Summary
The Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings reported to the UK’s Minister of Universities and Science in mid-2012. This was followed by a new policy for open access publishing by Research Councils UK as well as a commitment from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to require that research submitted to future research evaluation exercises – after the 2014 Research Excellence Framework – be open access. These initiatives build on a broad consensus, including among for-profit publishers, that Open Access is the way of the future.