How will open-access publishing affect the practice of medical science?
According to the World Health Organization, only 10% of health research funding targets the diseases and conditions that account for 90% of global health problems. Even worse, the research results that do address these problems remain inaccessible to the great majority of health care providers who need it most. Open-access publishing strives to correct this fundamental inequity by making medical research a global public resource, and by delivering critical information such that it may be easily condensed, summarized, and reproduced to support local health care efforts around the world. Closing the information gap between rich and poor nations provides a necessary first step towards promoting universal, evidence-based health care, while at the same time promoting scientific inquiry through the untrammeled exchange of ideas.
