Studies have shown that access to published health research by the research communities in developing countries is no longer “fit for purpose”.2 As has been well documented, rising costs of subscriptions and permission barriers imposed by publishers have barred access to the extent that local health research and health care have been damaged through lack of information.3,4 For example, Yamey5 tells of a physician in southern Africa who could not afford full access to journals but based a decision to alter a perinatal HIV prevention programme on one single abstract. The full text article would have shown that the findings were not relevant to the country’s situation. With the advent of the internet there is little justification for continuing to create barriers to access. Richard Smith, as the former editor of the British Medical Journal, said, “Most research is publicly funded, and when the internet appeared it made no sense for research funders to allow publishers to profit from restricting access to their research”.6 This is true not only for publicly funded research but for private health charities around the world. As the Open Access Policy of the Wellcome Trust states, “We . . . support unrestricted access to the published output of research as a fundamental part of its charitable mission and a public benefit to be encouraged wherever possible”.7 Science is a collaborative process and openness is fundamental to knowledge advancement.