“Free and open access to publicly-funded research offers significant social and economic benefits. The Government, in line with its overarching commitment to transparency and open data, is committed to ensuring that such research should be freely accessible. As major bodies charged with investing public money in research, the Research Councils take very seriously their responsibilities in making the outputs from this research publicly available – not just to other researchers, but also to potential users in business, charitable and public sectors, and to the general public.”
(Research Councils UK Policy on Open Access)
Research Councils UK is a strategic partnership of the UK's seven Research Councils. Research Councils set out requirements for disseminating and publishing the findings of funded research on their web sites. The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation supporting research into human and animal health. The Wellcome Trust supports unrestricted access to the published outputs of research through an Open Access policy.
