Canada Institutes champion open access

Signalling another success for the open access movement, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has unveiled a new policy to promote public access to the results of research it has funded.

CIHR will require its researchers to ensure that their original research articles are freely available online within six months of publication.

'With the development of the internet it is now feasible to disseminate globally and easily the results of research that we fund,' said Alan Bernstein, president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. 'As a publicly-funded organization, we have a responsibility to ensure that new advances in health research are available to those who need it and can use it - researchers world-wide, the public and policy makers.'

The research body states those receiving grants after January 1, 2008, must ensure that peer-reviewed research articles are freely available as soon as possible after publication. This can be achieved by depositing the article in an archive, such as PubMed Central or an institutional repository, and/or by publishing results in an open access journal.