PHM-Exch> Research Output in Developing CountriesReveals 194% Increase in Five Years (2)

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Leslie London Leslie.London at uct.ac.za

This is an interesting report

However, some cautions should be stated.

1. The authors of the report are claiming a lot from an ecological
association between the introduction of the Research4Life iniative and
increase in scholarly output in scientific journals.
As we know, there have been umpteen investments in building research
capacity in developing countries in the same period.
It may well be that Research4life has contributed to this trend, but it is
quite a step to claim that "Research4Life Demonstrates Profound Impact on
Scholarly Landscape" based on an ecological association.

2. Some of the data on which this claim is made is produced by agents with
overwhelmingly strong vested interests in the matter - Elsevier, Thomson's,
for example. We know there have been huge criticisms made of what journals
are counted in the Thomson's database, for example, and it isn't clear that
changes in the profile of journals included in the database over the study
period were accounted for.

3. Experiences shared with me by colleagues in Tanzania, anecdotal though it
may be, is that access to journals through the HINARI portal is limited by
IT connectivity, so the benefits of free access to journals for researchers
in eligible countries is completely negated by impractical IT systems in
these same countries which make it practically impossible to download
articles. The seeming benefits of increased access to journal articles in
encouraging developing country researchers to publish is entirely dependent
on better IT connectivity. What is to say that it isn't improvements in the
IT infrastructure in these countries that has simply enabled developing
country researchers to 'catch' up?

This is not to say that I am opposed to or critical of efforts to improve
developing country research outputs through public-private partnerships that
offer health, agriculture and environmental research for free or at very low
cost to developing countries.

However, I would be a bit more critical about accepting dogmatic claims at
face value, particularly with strong vested interests at stake.

For one, if the IT and telecommunications industry invested in ICT to
support scientific endeavours in these same countries, we would no doubt
overcome many of the problems experienced to date


*>Research4Life Demonstrates Profound Impact on Scholarly Landscape*

London, 2 July 2009 - The partners of Research4Life announced today at
the World Conference of Science Journalists 2009 that a new research
impact analysis has demonstrated a dramatic rise in research output by
scientists in the developing world since 2002. By comparing absolute
growth in published research before (1996 - 2002) and after (2002 -
2008) the advent of the Research4Life programmes, the analysis has
revealed a 194% or 6.4-fold increase in articles published in peer
reviewed journals.
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