---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 6:58 AM
Subject: [HIFA2015] HINARI: Publishers withdraw 2500 journals from free access scheme in Bangladesh (8)
To: HIFA2015 - Healthcare Information For All by 2015 <[log in to unmask]>

Dear Swarna,

Your response is extremely helpful.

I was responsible for alerting Neil and the BMJ when I heard from a friend about the major publishers stopping access to their journals in Bangladesh through HINARI. We thought that this might have happened in other countries, and clearly it has. There hasn't been the publicity there should have been, and I can see that WHO doesn't want to upset the publishers by publicising the losses. But it would be very good to know how many countries have had access stopped. HINARI may be slowly dying, unnoticed by the world.

I was involved in starting HINARI when I was editor of the BMJ. We paid for one of our staff to work with WHO and help make it happen. We had the launch of the project in BMA House in London.

One of the main incentives for the commercial publishers was, I judge, watching the pharmaceutical industry take a beating over its behaviour in low and middle income countries. They may have forgotten that now and hope that they can make increases in their profits from stopping access in some countries.

I think that they are shooting themselves in the foot, particularly when open access is gaining momentum.

We should find out exactly how many countries have been shut out and mount a campaign to embarrass the companies into reinstating access in low income countries.

I suggest as well that people send rapid responses to the news item in the BMJ. Sadly and ironically it's not open access, but the link is:

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d196.full

Richard Smith

HIFA2015 profile: Richard Smith is an Executive Director of UnitedHealth Group, where he is responsible for a programme to create centres in the developing world to counter chronic disease (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease). UnitedHealth Group is a diversified health and well-being company dedicated to making the health care system work better. Richard is a board member of the Public Library of Science, and was formerly Editor of the BMJ and Chief Executive of the BMJ Publishing Group. richardswsmith AT yahoo.co.uk

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From: "Swarna Bandara" swarna.bandara AT uwimona.edu.jm
To: "HIFA2015 - Healthcare Information For All by 2015" [log in to unmask]
Subject: [HIFA2015] HINARI: Publishers withdraw 2500 journals from free access scheme in Bangladesh (7)
Date: 12 Jan 2011 15:54:43 +0100

Dear Colleagues,

Publishers withholding access to journals in HINARI is not new, but publicized very little about it. We in Jamaica had the subscription at a low price and most of the major publishers blocked access to their journals (Elsevier, Blackwell, etc.) The reason given was that publishers fear that we may cancel the few journals we subscribe to. I know that it is not only Jamaica facing the problem. The paper published by my colleague in Peru 'Biomedical Journals and Global Poverty: Is HINARI a Step Backwards?' published in PloS Medicine gives a very good idea about how much access is available to those countries that were penalized by publishers. Here is the link to the paper; http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0040220

I always maintained that this is an excellent initiative and WHO must be given the credit and that is why we support it. However, publishers have not seen the benefits of the initiative to less developed world. I have protested this issue at every opportunity I got at various international conferences on public forums, but there was no change. Even with these restrictions, statistics from WHO reflects very high usage of HINARI by Jamaican scientists. This is very much due the type of training we provided. One can imagine how useful HINARI would be if no restrictions are imposed. After publishers restrictions, the most journals journals we can access through HINARI can be freely accessed by other sources as well.

As far as I know, access is not blocked to African countries where Internet access is lowest. World Statistics on World Internet Usage show up to June 2010 Internet penetration by African continent is only 10.9% of total world Internet access. (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm) This is an increase from 4% over the last 2-3 years. Out of this, 90% of Internet access is from South Africa. I am not certain whether SA qualified for HINARI [*]. In effect, the publishers are giving the access to people who cannot get the full use of HINARI and boast about it as if the access is provided to all countries qualified for accessing HINARI.

These actions of publishers provide a clear idea to the scientists how publishers control scholarly communication. They decide what is to be published and who can access it. When the catering is for the rich they have no reason to accept papers reporting problems of poor countries, and when they do even the institution the author belongs to cannot access it. Publishing research is market driven industry, and not for the original purpose of communicating research. Recently Elsevier had reduced the freedom given to authors previously to archive preprints of papers published in their journals in institutional repositories.

This is why it is so important we in the less developed world recognize Open Access as the way of research communication. This discussion also provides an opportunity to understand Knowledge Cycle and the blockages for free flow of research information for both access and dissemination.

Thank you.

Swarna Bandara

HIFA2015 profile: Swarna Bandara is former Head of the Medical Library at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. She is ETD/DSpace Coordinator (ED/DSpace is an international repository for electonic theses and dissertations), and Virtual Health Library National Coordinator. Her professional interests include Open Access, Electronic publishing, Health Science Information, and Information skills training. swarna.bandara AT uwimona.edu.jm

[*Note from HIFA2015 moderator:
South Africa is not included in HINARI:
http://www.who.int/hinari/eligibility/en/
Thanks, Neil PW]

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