BMJ  2005;330 (2 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7494.0-g

Editor's choice

Open access, and proud of it

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We've been told we don't make enough noise about the good things the BMJ does (some of you will dispute this). So, prompted by two articles in this week's journal, let me shout about the fact that the BMJ is open access. In fact, for those of you who didn't know, the BMJ is the world's only major general medical journal to provide immediate free access to the full text of all research articles, something it's been doing since 1998. We think this provides an important service to the clinical and research communities, and we hope that it increases our attractiveness to authors wanting rapid dissemination and high visibility for their work. All of which confirms that the BMJ's editors are what Jeff Aronson (p 759) calls "zealots" for open access.

But Aronson is right to say that the world should not adopt this system uncritically, and . . . [Full text of this article]

Fiona Godlee, editor

(fgodlee@bmj.com)


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