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Well, open access is absolutely crucial right now,
and it's crucial because
it both makes the scholarly communications process
more efficient
and because it allows publicly funded research in the UK
to have a lot more impact.
And we've shown by the research that we've funded
that the efficiency savings are really quite significant
as compared with the way in which scholarly communications
and research papers are disseminated now.
But, perhaps more importantly than that,
if we're going to get out of recession,
getting out of recession is gonna be based on innovation.
It's gonna be based on the private sector having access
to the output from the public science base,
and being able to use that in order to innovate,
to compete much more effectively in the global economy.
And to do that it will need to have access to research outputs.
There was a report recently commissioned - by the publishers -
which showed that most small and medium-sized enterprises
have difficulty getting hold of research papers.
And they consider these research papers
as really important sources of information for their work.
Clearly, if this material is available openly on the web
those small and medium-sized enterprises will have access to it
and will be in a much better position to compete.