Open Season for Researchers

Calls for widening of access to academic journals via internet | eG weekly | EducationGuardian.co.uk

"Ours is the best of businesses: we get our raw material for free and our customers pay us a year in advance," joked the publisher of an academic journal to a university researcher.

Perhaps not for much longer. Momentum is growing for publicly funded published academic research to be available free on the internet. So-called "open access" would mean anyone could view an article in a scholarly journal shortly after it was published.