HINARI v. OA archiving

Barbara E. Kirsop, Leslie Chan, Subbiah Arunachalam, Open Access Archives for the global distribution of research publications, BMJ, May 26, 2004. A letter to the editor in response to Srinivasa Katikireddi's article about HINARI published on May 15. Excerpt: "The recent review of the HINARI project was timely and highlighted the great imbalance between access to essential research information. In this programme, collaborating publishers have agreed to make material available where it will not adversely affect their commercial interests. While this is a valuable development of immediate importance, it does not seem to us that this is the best policy in terms of sustainability....Those of us working to establish mechanisms to improve access to research information believe that OAA provides enormous and sustainable benefits. The establishment of institutional archives brings greatly increased visibility to the research output of institutions and is already showing a three- to five-fold increase on the research impact of articles archived in this way. This policy can therefore lead to immediate benefit, and is low-cost, equitable and highly appropriate as a means of levelling the playing field for access to information."