Abstract

Over the past couple of years the Wellcome Trust – an independent research funding charity – has been actively promoting the 'open access' model of science publishing. Under this model, articles are freely available on the Web, either by being deposited in a public access repository, e.g. PubMed Central (PMC) <www.pubmedcentral.gov/>, or by being published in an open access journal, e.g. PLoS Medicine <http://medicine.plosjournals.org/>. In the latter case, the cost of publishing is derived from contributors (known as the author-pays model), but in most cases the funder meets these costs.