... [T]he journal Health and Human Rights (HHR) this month published its first open-access edition. Volume 10, issue 1, will still appear in print, and is still published by the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (FXB Center) at the Harvard School of Public Health. ...
HHR’s new full-text, open-access format was discussed by [Paul] Farmer and others in a public panel last week (Sept. 17). The event drew a capacity crowd to the American Repertory Theatre’s Loeb Stage.
“The focus is not just to write for each other,” said FXB Center Director and HHR publisher Jim Yong Kim, “but to develop a robust community of practice.” ...
HHR is free to anyone with a computer, and so “aligns itself with a global movement for the democratization of scientific knowledge production,” said an HHR editor’s note co-written by Farmer.
“The right to health cannot be separate from the right to information,” agreed panelist Agnès Binagwaho, a pediatrician who runs Rwanda’s National AIDS Control Commission.
HHR was previously available only in print, and only by subscription. But now that it is online and free, the journal becomes a more powerful tool for reflection, education, and innovation, she said.
The Internet offers speed and efficiencies that print cannot, said Binagwaho, who used to cram her suitcases with medical literature on the way back from trips to the West, up to the airline’s limit of 20 kilos. “But how much knowledge is in 20 kilos?” she asked. ...
See also our post from March noting that HHR was converting to OA.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 9/26/2008 08:20:00 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.
