The World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced a new policy on open access. The policy, which will come into force in July 2014, will apply to all WHO-authored or WHO-funded research published in non-WHO publications, such as external journals and books.

Although information WHO publishes has been freely available through the WHO website, work published by WHO staff and reports of research funded by WHO published in external journals has often been accessible only through the payment of subscriptions or other fees. Open access takes advantage of digital publishing and the internet to ensure that published research is widely disseminated and freely available.

Any reader with access to the internet can find and read a whole article. Researchers and policy-makers can find and combine information without having to seek permission and pay to reproduce a graph or table. Information can be automatically brought together on websites and platforms, making the management of information more efficient.

As subscription barriers to access will be removed for everyone, WHO-authored and WHO-funded work will gain much wider visibility and impact.

SOURCE: World Health Organisation