| Abstrakt: |
The open access movement seeks to recover the original principles behind scholarly communication--disseminating the results of research as broadly as possible, so that they can be analyzed, discussed, evaluated and confirmed by the scientific community, while eliminating legal, economic or technological barriers for the access to such documents. Open access policies can be considered catalysts of favourable attitudes and behaviours in this sense. In the particular case of Cuba, widespread and equal access to knowledge and information has been a core issue of social development policies since 1959. Nonetheless, there are weaknesses in the register of scientific production, and the accessibility and visibility of some types of documents in the health sector. This paper presents an outline for developing an open access policy to disseminate the scientific output of Cuba's National Health System. The four-stage analytical process involved questionnaires, interviews, focal groups, content analysis, and a Delphi policy study. The findings underline the benefits of obligatory register and deposit of Cuban scientific articles, Master's and PhD theses, and books on medicine and the health sciences, and thus, that their availability through open access be achieved as soon as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
