BMJ  2007;335:280-283 (11 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.39293.711088.DE

Feature

For richer for poorer

Five years ago, the world's biggest publishing houses committed themselves to letting researchers in developing countries have free access to the content of their journals. Beset by technical problems and language difficulties, is HINARI succeeding in what it set out to do? Hannah Brown reports

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

It is not often that publishers of scientific material get a good press. Their main customers—the funders of research, scientists, and librarians—have long resented the unfairness of a system that sees their library coffers squeezed dry to purchase reports about their own science, resulting in a fractious, if co-dependent, relationship. But away from the animosity of rich countries' labs and libraries, the world's biggest publishers have been challenging their heartless image.

View larger version (39K):   Institutions registered with HINARI

 
Since 2000, when the World Health Organization (WHO) first broached the idea of increasing access to scientific information in the developing world by supplying electronic content free of charge, publishers have been falling over themselves to take part. Last month, more than 100 of the world's largest publishing companies further extended their commitment to this philanthropic project by pledging to support WHO's "health internetwork access to research initiative" (HINARI) to at least 2015.¹

Some observers . . . [Full text of this article]

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