How can we get more open access to medical studies? Simple, let’s take the green road

Abstract

Open Access (OA) to research publications is a fundamental resource for the advancement of scientific research. To facilitate the transition to OA, publishers and institutions have begun negotiating the so-called transformative agreements, contracts combining access to subscription journals with the ability to publish OA. While the debate on transformative agreements is very much alive, little attention is being paid to the “green road,” the practice of openly self-archiving manuscripts that have been accepted by journals but not yet typeset. Here we focus on medical literature, showing how the green road could outperform transformative agreements as a means of increasing the full and free availability of peer-reviewed scientific papers.

Keywords:

• Open access
• open science
• cooperation
• transformative agreements
• public health
• medical research
• post-prints

Transparency

Declaration of funding

This work was supported by the Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), through the project “Setting up a network for Responsible Research and Innovation - RRI-Net” (PI116154C845CA8D). We also thank the Istituto Italiano di Antropologia for supporting this work as part of the Oasis Initiative (https://www.isita-anthropology.com/oasis).

Declaration of financial/other relationships

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

All authors equally contributed in designing and drafting this manuscript and they agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.