which is sold to libraries in bundles. Much of the funding for the research that informs these articles and the time spent on producing them comes from public funds, so over the last decade there has been a demand to make them publicly accessible. This has now become the mandate for many research funders, and many governments have adopted open access policies at a national level which stipulate that the findings of publicly funded research are made publicly available. This has extended to data from research projects as well as publications. Open access publishing is now the norm for many academics, and not just those who might be deemed early adopters; a survey by Wiley of its authors found that 59% had published in open access journals (Warne, 2013).
In the UK the 2012 Finch report (Finch Group 2012) recommended that ‘a clear policy direction should be set towards support for publication in open access or hybrid journals, funded by APCs, as the main vehicle for the publication of research, especially when it is publicly funded’. APCs are Article Process Charges; this is often termed the Gold route to open access, whereby authors (or more often the research funders) pay the publishers for an article to be made open access. This is in contrast with the Green route, where it is self-archived, or the Platinum route, which are journals where there is no APC charge.
In this we can see the initial triumph of openness. Open access has moved from the periphery to the mainstream and become the recommended route for publishing research articles. But at the same time, the conflicts around implementation are also evident, as is the thwarting of the original open ambitions.
The Finch report has been criticised for seeking to protect the interests of commercial publishers, while not encouraging alternative methods such as Green or Platinum open access (Harnad 2012). In addition, the pay-to-publish model has seen the rise
