Open access journals: Re: Commentary on Assessing Clinical Discoveries

"To summarize, open access and peer review are separate issues. Authors and readers cannot assume that an open-access medical journal is not peer-reviewed or that it has automatically has low readership. For instance, all research articles in journals published by BioMed Central (BMC) and PLoS (Public Library of Science) are peer-reviewed before publication.[4,5] They are major publishers of widely-read (and cited) scientific literature.[6,7] Free digital peer-reviewed content, restricted by traditional copyright, is available from many other respected journals - such as the Annals of Family Medicine, BMJ, New England Journal of Medicine, and The Lancet - whether complete and immediate free access (AFM), immediate free access to certain content (Lancet), or a combination of delayed free access and immediate free access to some content (BMJ, NEJM). The open access movement is rapidly gaining momentum, and should not be underestimated or dismissed...."