Advocating For Open Access: Information Has the Power to Save Lives

To mark the beginning of Open Access Week, a global event now in its 5th year, which promotes open access as a new norm in scholarship and research, we started thinking about the concept of “open.”  Google defines it as: "Allowing access, passage, or a view through an empty space; not closed or blocked up: ‘the door was wide open."

IntraHealth has long championed the importance of health workers and managers having open access to information, particularly in developing countries. Open access is a natural extension of that work. As we blogged last spring, readily available and accessible information can help health workers save lives.

Sometimes it is the prohibitively high cost of access to research journals that makes it hard for health workers, particularly those in developing countries, to use this information. But there are also other concerns: access to continuing education, language, connectivity, and information literacy, to name only a few. Open access advocates should be looking at all these barriers to information in their advocacy efforts...