Free Access to Academic Research

[John Simkin]

A group of UK academics including Sir Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the world wide web, has called on the government and public bodies to ensure anybody can view publicly funded research for free on the internet. Berners Lee of course established the web in order that physicists could communicate with each other about their scientific research. He is now a member of the association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).

This is not only a subject that interests scientists. All fields of academic study would benefit from research being made immediately available on the web. Currently, the UK government has not responded favourably to these suggestions about free access to the latest research. The reason for this is that they are responded to pressure from the highly profitable academic publishing industry.