Accelerating access

It's been an eventful few months in moves to make the primary scientific literature 'open-access'-that is, freely available to all online to read, download and reuse without any barriers, charges or restrictions. In October, the Public Library of Science (PLoS), run by a group of top biologists, launched PLoS Biology, an open-access journal intended to compete with top-tier journals, and which its founders hope will herald a suite of journals that lift open-access from relative obscurity to mainstream. The UK's Wellcome Trust, one of the world's biggest medical charities, has since agreed to let researchers use grants to cover open-access author charges, and the main research agencies in Germany and other European countries have since followed suit.