Access to Health Information

About Open Access

Open access is a means to make research results freely available online to anyone. For much of the general public, students and health professionals at small institutions, especially those in poor countries, access to the latest health research is limited.

Making papers from scholarly journals freely available online provides researchers, doctors, nurses, health educators, students and the public with the most current peer-reviewed scientific and medical information and discoveries. Open access papers can be used freely for research, teaching and other purposes. Essentially, open access publishing removes any price and permission barriers.

The unrestricted online access to articles published in scholarly journals is essential in order to ensure the rapid and efficient communication of the latest health research findings.

Research that is open access is freely available online throughout the world, for anyone to read, download, copy, print, link to, distribute and use (with attribution) in any way, with no permission required. Open access research leads to wider dissemination of information and promotes the right to health for all.