UK Government Allocates £10 Million to Support the Shift to Open Access Publication. (September 10, 2012)

Last Friday Britain's Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) announced: "Government invests £10 million to help universities move to open access."

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Aberdeen, David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science said: "Removing paywalls surrounding publicly-funded research findings is a key commitment for this Government and will have real economic and social benefits. This extra £10 million investment will help some of our universities move across to the open access model. This will usher in a new era of academic discovery and keep the UK at the forefront of research to drive innovation and growth."

According to BIS the £10 million are being directed to "30 institutions receiving funding through Research Councils and UK higher education funding councils. It is in addition to the contribution RCUK will be making to institutions to support payment of APCs [article processing charges] associated with open access through block funding grants from 1 April 2013 onwards. More details of this will be announced in the autumn".

Following on the announcement by BIS, 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," and sounded the important caveat, "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."