Wellcome Trust and publishers reach agreement on open access
15 December 2005
Three publishers, Blackwell, OUP and Springer, have today announced changes to their licence conditions that will ensure that research published in their journals will be immediately available online and without charge to the reader.
Ongoing discussions have taken place between the Wellcome Trust and several publishers following the Trust's move to a make it a condition of funding that research is deposited in PubMed Central (or the UK version of it, once established), as well as being available from publishers' own sites.
Under the new conditions, research articles and supporting documentation will be made freely available online to view immediately upon publication. The charges for this process will be met by funding bodies, such as the Trust. The articles published in this way will be available through Blackwell Online Open, OUP Oxford Open and Springer Open Choice services.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee will further consider the future of scientific publishing today at a Westminster Hall debate on the Committee's report into the issue.
See also
- Press release (15 December 2005)
- Open access(Spotlight issue, Policies and advocacy)
- Open access to become a must for Wellcome Trust researchers (News: 29 September 2005)