For some years now it has been the British Medical Journal Publishing Group's policy to give gratis subscriptions to our Journal to applicants from countries in the developing world. However, in practice this has had its difficulties. Many developing countries have either poor or non-existent postal services and granting a print subscription can often be problematic and expensivethe marginal cost of sending JNNP to Africa is around £25 each year.

An editorial in the BMJ sets out the arguments very clearly.¹ We know that the gap between the rich and poor countries is widening. Whereas those of us in the developed world have information overload, the developing countries have bare library shelves. The internet gives us the opportunity to narrow the gap. The marginal cost of giving access to the electronic edition of JNNP is close to zero. What is more, those in resource poor countries can access electronic . . . [Full text of this article]