A food allergy is an adverse immune response to a food protein. It is an immune system reaction that occurs soon after eating a certain food. They are different from other adverse responses to food, such as food intolerance, pharmacological reactions, and toxin-mediated reactions. The protein in the food is the most common allergic component. Some food allergens include milk, nuts, shellfish, egg, soy products etc. The symptoms include digestive problems, wheezing, Diarrhoea, Vomiting, nausea, hives or swollen airways. A food allergy can cause severe symptoms or even a life-threatening reaction known as anaphylaxis, which needs immediate medication. Food allergies involve two features of immune response, the production of immunoglobulin E (IgE) and the mast cells. Treatment consists of either immunotherapy (desensitisation) or avoidance, in which the allergic person avoids food to which they are allergic.
Open access to the scientific literature means the removal of barriers (including price barriers) from accessing scholarly work. There are two parallel roads towards open access: Open Access articles and self-archiving. Open Access articles are immediately, freely available on their Web site, a model mostly funded by charges paid by the author (usually through a research grant).
Open Access raises practical and policy questions for scholars, publishers, funders, and policymakers alike, including what the return on investment is when paying an article processing fee to publish in an Open Access articles, or whether investments into institutional repositories should be made and whether self-archiving should be made mandatory, as contemplated by some funders.
Last date updated on July, 2014
