WHO Policy on Open Access
WHO believes that universal access to publicly funded research, including research data, is fundamental to tackling the public health challenges of the 21st century.
WHO’s policy on open access seeks to ensure that, as a fundamental part of its mission, the published outputs of its activities are freely accessible and reusable by the public.
WHO is a member of cOAlition S and its open-access policy is in line with the principles of
Plan S.
The policy applies to:
- articles or chapters that are authored or co-authored by WHO staff or by individuals or institutions funded in whole or in part by WHO and published by external publishers;
- publications published by WHO.
1. Articles or chapters that are authored or co-authored by WHO staff or by individuals or institutions funded in whole or in part by WHO and published by external publishers: |
Requirements
From 1 January 2021, all WHO-authored and WHO-funded articles that are submitted for publication in peer-review journals must be published in an open-access journal or on an open-access platform.[1]
Such journals should be indexed by the Directory of open access journals and have an agreement with the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) to deposit the version of record in PubMed Central (PMC) and to allow that content to be shared with Europe PMC.
WHO will no longer support the costs of hybrid open-access publishing in subscription journals or publication in subscription journals with an embargo period, except in the following cases:
- subscription journals that have committed to transitioning to full open access by 2024;
- subscription journals that allow authors to deposit their accepted manuscript immediately in a public repository under the terms of the CC BY 3.0 IGO or CC BY 4.0 licence.
All articles (version of record or the author-accepted manuscript) must be deposited in Europe PMC or PMC by the official date of publication and published under one of the following licences:
- Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organization (CC BY 3.0 IGO) licence (for WHO-authored articles); or
- CC BY 4.0 licence (for WHO-funded articles).
Chapters in scientific books must be made available in a public repository under a CC BY 3.0 IGO or CC Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 IGO (BY-NC 3.0 IGO) licence as soon as possible after publication, and not more than 12 months after publication.
Cost of open-access publication
Where applicable, reasonable article processing charges (APCs) will be covered by WHO for articles published in open-access journals or on open-access platforms that are compatible with the above-mentioned requirements.
WHO invites external entities applying for project support from WHO to include such costs, where appropriate, in their applications. Applicants should not include the costs for APCs for hybrid journals in their grant applications unless the journals concerned meet the above-mentioned requirements, and holders of grants from WHO should not use their grants to pay for these costs. Applicants should also register for and provide their Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) identifier in their applications and link their published research outputs to their ORCID identifier.
WHO will include the open-access publication fees, where appropriate, in its applications to donors for project support.
2. Publications published by WHO: |
Since 12 November 2016, WHO publications have been published under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO licence. This licence allows for any non-commercial use, without the need to obtain permission from WHO. Adaptations and translations are also permitted, as long as the adapted work is published under the same or a similar licence. WHO publications published prior to 2017 will not be reissued under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence; however, WHO will continue to encourage their reuse for non-commercial educational and research purposes.
WHO publications are accessible through the Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS). Requests to use WHO publications for commercial purposes should be made using the permissions form.
Journals published by WHO
The following journals are indexed by the Directory of open access journals and have an agreement with NLM to deposit the version of record in PMC and to allow that content to be shared with Europe PMC:
- Bulletin of the World Health Organization (DOAJ application progress)
- Pan American Journal of Public Health
- Western Pacific Surveillance and Response.
The following journals are freely accessible on the WHO website:
- African Health Monitor
- Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal
- Public Health Panorama
- Weekly Epidemiological Record
- WHO Drug Information
- WHO South-East Asia Journal
3. Research data and related materials: |
All research articles that are funded in whole, or in part, by WHO, must include a data availability statement with links to underlying data or extended data and any relevant materials necessary to understand, assess, and replicate the research. In cases where data cannot be made publicly available for ethical and confidentiality reasons, the statement should indicate the restrictions, the process for applying for access to the data and the conditions that will apply.
Data sets should be deposited in an appropriate open data repository, with a persistent identifier, such as a DOI and under an open licence.
For further information: see Sharing and reuse of health-related data for research purposes: WHO policy and implementation guidance
[1] For the purpose of Plan S, open-access platforms are publishing platforms for the original publication of research findings under a CC BY licence. Platforms that serve only to aggregate or republish content that has already been published elsewhere are not considered as such.
Related resources
6 April 2022
Sharing and reuse of health-related data for research purposes: WHO policy and implementation...
The policy and practice on the reuse and onward sharing for research purposes of health data collected under the auspices of WHO technical programmes.