Non-profit publisher Annual Reviews has announced that the 2017 volume of the Annual Review of Public Health, which is currently online, is published open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BYSA) license. This influential content is now freely available to read, reuse, and share. Additionally, all 37 back volumes (1980-2016) are now free to read. Support for this initiative to increase openness and transparency in research is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
According to the journal's Editor, Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the Fielding School of Public Health and the Geffen School of Medicine, all Annual Review of Public Health articles summarise research findings, draw together and integrate strands of knowledge, assess practical applications, and point to unanswered questions. Expanding the availability of these articles and increasing the dissemination of the actionable information they contain has the potential to accelerate research and the speed at which new findings are assessed and implemented.
Many of the articles include practical advice that can be quickly implemented by public health professionals at all levels, health care providers, and health-oriented nonprofits. Content is also targeted to the health information needs of educators and students, patients, health insurance and health plan providers, legislators, and the media.
Topics covered in the latest volume include the changing epidemiology of autism spectrum disorders; the health impact of large-scale changes in public policy; the value of organic foods in the diet; the public health impact of climate change; and collective violence as a public health issue.
In addition, a collection of articles considers the impact of the exposome—the totality of environmental exposures encountered from birth to death—on health and disease.
The Foundation's support for the Annual Review of Public Health covers the costs of open access for one year, plus the exploration of sustainable funding mechanisms for future years.
The focus of the open access movement to date has been on primary research papers and data sets; the public benefit of converting high-quality review journals to sustainable open access has yet to be assessed.
Annual Reviews is establishing a collective fund to support the publication costs for the journal to sustain long term open access. This endeavour will promote a culture of health by making leading contributions to public health freely available, and it will advance open access by providing a proof of concept for other review publications to adopt. Customers who have paid a 2017 subscription for this journal will be asked permission to assign this payment to the collective fund.
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