Full article: Putting plain language summaries into perspective

"Thanks to the open science movement, and especially open access publishing, it is becoming easier for readers outside of large research institutions to access research articles for free. The proportion of research articles that are openly available has been increasing year over year1. This increase in open access has removed one important barrier to accessing research information. However, another key barrier to access is understanding. After all, what is the point of research information being openly available if only a tiny proportion of the people who have access to it can understand the technical language it’s written in? ..."