Open Access Mediates Translation of Food and Nutrition Research into Public Health Outcomes
SINGAPORE and LONDON (PRWEB) October 30, 2018 -- Socio-economic sustainability and prosperity of any country depends on its public health status. In addition to the prevalence of various types of diseases, malnutrition is an important factor governing a Nations’ productivity. Child malnutrition and nutritional deficiency among pregnant and lactating women are major public health concerns across the world. This is due to the imbalance in the intake of energy and nutrients, and also to some extent the altered nutritional value of foods as well as change in diet pattern and resources.
Research is underway for the development of healthy food systems, devising nutrition interventions, developing safe environment and technologies, analyzing the nutritional value of foods, and formulation of nutrition policy and guidelines. Food processing technologies are being developed for retaining optimal nutritional values and enhancing consumer acceptability with minimum wastage of food resources. These endeavours yield volumes of information which needs to be communicated effectively.
Nutrition communication plays a pivotal role in nutrition monitoring and in behavioural nutrition interventions for overall improvement in the health status. On the other hand, health literacy dealing with access, processing and utilization of nutrition and health information, is a strong determinant of health status. Open access mode of publishing is the most suitable and preferable form of communication in food and nutrition research as it effectively fills the gap between the academic research and practice of health & dietetics among general public when compared to subscription mode of publishing. People generally tend to search online resources for their nutrition requirements, healthy diets and food sources and would give preference to systematic, scholarly and scientific content.
Omics International founded by Dr. Srinibabu Geleda (Young Scientist Awardee, Human Proteome Organization) way back in 2008 is one of the leading publishers with more than 1000 open access journals in science and management crossing the overall readership by 50 million in the year 2018. Dr. Srinibabu opines that open access scientific publication can be potentially translated into multiple regional languages without copyright restrictions thus rendering the healthcare information accessible, amenable and affordable by vulnerable sections of populations even in the remotest corners of the world.
The company publishes 36 open access journals related to food and nutrition science catering to the knowledge requirements of academicians, scientists, physicians, dieticians, nutritionists and consumers and encourages coordinated and concerted efforts for improved nutrition and health outcomes.
The theme of this year’s Open Access Week is, “Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge”. Open science has the potential to maximize the food and nutrition research outcomes and has greater impact in translation of academic research into public health by catalyzing the pace of technological advancements.
During this week Omics reiterated its commitment to the policy and philosophy of the open access publishing. As a part of the celebrations of the open access week, scientific contributors were encouraged to share their experiences of publishing in open access journals in order to foment a healthy debate as to the pros and cons of this movement.
All the members and scientific contributors had a good time participating in the event and in the process achieved a better understanding of the endpoints and snarls en route. It is hoped that more and more scientists would chose to publish in open access journals, without any fear of negative consequences.
Abhishek Babu, PULSUS GROUP, http://www.pulsus.com, +91 4047482201, [email protected]
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