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Academic research now available from your local public library
Under the recently launched ‘Access to Research‘ initiative, public libraries are now able to provide walk-in readers with access to a wide range of academic articles and research.
Following the recommendation of the Finch report that the major publishers should grant public libraries a licence to provide free access to their academic articles, the two year Access to Research scheme will enable a new audience of the general public, small businesses and independent researchers to access scholarly research.
Finch report: progress review published
In June of last year the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings (or ‘Finch Group) published the ‘Finch report‘, describing ways and means of increasing access to UK research outputs. Amongst its recommendations it controversially argued that the sector should adopt the ‘gold’ route to open access (OA), where necessary paying article processing charges to publishers to ensure immediate access to research publications.
Within a month the Department for Business, Information and Skills (BIS) had announced its support for the Finch Group’s recommendations and Research Councils UK (RCUK) had published a new open access policy. Both parties quickly followed through with financial support – BIS made available £10 million to pump prime the system whilst RCUK announced a block grant scheme to support 107 organisations over the following two years.
UON Graduate School Blog 