The peer reviewing process is provided for free by busy clinicians and scientists but yet, publishers charging prospective readers large sums to view an article or subscribe to their journals, strictly control the access. With a great amount of scientific information accessible online at no cost, multiple hurdles remain to access most research published in scholarly journals. A study found the Implications of open access However, the citation advantage is a little less clear cut. While the initial enthusiasm of OA was tempered by a fear of ‘negative connotation’ by many authors, there is clear evidence to suggest that OA articles have a broader reach than subscription accessed articles. This is the result of a steady increase in publication in OA journals at a rate of 9.5% per year. More than 50% of scientific papers published between 20 can now be downloaded at no charge. Section snippets Current status of open access Finally as editors of a respected medical journal, we will speculate on future directions for medical publications. We then will focus on the implications that this novel scientific dissemination strategy will have on the various involved parties. In this editorial, we aim to summarize the current status of open access journals looking at their importance and growth throughout the last decades. OA comes however at a price and each of the involved parties (the researcher, the general public, the funding body, the university and the publisher) is affected by this revolution in a different way. The concept of OA aims to stimulate barrier-free online dissemination of research findings, timely identification of units with common research interests for establishing collaborations, a faster application of the results in clinical practice and, in theory, a better return on research investments.
The development of open access (OA) publications was motivated by scientific social inequalities (discrepancies in the access to scientific knowledge between countries and institutions) and boosted by the globalization of the World Wide Web in the early 2000s.
Beyond the significant ethical concerns posed by the use and dissemination of immortal cells without patients’ consent, Henrietta's story underlines the power of ‘free’ scientific discovery accessible to all with little to no copyright, terms of use, ownership and expiry date. The origin of HeLa cells remained mysterious for several decades both for the general public and for the Lacks family, unaware that Henrietta Lacks's cervical cancer cells had contributed, at ‘no cost’, to an enormous body of research in the fields of virology, immunology, cancer research and genetics. The so-called HeLa cells were sent to thousands of research laboratories worldwide allowing groundbreaking discoveries and pharmaceutical developments. She was seen at Johns Hopkins Hospital where, without her knowledge or consent, sample tissue of her cervix was given to researchers working on the development of tumour cell line. More than 55 years ago, a young African-American woman was diagnosed with an aggressive cervical cancer. The story of Henrietta Lacks and her famous HeLa cells highlights the conundrum posed by open access publication and the ethical dilemma of science ownership, in particular, and access to knowledge in a broader sense.