UK Research Funders: Publicly Funded Research Must Be Publicly Available 61
scibri writes "The UK's research councils have put in place an open access policy similar to the one used by the US NIH. From April 2013, science papers must be made free to access within six months of publication if they come from work paid for by one of the UK's seven government-funded grant agencies, the research councils, which together spend about £2.8 billion each year on research (press release). The councils say authors should shun journals that don't allow such policies, though they haven't said how those who don't comply with the rules will be punished."
Not just the UK, but EU (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't actually a decision from the UK, but from Europe, and applies to all European countries. http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/12/790&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
Re:Good news (Score:4, Informative)
Every scientist who wants to be taken at all seriously. Preprint services are just online document aggregators. Anyone can put anything they want there. And no, a group ranking system won't fix that. Even fields that have preprint services STILL have journals.
Journals currently provide two essential services - they put their reputation behind their review and publication procedures, and they maintain archives. If bad papers get through, the journal's reputation suffers. They don't want that, so they have a vested interest in making sure bad papers don't get through.