STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has recently claimed that the WHO HINARI programme leads to a significant increase in the number of publications from researchers in the qualifying countries. The programme supports the provision of free access to articles made available by collaborating publishers to registered organisations in certain low income countries. The conclusions were reportedly arrived at from an informal study of ISI data carried out by an individual at Elsevier. The Elsevier claim has been criticised by a number of e-publishing experts.
According to critics, the conclusions are meaningless without knowing the methods and the data used for the study. They state that the increase could be largely due to open access literature being increasingly available to scientists in the developing world. There are measures of impact other than publishing in ISI indexed journals, and these may be particularly relevant to researchers from the developing world. The critics have expressed a desperate need for good research on publishing and citation patterns of researchers from developing countries to better understand the various effects of the different means of increasing access.
According to HINARI Program Manager Kimberly Parker, while the programme is a contributing factor in the growth, it is impossible to prove HINARI alone has caused this increase. Others have said that increased access - whether through the increasing number of open access resources or through donor programmes - is bound to stimulate research activity. It requires in-depth studies to show whether programmes such as HINARI are the sole contributors to increases in scientific activity, they observe.
