The case for open access

Open access in medical publication refers to unrestricted online access to peer reviewed scholarly research. A common form is publication in open access journals such as Arthroplasty Today, which provide immediate access to all of their articles on the publisher's website. Conventional journals cover publishing costs through access tolls such as subscriptions, site licenses or pay-perview. Open access journals cover publishing costs through article processing charges (APCs), typically after independent peer review and decision to accept the manuscript. Active debate over the economics and reliability of various ways of providing open access continues among researchers, academics, librarians, university administrators, funding agencies, government officials, and commercial publishers. The open access movement is growing and parallels the proliferation of information available on the web. Open access scientific publication benefits aworld audience that may not be able to afford tolls, or have library access. This may be even more important in surgical publications than in scientific publications, because of the