Wellcome Trust responds to Finch Report on open access

Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, says: "We are delighted that the Finch Report encourages the UK to embrace open access, something that we at the Wellcome Trust feel very strongly about. There is a real groundswell of opinion in support of open access in the UK, the USA, Europe and beyond and this is a real opportunity for the UK to lead the way.

"Open access is the only way to ensure that important research is made freely accessible to all. It will help drive forward innovation and breakthroughs in medical research.

"We urge publishers to adopt the so-called 'gold' open access model, where the publication costs are met by the research funder, rather than the reader, and where articles are licensed in ways which allow others to reuse these works, subject to attribution. This will need the support of all of those that fund and support research, who will need to put into place effective and flexible arrangements to meet these costs, which we anticipate being only 1-1.5 per cent of research costs."