I’ve been following the arguments surrounding the publishing of scientific research with interest; what the Guardian are calling an ‘
Academic Spring’. Since the Wellcome Trust, in conjunction with The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Max Planck Society ‘
announced they are to support a new, top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life sciences research’, various academics have come out very much in favour of freely accessible research papers. Recently mathematicians have taken matters into their
own hands and thrown down the gauntlet in front of Elsevier publishing. This has major implications for academic libraries and the
renegotiation of journals contracts. I will continue to monitor this from a professional stand point.
