Dear HIFA2015 members,

INASP (International Network for the Availability
of Scientific Publications) and ACU (Association
of Commonwealth Universities), through their
Publishers for Development initiative, recently
hosted an online discussion on the question, 'Why
are publishers participating in developing country access initiatives?'

All participants were learned society and
commercial scholarly publishers (publishing in
all sectors, including health). The results of
the discussion are provided below. I contacted
INASP and we agreed it would be valuable to share
this for comment and further discussion on
HIFA2015. One might indeed broaden the question
to: 'How might learned society and commercial
publishers more effectively help to meet the HIFA2015 goal?'

With thanks,
Neil

HIFA2015 moderator: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is the
coordinator of the HIFA2015 campaign and
co-director of the Global Healthcare Information
Network. He started his career as a hospital
doctor in the UK, and has clinical experience in
rural Ecuador and Peru. For the last 18 years he
has been committed to improving the availability
of healthcare information for health workers in
developing countries. He has worked with the
World Health Organization, the Wellcome Trust,
and INASP (International Network for the
Availability of Scientific Publications). neil.pakenham-walsh AT ghi-net.org


PUBLISHERS-FOR-DEVELOPMENT

TOPIC ONE - WHY ARE PUBLISHERS PARTICIPATING IN
DEVELOPING COUNTRY ACCESS INITIATIVES?

When we started the discussion topic 'Why are
publishers cooperating in developing country
access initiatives?' we set forward a few
suppositions and asked if there were any
motivations we had not previously considered and
whether there were ways that existing access
initiatives could better serve the needs of both
researchers and publishers. We wanted to start
from the beginning, to ask why publishers are
already involved in developing country initiatives.

We suggested a few reasons why we thought
publishers were already involved and might wish
to deepen their engagement, but were keen to hear
the thoughts of the publishers. Are there other
important motivations? Are there ways that
existing access initiatives could better serve
the needs of both researchers and publishers?
Understanding these better will give us a good
foundation on which to build our future discussions.

The discussion looked at what publishers are
doing to assist developing country researchers,
the programmes and initiatives which already
exist, and why publishers are involved in these.
For members less familiar with the developing
country research environment, we also included
the brief scene-setting summary below explaining
the implications of this for access to scientific information.

There are a number of major access initiatives -
and many smaller schemes focused on specific
disciplines or even individual titles - which
enable developing country researchers and
students to access scholarly information freely
at point of use. Commonly these are focused on
supplying free or proportionately priced access
to academic journals and databases, but there are
also several support programmes which aim to
strengthen the capacity of libraries to access
and use these resources more effectively.

Publishers already provide considerable support
to these schemes, offering proportionately
discounted access to their principal titles - or
in some cases free access - most often in
electronic form, but occasionally also for print
subscriptions where libraries still struggle to
make good use of online information. The INASP
Directory provides details of the schemes of
which we are aware - but we would welcome any further additions.
[http://www.inasp.info/file/1bfb5e3f6fa3e9e61003d86b8a90c1d3/directory.html#info
- follow the ‘Information Access’ link]

We have now incorporated the small amount of
discussion which took place into the document
below. All messages on this topic and associated
resources can be found at http://d2.dgroups.org/groups/pubs-for-dev/


SOME KEY MOTIVATIONS FOR PUBLISHERS’ PARTICIPATION

A moral argument

For many there is an important moral or
philanthropic argument. Publishers, committed to
advancing scholarly and scientific investigation,
wish to extend access as widely as they can, and
to ensure as many people as possible can reap the
benefits of research. Developing countries are
unable to pay ‘market rates’ but publishers can
help by making subscriptions more affordable,
thereby ensuring the digital and academic divide is narrowed.

The business case

This moral argument is also underpinned by a
business case. Publishers’ key objective is to
serve their authors as well as they can. Making
sure that their publications - and thus their
authors’ research - are disseminated as widely as
possible is central to this. Publishers are at
present not able to maximise their potential
readership base and there is therefore a strong
business case for extending access to new
audiences and earning new readers. Discussion
also noted that as well as serving the authors
some publishers serve society partners who have
this dissemination as part of their articles of existence.

Building the global research system

By helping to increase access publishers play a
vital role in building the global research
system, assisting researchers across the world to
develop their subject knowledge but also to
improve their information searching and
analytical skills. Researchers who are unable to
access major academic information sources not
only lack exposure to the latest knowledge in a
particular fields, but they also don’t have the
opportunity to develop their general information
seeking skills, skills which are critical when
they are trying to identify and locate new research information.

New authors and higher quality papers

Much good research is done in developing
countries but academics are often unable to
translate this into publishable papers because
their sources, methodologies or background
literature is out of date. Researchers able to
access the latest information will be able to
produce better and higher quality papers which
are more suitable for publishing in major
journals. This will help publishers to identify
and source new material and recruit new authors,
and will make the editorial process easier.

Authors are not so much interested in the
quantity of readers, but that the "right" people
are reading - that can be those that have
influence over their careers or those that could
advance their research by putting it into direct practice.


SETTING THE SCENE: ACCESS TO SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The world of scholarly information is changing
rapidly. More and more publishers and information
providers are offering online access and
electronic products, and researchers and students
are using the internet to access what they need.
Developing countries face some particular
challenges. Despite the cost savings that can be
offered through electronic access, many
institutions have insufficient internet access
and computing infrastructure and so still rely heavily on printed material.

It is important to note that developing countries
all face different challenges, however. Locally
tailored solutions are needed and a
one-size-fits-all solution will not work. The
research environments and resource bases of
Cameroon and Bangladesh are very different, and
there are also significant differences within
countries. Sometimes the size of a country and
the number of academic institutions within it
masks the true poverty of many of the
institutions. China, India and Nigeria are
examples of this - enough institutions have
subscriptions to single journals to represent
significant business so publishers are reluctant
to participate in access initiatives in these
countries, but few, if any, institutions could be
described as “well resourced”.

The academic, research and library community

This is perhaps best captured visually. The
attached diagram illustrates how the research
communication cycle works in general, but in
doing so draws attention to some of the obstacles
for developing country researchers to
participate. As this well demonstrates, ICT is critical.

Internet access

That internet access is less good in developing
countries than in Europe or North America is not
a surprise. But exactly what this means for
access to information is often less well
understood. The average African university, for
example, currently has the same bandwidth as a
European or North American household. This can
mean 30,000 students sharing the equivalent of a
domestic connection. African universities also
typically pay 50 times the rate that higher
education and research institutions in Europe or
North America pay. The latter also benefit from
fast fibre optic networks, while many African
universities rely on more expensive, and slower,
satellite (VSAT) connections. Read more about
this in the INASP newsletter at
http://www.inasp.info/uploaded/documents/No-35-Newsletter.pdf

Downloading emails can take a considerable time,
so accessing a 30 page journal article poses
significant problems for many scholars. Academics
and students alike often rely on internet cafés
and so must pay personally to do so. This can be
in the range of US$1 for 15 minutes, which, given
average incomes in these countries, represents a
substantial personal cost. When access is poorer,
slower and more expensive, researchers are less
likely to be able to spend time browsing and searching for information.

Current and future progress

Progress is being made to improve connections in
Africa. For example, UbuntuNet is an initiative
to link national research and education networks
across Africa and work for fast and affordable
bandwidth [see Page 9 of
http://www.inasp.info/uploaded/documents/No-35-Newsletter.pdf].
Other projects include a deep-sea cable to
connect South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and
Kenya with France and India, due to be
operational by 2009 and a further East African
cable due for 2010. These will offer huge
improvements to Africa’s ability to connect to
the global information system. However, websites
are becoming increasingly more sophisticated
(particularly with audio and video content), and
as a result consume ever more bandwidth. Managing
this is therefore vital as it is not a solution
to try to keep increasing bandwidth to match website sizes.

University infrastructures

An institution’s own computing infrastructure
presents the next challenge. Even with reliable
and adequate internet access, sufficient computer
terminals and a good local network are needed.
Most developing country university researchers
will not have a computer on their desks, as their
counterparts in other regions invariably do, and
must instead share machines with colleagues. Many
students must share limited numbers of computers
in computer labs or libraries. Access to a
terminal is necessary not only to find and
download an article, but also to read it and take
notes. With insufficient computer terminals and
several thousand students this can be difficult.
Even where computers are available, they are not
necessarily connected to the Internet.

Existing support - free and discount schemes for developing countries

There are a range of existing schemes and
initiatives which aim to support developing
countries to access scientific and scholarly
information. Many major publishers are already
actively involved in one or more of these, and as
a result making a considerable contribution to
increasing developing country access. INASP and
the ACU both run their own schemes, as do a
number of other organisations. INASP’s PERii
enables access to electronic material on a
countrywide license basis, negotiating with
publishers, or supporting local negotiation, for
proportionately priced discounts in
subscriptions. The ACU for its part operates the
Low Costs Journals Scheme for discounted
print-journals. Information about some other
schemes is available from the INASP Directory
[http://www.inasp.info/file/1bfb5e3f6fa3e9e61003d86b8a90c1d3/directory.html#info
- follow the ‘Information Access’ link]

posted 30 June 2009 by Neil Pakenham-Walsh from email