborah Shorley, Director of Library Services, Imperial College London, said:

“Today’s news is very welcome. This investment will help support those first essential steps as we move towards a free and open model for sharing research findings.

“There is still some way to go, however. The change to open access, while worth every penny, will not come cheap and many universities will face annual costs running into six or seven figures.”

Steven Inchcoombe, Managing Director, Nature Publishing Group, said:

“Nature Publishing Group welcomes the UK Government’s support for sustainable open access. We are pleased to see this implementation of a key recommendation of the Finch Group: the investment of additional funding to facilitate a managed transition to making the UK’s research publicly accessible, through dedicated funds to support open access publication in journals.”

Professor Douglas Kell, RCUK Champion for Research and Information Management, said:

“We are delighted that BIS are providing additional funding to a number of universities to assist in their transition to full open access, helping them to set up and manage their funds for research publications. This underpins the work of RCUK and other research funders in providing full access to ground-breaking research that can contribute to both the economic growth and the social wellbeing of the UK and beyond.”

Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, said:

“We are delighted that the Government has made such strong commitment to ensure that the published outputs of publicly-funded research are freely available to all, so that it can be accessed and used to deliver new economic and societal benefit. This initial £10m – which is in addition to the funding RCUK will also make available – will help support the transition to full open access.”