%0 Journal Article %T Minimally invasive surgery - maximal exposure to research %A Ronald Matteotti %A Seigo Kitano %A Stanley Ashley %J Annals of Surgical Innovation and Research %D 2011 %I BioMed Central %R 10.1186/1750-1164-5-3 %X Why to pay for publication if I can publish for free in another journal?These arguments were overthrown in the recent past where major grant institutions incorporate in their policies demands to publish preliminary results first online and open access. These developments really shaped the scientific world as we could witness in Northern Europe. The Norwegian research councils issued a statement that all research founded by public bodies should be published open access. The Swedish research council took this recommendation a step further and mandated to publish open access all research founded by grants issued after 2010 [2]. The NIH issued a statement in 2008 which clarifies their open access policy.SEC. 218. The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law[3].Peer review is much faster and more efficient when compared to traditional publishing and we see an average of 30 days from receiving the manuscript to reach a first decision. This is especially important for time sensitive publications and research if you need results published for further grant applications. On the other hand peer review remains thorough by experts in the field and we see an approximate 35-40% acceptance rate. This highlights the high quality of research being published and in combination with the afore mentioned audio-visual component gives ASIR clearly an advantage over traditional 'paper-only' journals.Costly subscriptions to individual journals with only a limited scope and 'subscriber access only' is frustrating and will soon be a thing from the past. Fee- %U http://www.asir-journal.com/content/5/1/3