Re: End of Free Access in Bangladesh

[Jean-Claude Gueson <jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca>]

Like David, I am very much saddened by this piece of news; but I 
am not surprised. In fact, I have been expecting something like 
this for quite some time. I have always been doubtful of 
"charitable" moves: they can be arbitrarily and swiftly removed 
for any pretext. This is the reason why, while commending the 
efforts of the Hinari people who work hard on behalf of poor 
countries, I could never feel completely secure and happy with 
this programme. I also saw the Hinari approach as a way, for 
publishers, to explore beachheads for a later commercial landing: 
Hinari uptake allows for a precise monitoring of the state of 
uptake in a national market. The intent is to transform it into 
an operational commercial market at the first opportunity. In 
this perspective, the process of scholarly and scientific 
communication is viewed as necessarily embedded inside a 
commercial, market driven agenda. The need to finance scientific 
and scholarly communication is never imagined in any way other 
than a market mechanism. And to make things worse, the market is 
dominated by a few, powerful players acting together as an 
oligopole close to a cartel.

Scientific communication is an infrastructural element of 
scientific research and education. Like roads, it has to be 
financed, but not necessarily according to market conditions. We 
all have an inherent right to access and use roads, and, 
likewise, scientists and scholars should have a right to access 
all the validated research results of their colleagues. 
Presently, we have a financing system that grossly distorts this 
objective, all in the name of market fundamentalism. Toll roads 
that are sometimes mentioned in an effort to disprove the above, 
do not change the issue, even when run by private companies: 
there are always alternative itineraries to reach a particular 
destination. Not so with journals, unless their articles are 
archived in OA depositories.

There is a deep lesson in the Bangladesh story, and we should 
heed it. It underscores the fact that Open Access is needed more 
than ever. With it, charitable attitudes will become superfluous, 
and the humiliations accompanying such charitable moves will be a 
thing of the past.

Jean-Claude Guedon

Le jeudi 13 janvier 2011 19:39 -0500, David Prosser a ecrit :

> I am sure that I am not alone in being saddened to read of a 
> number of publishers, including Elsevier and Springer, refusing 
> continued journal access through HINARI to researchers in 
> Bangladesh. Of course, participation in HINARI is an act of 
> charity on behalf of the publishers and they have every right 
> to withdraw their content as they see fit.  However, the GNI 
> per capita of Bangladesh falls well below the ceiling for 
> free-access under the rules of HINARI.
>
> Details of this decision can be found in the BMJ story:
>
> http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d196.full
>
> I'm afraid that I found the quote from Kimberly Parker of 
> HINARI, "Access is still available through those institutions 
> which purchase the journals," particularly depressing.
>
> David