Earlier this year, BMC Medicine launched the Medicine for Global Health article collection, which aims to explore public health initiatives, health care policies and economics, and research into the control and treatment of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Specifically, factors affecting evidence-based medicine in resource-limited settings, have been discussed in a Forum article published this week in the journal.

Accessibility of research findings is vital to the progress of such work, and this is where open access publishing can play an important role in dissemination. The benefits of doing so has been highlighted in this short video by some of our Editorial Board Members. In addition, the growing focus on the importance of open data (as reflected in the recent inclusion of the Creative Commons CC0 waiver into the BioMed Central Copyright and License Agreement) should go a long way into facilitating the transparency of raw data.

In recognition of Open Access Week (21st- 27th October), we will be hosting a 1 hour Twitter-chat to discuss how open access publishing impacts medical research and global health. We will be joined in the discussion by a very prominent group of researchers: Agnes Binagwaho, Charles Wiysonge and Prabhat Jha.

For a chance to have your say, join BMC Medicine (@BMCMedicine), Agnes Binagwaho (@agnesbinagwaho), Charles Wiysonge (@CharlesShey) and Prabhat Jha (@countthedead) for a one hour Twitter-chat on Monday 21st October at 4 pm UK time. The Twitter-chat will use the hashtag #BMCMed, and will be moderated from the @BMCMedicine account.

The questions we’ll be asking during the Twitter-chat are:
1. What are the current challenges to medical research for global health?
2. Does publishing research in an open access journal benefit medical research?
3. Can having unrestricted access to research drive public health decision-making?
4. What is the importance of open data for informing large-scale global studies?
5. Is there more that open access journals can do to support medical research for global health?

We hope you can join us to share your views on these topics. Please remember to use the hashtag #BMCMed in all tweets. If your question or comment is directed at a specific individual, include their @name at the start of your tweet.

We look forward to your participation! If you’re unable to join us for the chat, please feel free to tweet your comments to @BMCMedicine with the #BMCMed hashtag. An edited summary of the Twitter-chat will be published in a Storify post soon after the session.