Gates foundation pushes for open access

From 2017, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will require that all the research it funds is published in open-access journals, in an approach to open access that goes further than that of any other major research funder.

From 2015, the Gates foundation will ask researchers to ensure that their research is freely available within a year of its publication, which matches National Institutes of Health policy on open access. However, the foundation also stipulates that researchers make their work available for commercial reuse. And 2 years later, the fully implemented open-access policy will require that all research studies funded by the Gates foundation, as well as all underlying data, be freely available as soon as they are published. This would prevent researchers from publishing in Science and Nature, under the rules of those journals.

In a statement on its website, the foundation said that the policy would help researchers make breakthroughs by giving them the greatest possible access to other research. Also, the move will help the world’s poorest people by speeding the development of medicines and technology. The foundation also says open-access requirements will help researchers and the public monitor the risks and benefits of new drugs and medical devices more easily.