Wellcome to Fund Publication in Open-Access Journals

One of the world's largest research charities, the UK-based Wellcome Trust, has lent its support to calls for 'open access' to the scientific literature. A report released by Wellcome this week, "An Economic Analysis of Scientific Research Publishing," says that the current system of thousands of subscription journals "does not operate in the interests of scientists and the public, but is instead dominated by a commercial market intent on improving its market position". In the report, the trust announces that it will allow scientists that it funds to use their grants to pay author charges required by open-access journals.

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtpubrepeas.html

In a separate statement, the trust also pledged its support for online journals, such as those of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), which will test alternatives to the 'reader pays' model of most research journals, which charge readers or libraries for subscriptions. Such open-access journals aim to transfer all publishing costs up front as a 'dissemination' fee paid by authors or their institutions, with papers then being made available free online.

Posted by Tom on October 02, 2003