Research Councils UK, the organization responsible for the major share of public funding for scientific research in
the UK, has just published the results of an independent
study that it commissioned to look at the impact of the open access policies
which were introduced by individual Research Councils in 2006, and  more generally to examine
the impact of open access journals and open access repositories on the traditional
scholarly publishing system.

Based on the results of the study, the announcement noted that the Chief Executives of the Research Councils "have agreed that over time the UK Research Councils will support increased
open access, by:

• building on their mandates on grant-holders to deposit research papers in
  suitable repositories within an agreed time period, and;
• extending their support for publishing in open access journals, including
  through the pay-to-publish model."

This news from RCUK follows a similarly positive joint report
from the UK Research Information Network and Universities UK, which encouraged
research institutions and funders to work together to develop a coordinated
approach to the funding of open access publication costs.

BioMed Central has published a series
of case studies showing how research institutions are  adapting
their funding structures to support an open model for scholarly communication with
the creation of central open access funds. Recent additions to the series include case studies on the University
of Calgary and the Max
Planck Society.