David Willetts, a minister of state for universities and science in the UK, is calling for more open access in academics:
> Giving people the right to roam freely over publicly funded research will usher in a new era of academic discovery and collaboration
If you ever worked in an academic environment or just wanted to read some scientific studies, you probably know this is currently an outrageous mess, not only in the UK. Because most research gets published in very expensive journals and magazines, a huge amount of publicly paid academic research and its outcome can't be accessed by the public.
So yes:
> Moving from an era in which taxpayer-funded academic articles are stuck behind paywalls for much of their life to one in which they are available free of charge will not be easy.
But they basically [have Jimmy Wales on board](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/01/wikipedia-research-jimmy-wales-online), so it looks like this isn't just the usual politician jibber-jabber.
