Worldwide inequality in access to full text scientific articles: the example of ophthalmology

Christophe Boudry (1, 2) , Patricio Alvarez-Muñoz (3) , Ricardo Arencibia-Jorge (4) , Didier Ayena (5) , Niels J Brouwer (6) , Zia Chaudhuri (7) , Brenda Chawner (8) , Emilienne Epee (9) , Khalil Erraïs (10) , Akbar Fotouhi (11) , Almutez M Gharaibeh (12) , Dina H Hassanein (13) , Martina C Herwig-Carl (14) , Katherine Howard (15) , Dieudonne Kaimbo Wa Kaimbo (16) , Patricia-Ann Laughrea (17) , Fernando A Lopez (18) , Juan D Machin-Mastromatteo (19) , Fernando K Malerbi (20) , Amadou Ndiaye (21) , Nina A Noor (22) , Josmel Pacheco-Mendoza (23) , Vasilios P Papastefanou (24) , Mufarriq Shah (25) , Carol L Shields (26) , Ya Xing Wang (27) , Vasily Yartsev (28) , Frederic Mouriaux (29, 30)

1 UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie
2 URFIST Paris - Unité Régionale de Formation à l'Information Scientifique et Technique de Paris
3 Universidad Estatal de Milagro, Milagro, Ecuador
4 Empresa de Tecnologías de la Información (ETI), Grupo de las Industrias Biotecnológica y Farmacéutica (BioCubaFarma), Havana, Cuba
5 Université de Lomé, Faculté des Sciences de la santé, Hôpital de Bè, Lomé, Togo
6 Leiden University Medical Center, Department of Ophthalmology, Leiden, The Netherlands
7 University of Delhi, Lady Hardinge Medical College, PGIMER, Dr RML Hospital, New Delhi, India
8 Victoria University of Wellington, School of Information Management, Wellington, New Zealand
9 Université de Yaoundé, Faculté de Médecine et des Sciences Biomédicales, Yaoundé, Cameroon
10 University of Tunis El Manar
11 Tehran University of Medical Sciences, School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Tehran, Iran
12 University of Jordan, Faculty of Medicine, Amman, Jordan
13 Cairo University, Ophthalmology Department, Cairo, Egypt
14 University of Bonn, Department of Ophthalmology, Bonn, Germany
15 Flinders University [Adelaide, Australia]
16 UNIKIN - University of Kinshasa
17 Laval University, Department of Ophthalmology and Head and Neck Surgery, Quebec, Canada
18 CONICET - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [Buenos Aires]
19 Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico
20 Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein [São Paulo, Brazil]
21 UCAD - Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar [Sénégal]
22 JEC Eye Hospitals and Clinics, Jakarta, Indonesia
23 Unidad de Investigación en Bibliometría, Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola, Lima, Peru
24 Royal London Hospital, Barts Health NHS Trust. Moorfields Eye Hospital, London, UK
25 Pakistan Institute of Community Ophthalmology, Hayatabad Medical Complex, Department of Optometry, Peshawar, Pakistan
26 Wills Eye Hospital
27 Beijing Institute of Ophthalmology, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Key Laboratory, Beijing, China
28 Scientific Research Institute of Eye Diseases, Moscow, Russia
29 Service d'Ophtalmologie [Rennes] = Ophtalmology [Rennes]
30 NuMeCan - Nutrition, Métabolismes et Cancer

Background - The problem of access to medical information, particularly in low-income countries, has been under discussion for many years. Although a number of developments have occurred in the last decade (e.g., the open access (OA) movement and the website Sci-Hub), everyone agrees that these difficulties still persist very widely, mainly due to the fact that paywalls still limit access to approximately 75% of scholarly documents. In this study, we compare the accessibility of recent full text articles in the field of ophthalmology in 27 established institutions located worldwide. Methods - A total of 200 references from articles were retrieved using the PubMed database. Each article was individually checked for OA. Full texts of non-OA (i.e., "paywalled articles") were examined to determine whether they were available using institutional and Hinari access in each institution studied, using "alternative ways" (i.e., PubMed Central, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and Online Reprint Request), and using the website Sci-Hub. Results - The number of full texts of "paywalled articles" available using institutional and Hinari access showed strong heterogeneity, scattered between 0% full texts to 94.8% (mean = 46.8%; SD = 31.5; median = 51.3%). We found that complementary use of "alternative ways" and Sci-Hub leads to 95.5% of full text "paywalled articles," and also divides by 14 the average extra costs needed to obtain all full texts on publishers' websites using pay-per-view. Conclusions - The scant number of available full text "paywalled articles" in most institutions studied encourages researchers in the field of ophthalmology to use Sci-Hub to search for scientific information. The scientific community and decision-makers must unite and strengthen their efforts to find solutions to improve access to scientific literature worldwide and avoid an implosion of the scientific publishing model. This study is not an endorsement for using Sci-Hub. The authors, their institutions, and publishers accept no responsibility on behalf of readers.

Mots clés: Online Reprint Request; Google Scholar; Articles; Open access; Access to literature; Science publishing; Sci-Hub; Paywall; Bibliodiversity; Hinari; PubMed Central; ResearchGate; Ethical Issues; Legal Issues; Science Policy; Ophthalmology; Pay-per-view

Domaines: Sciences de l'information et de la communication; Médecine humaine et pathologie

Christophe Boudry, Patricio Alvarez-Muñoz, Ricardo Arencibia-Jorge, Didier Ayena, Niels J Brouwer, et al.. Worldwide inequality in access to full text scientific articles: the example of ophthalmology. PeerJ, 2019, 7, pp.e7850. ⟨10.7717/peerj.7850⟩. ⟨hal-02346748⟩