BMC Medicine, an open access journal published by BioMed Central, will be hosting a one hour Twitter-chat to discuss how open access publishing impacts medical research and global health in recognition of Open Access Week (October 21 - 27).
Earlier this year, BMC Medicine launched the Medicine for Global Health article collection, which aims to explore public health initiatives, healthcare policies and economics, and research into the control and treatment of communicable and non-communicable diseases which have strong implications for global health. Accessibility of research findings is vital to the progress of such work, and this is where open access publishing can play an important role in dissemination. In addition, the growing focus on the importance of open data (as reflected in the recent inclusion of the Creative Commons CC0 waiver into the BioMed Central Copyright and License Agreement) should go a long way into facilitating the transparency of raw data.
Interested parties may join BMC Medicine (@BMCMedicine) and a prominent group of researchers - Agnes Binagwaho (@agnesbinagwaho), Charles Wiysonge (@CharlesShey) and Prabhat Jha (@countthedead) - for a one hour Twitter-chat on October 21 at 4 pm UK time. The Twitter-chat will use the hashtag #BMCMed, and will be moderated from the @BMCMedicine account.
The questions that will be asked during the Twitter-chat are: What are the current challenges to medical research for global health?; Does publishing research in an open access journal benefit medical research?; Can having unrestricted access to research drive public health decision-making?; What is the importance of open data for informing large-scale global studies?; and Is there more that open access journals can do to support medical research for global health?
