Abstract
IntroductionBased on relative population size and burden of disease, emergency care publication outputs from low- and middle-income regions are disproportionately lower than those of high-income regions. Ironically, outputs from regions with higher publication rates are often less relevant in the African context. As a result, the dissemination of and access to local research is essential to local researchers, but the cost of this access (actual and cost-wise) remains unknown. The aim of this study was to describe access to African emergency care publications in terms of publisher-based access (open access or subscription) and alternate access (self-archived or author provided), as well as the cost of access.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study using all emergency medicine publications included in Scopus between 2011 and 2015. A sequential search strategy described access to each article, and we calculated mean article charges against the purchasing power parity index (used to describe out-of-pocket expense).ResultsWe included 666 publications from 49 journals, of which 395 (59.3%) were open access. For subscription-based articles, 106 (39.1%) were self-archived, 60 (22.1%) were author-provided, and 105 (38.8%) were inaccessible. Mean article access cost was $36.44, and mean processing charge was $2,319.34. Using the purchasing power parity index it was calculated that equivalent out-of-pocket expenditure for South African, Ghanaian and Tanzanian authors would respectively be $15.77, $10.44 and $13.04 for access, and $1,004.02, $664.36 and $830.27 for processing. Based on this, the corrected cost of a single-unit article access or process charge for South African, Ghanaian and Tanzanian authors, respectively, was 2.3, 3.5 and 2.8 times higher than the standard rate.ConclusionOne in six African emergency care publications are inaccessible outside institutional library subscriptions; additionally, the cost of access to publications in low- and middle-income countries appears prohibitive. Publishers should strongly consider revising pricing for more equitable access for researchers from low- and middle-income countries.
Highlights
Based on relative population size and burden of disease, emergency care publication outputs from low- and middle-income regions are disproportionately lower than those of high-income regions
We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study using all emergency medicine publications included in Scopus between 2011 and 2015
One in six African emergency care publications are inaccessible outside institutional library subscriptions; the cost of access to publications in low- and middle-income countries appears prohibitive
Summary
Based on relative population size and burden of disease, emergency care publication outputs from low- and middle-income regions are disproportionately lower than those of high-income regions. The fact that around three-quarters of African emergency care publications are published in international journals suggests a necessarily high rate of collaboration – 40% of African emergency care publications included authors from outside Africa, while only 12% of collaboration came from other African countries.[4,5,6,7] taking into account a local, developing, emergency care knowledge economy and the relative irrelevance of high-income setting-produced research, the importance of sharing local African-related emergency care research within Africa should be a given It is, not known how much of the continent’s scientific emergency care output is readily accessible to the local emergency care community.
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