Open access should get a considerable boost from a new UK Government policy statement issued by the department responsible for innovation.

The statement, Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth, states:

Mass datasets have the potential to deepen our understanding of the biggest challenges, for example, in healthcare. We have opened up much public data already, but need to go much further in making this data accessible. We believe publicly funded research should be freely available. We have commissioned independent groups of academics and publishers to review the availability of published research, and to develop action plans for making this freely available. We will also create an Open Data Institute, which will develop semantic web technologies for using data more effectively, and will advise the public sector and business as to how best to use these and manage their data so it can be exploited for economic and social benefits.

The statement is as much about open data as it is about open access to publications. It goes beyond mere words and makes important commitments, for example:

Para 6.6:

The Government, in line with our overarching commitment to transparency and open data, is committed to ensuring that publicly-funded research should be accessible free of charge.

Para 6.8:

Government will work with partners, including the publishing industry, to achieve free access to publicly-funded research as soon as possible and will set an example itself.

Para 6.9:

The Research Councils expect the researchers they fund to deposit published articles or conference proceedings in an open access repository at or around the time of publication. But this practice is unevenly enforced. Therefore, as an immediate step, we have asked the Research Councils to ensure the researchers they fund fulfil the current requirements.

UK researchers and research institutions therefore have full Government support for making the results of their publicly-funded research available in repositories.