Towards open access to UK research

Progress towards open access to UK research reports is slow but steady. The growth in open access has been remarkable when the past ten years are set in the historical timescale of over 500 years of availability of print publications and over 300 years of scientific journal publishing. And yet so many more results from UK taxpayer-funded research could already have been made freely available if the UK Government had the vision to see the opportunities in new forms of scholarly communication. The story of open access in the UK is one of initiatives by organisations and individuals to develop the opportunities provided by new technologies, while the benefits from those initiatives have not been realized by a hesitant Government influenced by lobbying from vested interests