This interesting article from the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/09/wellcome-trust-academic-spring?INTCMP=SRCH discusses how the Wellcome Trust is supporting the growing 'academic spring' campaign to allow all research papers to be shared online.
Nearly 9,000 researchers have now apparently signed up to boycott journals that restrict access to research papers (i.e. those published by Elsevier). The Wellcome Trust itself is about to launch a "'high calibre scientific journal called eLife that would compete directly with top-tier publications such as Nature and Science".
These are interesting times in the world of academic publishing. There will inevitably be consequences for academic libraries across the world. British universities currently spend £200m a year on journal subscriptions, which represents around 10% of the block grants that they receive from government, as outlined in this article.
