In addition to articles that you would expect to find in traditional journals, Gates Open Research publishes documents, which are research outputs such as end-of-grant report, policies, guidelines, workflows etc. Unlike articles, documents are not peer reviewed in Gates Open Research. Gates Open Research also publishes posters and slides.

We accept documents in all languages; however, we do require that the metadata i.e. the title, the author’s names and affiliations, the description and the keywords are written in English. Gates Open Research only offers the publication of documents within gateways and collections and must have prior approval from the editorial office. Documents submitted to the platform without prior approval will be removed. If you would like to create a gateway or collection for the hosting of your community’s documents then please contact us.

We are happy to accept documents that directly relate to previous publications, as well as those that are unpublished. If the work includes figures or tables used in a previously published paper and the publisher holds the copyright, authors need to ensure that they have permission from the journal to reuse those figures/tables. This needs to be done before submitting the document.

Documents are not peer reviewed or edited before being posted on Gates Open Research. It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure that all research is conducted in accordance to international ethical standards for human and animal research. Authors of documents must consult our policies, which reflect general good scientific practice and publishing standards.

Specifically, for any documents that include information that can potentially identify an individual, authors must ensure that they have obtained written, informed consent from all patients or healthy participants (or their legal guardians for minors, or next of kin if the participant is deceased), confirming that the results and any accompanying images can be published. This includes large clinical datasets with direct or indirect identifiers (see this article for information), specific details about individuals, images and so on.

If a document contains any identifiable images of individuals, authors must include a statement confirming that they have permission to publish these images. If the document contains any clinical images or identifiable data then they must include an explicit consent statement under a separate heading of the ‘Consent’ section (we suggest: “We confirm that we have obtained permission to use [images/data] from the participants/patients/individuals included in this presentation”). Please also state the conditions under which the permission was obtained.

Alternatively, if no consent for publication was required (e.g. the data has been anonymised), then this should be clearly stated and a note should be added confirming that such alterations have not distorted scientific meaning.

Gates Open Research will not accept content of an advertorial nature. The purpose of the submitted material must be for the dissemination of scholarly information.

We accept documents in PDF format.

Currently, documents are published under a CC-BY 4.0 license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and leaves the copyright with the current copyright holder (usually the author or their institution).

Documents published on Gates Open Research will receive a digital object identifier (DOI).

Yes, Gates Open Research reserves the right to retract content that is found to be fraudulent (e.g. containing data manipulation or misrepresentation) or in serious breach of one of Gates Open Research’s terms and conditions. Evidence of plagiarism, falsification of data, or other scientific misconduct associated with published documents is determined at the discretion of Gates Open Research; this may involve contacting the authors’ research institution, an ethics committee or other third parties.