12 Ideas To Improve Development Research Access And Uptake

Our expert panel suggests how to ensure that research is open, accessible and still of high quality

Ruth King, publisher, BioMed Central, London, UK. @tweetruth

Open access can strengthen research quality: OA journals employ different business models from other journals, but there's nothing stopping them from having the same editorial quality standards. Also, with enough feedback systems in place, research quality can increase with exposure.

Researchers shouldn't have to plan how their work will be applied: If researchers were required to plan how their research would be made into policy and practice, it could put them off asking truly innovative research questions. However, I do think that researchers should be engaged with the practical uses of what they are working on.