About :: Open Access
This is how Wikipedia defines Open Access:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_(publishing)):
“In publishing, open access (OA) is free online access to articles that have traditionally been published in scholarly journals. Most open access material in this context is distributed via the World Wide Web. OA articles usually have limited copyright and licensing restrictions.”
OpenPHI and Open Access
OpenPHI is currently processing thousands of Open Access articles for inclusion in HealthLibrarian, our semantic search engine for health data. We physically download the OA articles from across the world and then load the entire article into our system. Then, we cross-index the content to make it discoverable through a single interface, using our Controlled Medical Vocabulary.
There are thousands of peer-reviewed scientific journals (full text) already available for free. And there is a growing global push towards Open Access from research funding agencies all over the world. Open Access is making a strong push right now from all angles.
National Institutes of Health
The US' NIH is now demanding that all researchers it funds publish their findings in Open Access journals.
"“The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.”"
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust in the UK (one of the largest funders of bio-medical research in the world) has the same policy in place:
"“We therefore support unrestricted access to the published output of research as a fundamental part of its charitable mission and a public benefit to be encouraged wherever possible.”"
It is also important to note that more and more researchers themselves are going Open Access as a matter of principle. And that several OA publications have high impact ratings already, http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/faq?name=impactfactor
Open Access Publishers
In case you are not familiar with OA publications, please notice that there are thousands of them already, in most fields of science and bio-medicine. A few of the OA publishers OpenPHI is working with include:
