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Today is the first day of this year’s Open Access Week, this year’s theme is “Open in Order to…” This can mean different things for different people. We operate publication platforms on behalf of several organisations who have chosen to launch a platform for various reasons. We thought we would find out what open access means to representatives for some of our partners.

We begin today with Professor Nazneen Rahman, Head of the Division of Genetics and Epidemiology at The Institute of Cancer Research and a also member of the Advisory Board for Wellcome Open Research. She leads research directed at identifying, characterising and clinically implementing genes that predispose to cancer and developing foundational resources for genetic medicine.

She shares her thoughts on open access and its benefits for research.

Thank you for agreeing to this interview. In line with this year’s theme, can you please complete this sentence: “Open in order to…”?

Maximise the benefits of research.

Why is open access important to you as a researcher?

Every single case report, every piece of information is valuable.

Open access research is important to me in two ways. Firstly it gives me the opportunity to access information freely and rapidly. Many of the human conditions that I research are very rare, and every single case report, every piece of information is valuable.

We need it all to make scientific and medical advances. Secondly, I want the research from my group to be available to everyone who might find it interesting or useful.

Who do you think benefits most from open access?

Everyone benefits. I have never heard a rationale against open research that isn’t solvable. The benefits far, far exceed any downsides

 What would you most like to see result from open research?

We are constantly on a journey of advancement, of doing things different and better than before.

I would like open research to help foster the growing culture of transparency in research. Not everything in research works, we are constantly on a journey of advancement, of doing things different and better than before. Having a research environment that recognises and supports this would be very helpful.

There are often nuggets of enlightenment in the research that hasn’t gone as hoped that others could learn from. An open research environment that values and supports these types of outputs would be beneficial to research as a whole.