One of the world's largest research charities, Britain's Wellcome Trust, says it will support efforts by scientists to make their work freely available for all.

Officials at the trust said it would establish a free, online research publication to compete with established academic journals.

The announcement comes as more than 9,000 scientists say they are boycotting a leading paid-for publisher for restricting access to their papers, the BBC reported Tuesday.

The Wellcome Trust's move comes in the midst of a debate over who owns and who gets access to the published work of scientists that has been ongoing for years, with the majority of the world's scientific journals accessible only by subscription.

Highly influential titles such as Nature, Science and the New England Journal of Medicine are available only with a paid subscription.

Frustrations with the costs of academic journals have prompted a boycott of Elsevier, the world's biggest publisher in the field, with more than 9,200 researchers saying they will no longer submit or act as peer reviewers for Elsevier.

Many researchers are calling for open access to their work, saying they believe this will speed up progress in scientific research.

Publicly funded research should not be confined behind the paywalls of private publishing houses, they said.

The fruits of research be available to all, Trust director Mark Walport said.

"One of the important things is that up until now if I submit a paper to a journal I've been signing away the copyright, and that's actually ridiculous," he said.

"What we need to do is make sure the research is available to anyone."

The Wellcome Trust said it will start its online open access journal called eLife this year.