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Health Hum Rights. 2008;10(1):21-42.
Most biomedical journals charge readers a hefty access toll to read the full text version of a published research article. These tolls bring enormous profits to the traditional corporate publishing industry, but they make it impossible for most people worldwide--particularly in low and middle income countries--to access the biomedical literature. Traditional publishers also insist on owning the copyright on these articles, making it illegal for readers to freely distribute and photocopy papers, translate them, or create derivative educational works. This article argues that excluding the poor from accessing and freely using the biomedical research literature is harming global public health. Health care workers, for example, are prevented from accessing the information they need to practice effective medicine, while policymakers are prevented from accessing the essential knowledge they require to build better health care systems. The author proposes that the biomedical literature should be considered a global public good, basing his arguments upon longstanding and recent international declarations that enshrine access to scientific and medical knowledge as a human right. He presents an emerging alternative publishing model, called open access, and argues that this model is a more socially responsive and equitable approach to knowledge dissemination.
大多数生物医学期刊向读者收取高昂的费用，以阅读已发表研究文章的全文版本。这些费用给传统的企业出版行业带来了巨大的利润，但却使全球大多数人——尤其是低收入和中等收入国家的人——无法获取生物医学文献。传统出版商还坚持对这些文章拥有版权，使得读者无法自由分发、影印论文，对其进行翻译或创作衍生教育作品。本文认为，将贫困人口排除在获取和自由使用生物医学研究文献之外，正在损害全球公共卫生。例如，医护人员无法获取他们实践有效医学所需的信息，而政策制定者也无法获取他们建设更好医疗体系所需的基本知识。作者提出，生物医学文献应被视为全球公共利益，他的观点基于长期以来的国际宣言和最近的宣言，这些宣言将获取科学和医学知识视为一项人权。他介绍了一种新兴的替代出版模式，称为开放获取，并认为这种模式是一种更能响应社会需求且更公平的知识传播方式。
