Knowledgespeak: WHO joins PubMed Central

"Global health authority, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced the launch of a new open access policy in January 2014 to ensure the widespread dissemination of scientific research. The policy, which applies to all WHO-authored or WHO-funded research published in external journals and books, kicked into action on July 1, 2014. There are many drivers behind the open access movement: to accelerate the pace of scientific research, discovery and innovation; increase the visibility, readership and impact of authors' works, as well as to enhance interdisciplinary research, to name but a few. All factors point to one ultimate goal, the advancement of knowledge, which both researchers and publishers know, can only be reached by sharing results and making them as accessible as possible. Effective January 1, articles authored or co-authored by WHO staff or WHO funding recipients will have to be published in an open-access journal or a hybrid open-access journal (a subscription journal with some open access articles). The research must be published under the terms of the standard Creative Commons licence or in a subscription journal that allows for the depositing of the article in Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) within 12 months of the official publication date. WHO will become the 26th funding member of the open access repository Europe PMC; the most widely used biomedical bibliographic database service. It provides free access to nearly 3 million full-text biomedical research articles, over 23 million abstracts from PubMed and 4 million biological and patent records. It is the same barrier-free and peer reviewed repository that BioMed Central publishes with, to ensure all its articles are immediately made freely available. WHO will be joining 25 other life sciences and biomedical research funders at a time when providing free access to research outputs continues to be championed at the highest levels ..."