Public

Why is Open Access important for the public?

In our inaugural editorial in October 2004 we said that “PLoS Medicine believes that medical research is an international public resource” and that “medicine, its place in the world and the dissemination of information have changed utterly” as a result of technological change, in particular the advent of the internet.

The current medical publishing system – in which most articles are only available through  journal subscription, or on a pay-per-view basis – is producing a global public health crisis. It stops many researchers, doctors, health professionals, students and members of the public from accessing the latest results of research.

Hence, a patient or their family may be unable to access up-to-date research on their condition without paying substantial sums of money for each article. A high school student may only be able to access a restricted part of the literature for their science project.

This lack of access is particularly damaging for individuals in the developing world or in institutions with restricted library budgets.

Thus for example, a doctor from an NGO may be unable to review the literature relating to a new disease outbreak; a doctor in the developing world may only have access to abstracts of the latest research.

PLoS Medicine publishes papers of relevance to a global audience about the major biological, environmental, social and political determinants and health. By making our papers available under an Open Access license they are available to all researchers to build upon the advances made in medical research; they are also available for health professionals working in the field, and for members of the public.

The UN formally endorses Open Access as a global health and development tool. For more information on Open Access see the Frequently Asked Questions on the PLoS website.

How does PLoS Medicine help the public understand medical research?

Aside from making everything that we publish freely available for anyone to read, we also publish Editors’ Summaries alongside every Research Article. The Editors’ Summary  is written to be understandable by the general public and  medical professionals irrespective of their specialty.  As you can see in this example, the Editors’ Summary gives background about the topic, asks why the research was done, what the researchers did and what they found, and what those findings mean.

As explained elsewhere, PLoS Medicine puts considerable thought and effort into the press releases and material it distributes to the media.  If you want to understand a health story currently in the news, NHS Choices Behind the Headlines is a good place to start.

Special Collections

PLoS Medicine has published a number of special collections that highlight specific topics, either to coincide with a special event or to raise awareness about that topic.  Topics covered in collections so far include poverty, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, influenza and diseases mongering. You can find the full list of collections and all articles on the journal site.