Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation makes its open access policy public. According to the policy statement released, the foundation is committed to information sharing and transparency. ‘We believe that published research resulting from our funding should be promptly and broadly disseminated,’reads the statement. The foundation has adopted open access policy that enables unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research- entirely or partially funded by the foundation.

Gates Foundation open access policy will be effective from January 1, 2015. All new research funding agreements will be attached with this condition as of January next year. The publishers will be allowed to impose embargo period which may not last for more than 12 months. However, imposing embargo by publishers will not be acceptable, whatsoever, after January 1, 2017.

The foundation’s open access policy contains the following crucial open access elements:

– Publications Are Discoverable and Accessible Online. Publications will be deposited in a specified repository(s) with proper tagging of metadata.

– Publication Will Be On “Open Access” Terms. All publications shall be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC BY 4.0) or an equivalent license.

-Foundation Will Pay Necessary Fees. This includes Article Processing Charges (APCs).

-Publications Will Be Accessible and Open Immediately. All publications shall be available immediately upon their publication (max 12 months embargo period), and without any embargo period (after January 1, 2017).

-Data Underlying Published Research Results Will Be Accessible and Open Immediately. The foundation will require that data underlying the published research results (depositing data set) be immediately accessible and open.