The international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has launched an open-access website on which it makes available published research based on its medical work. The site requires no password or sign-up and full-text articles are available for free. MSF hopes that health professionals, policy makers and researchers, especially those in developing countries, will now have easier access to the results of MSF’s field research....
This research has often changed clinical practice and health policy in developing countries.
At its launch, the field research site includes over 400 archived articles on issues including HIV care, malaria, tuberculosis, leishmaniasis, refugees and health politics. It also features conference abstracts and a section called ‘Programme Descriptions’ that describes lessons learnt from MSF’s field experience. As new articles are published, they will be archived on the site.
According to Tony Reid, who, along with fellow MSF Medical Editor Sarah Venis, developed the site, “MSF is mostly funded by private donations and does virtually all of its research on health issues in developing countries. We strongly believe that this research, funded by the public, should be made freely available to those who can most appropriately use it. We developed the site because we were concerned that health professionals in developing countries would not be able to pay for access to our medical research and would miss information that could be highly relevant to their work.” ...
PS: The MSF repository was built by BMC's OpenRepository service.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/17/2008 02:42:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
