A UK Parliamentary Committee has come out in support of open access to publicly funded scientific research.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee reached this conclusion in a long awaited report investigating the scientific publishing industry. The report also calls on the UK's Office of Fair Trading to conduct a biennial review of the market. However, the report stops short of unconditional endorsement of the open access model, but rather, encourages experimentation with this new model of scientific publishing.
Unsurprisingly, Reed Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of scientific journals, which depends on the old model of scientific publishing is not too thrilled about it, but the Wellcome Trust in the UK, the world's largest medical research charity has come out strongly in favour of open access. This report follows moves in the US since last year to make publicly funded scientific research accessible to everyone.