Wellcome backs campaign to break stranglehold of academic journals and allow all research papers to be shared free online

[sharon sanders]

Wellcome Trust joins 'academic spring' to open up science
Wellcome backs campaign to break stranglehold of academic journals and allow all research papers to be shared free online

Alok Jha, science correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 April 2012 15.44 EDT

One of the world's largest funders of science is to throw its weight behind a growing campaign to break the stranglehold of academic journals and allow all research papers to be shared online.

Nearly 9,000 researchers have already signed up to a boycott of journals that restrict free sharing as part of a campaign dubbed the "academic spring" by supporters due to its potential for revolutionising the spread of knowledge.

But the intervention of the Wellcome Trust, the largest non-governmental funder of medical research after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is likely to galvanise the movement by forcing academics it funds to publish in open online journals

more...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/09/wellcome-trust-academic-spring


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Also please see:

Harvard Can No Longer Afford Academic Journal Subscriptions - 3.75 Million USD Yearly - April 17, 2012

Discussion - Should US taxpayer-funded research be open access (FRPAA 2012)?