Dove Medical Press Welcomes UK Government Decision To Boost Funding For Open Access To £10 Million

UK government supports open access with £10 million funding boost.

Manchester, London (PRWEB) November 09, 2012--Dove Medical Press welcomes the recently announced decision of the UK government to support open access with a £10 million funding boost by Universities and Science Minister David Willetts.

Philip Smith, company Chairman of Dove Medical Press says "As a leading UK based open access publisher, we feel that the new initiative will be of help to the institutions that are seeking to transition away from the closed journals. Since 2003, our goal has been to ensure that the latest medical and scientific developments are freely available to everyone interested. I am thrilled to see that the Minister has taken steps to show his support for the availability of UK research."

Part of the new government policy states that all peer-reviewed published research articles funded by the Research Council UK (RCUK) Open Access Policy must be open access. The new policy aims to make it easy for UK institutions and researchers to publish in open access journals by paying article processing fees through block grants to UK Higher Education institutions, approved independent research organizations, and Research Council Institutes. This is in line with the Finch report recommendations on open access, published in June 2012.

"It will be encouraging to see an increasing number of academics publishing their publically funded research in open access journals who could not otherwise have considered this." says Smith. "I think that all UK based open access publishers are ready and waiting to assist the RCUK in implementing this initiative."

Dove Medical Press Ltd is a privately held company specializing in the publication of over 125 Open Access peer-reviewed journals across the broad spectrum of science, technology and medicine.