The chief public funding body for medical research in the United States, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is introducing an open access policy from next week. All papers resulting from research that it has funded will have to be made freely available to the public no later than one year after they have been published.

This is the latest policy from key research funders to promote open access to research findings (table⇓). It is based on the argument that the public should have free access to results from research that it has funded, and researchers should have free access to papers they have written or reviewed rather than have to pay subscriptions or single access fees to journals. Open access publishing also makes research freely available to help advance research around the world.

There are two main publishing models for open access. Researchers can publish their findings in a journal that offers an open access option, such as journals published by BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science, by contributing towards the costs associated with publication. Alternatively, they can submit their research to a journal that charges readers to access …