Impaired access to research information in health-related fields is not solely the preserve of developing countries but it is hugely exacerbated in poorer regions of the world. While these regions bear the brunt of the world’s health problems, only 10% of health research effort goes into these areas (referred to as the “10/90 gap”).1 If we are going to achieve what the World Conference on Science held by UNESCO and the International Council for Science in 1999 termed the true “orienting of scientific progress towards meeting the needs of humankind”, then we must improve the research effort on the health problems that afflict the greatest part of the world’s population. That cannot happen until research communication is optimized: at the turn of the new millennium more than half of research-based institutions in lower-income countries had no current subscriptions at all to international research journals.2