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LETTER TO EDITOR |
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| Year : 2012 | Volume
: 37
| Issue : 4 | Page : 264 |
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Chargeless/Free Availability of Medical Literature: The Ethical Need for Development of Global Healthcare
Prasanna R Deshpande, Anantha N Naik
Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Manipal University, Manipal, India
| Date of Web Publication | 15-Nov-2012 |
Correspondence Address:
Prasanna R Deshpande
Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Manipal University, Manipal
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/0970-0218.103478
How to cite this article:
Deshpande PR, Naik AN. Chargeless/Free Availability of Medical Literature: The Ethical Need for Development of Global Healthcare. Indian J Community Med 2012;37:264 |
How to cite this URL:
Deshpande PR, Naik AN. Chargeless/Free Availability of Medical Literature: The Ethical Need for Development of Global Healthcare. Indian J Community Med [serial online] 2012 [cited 2021 Jan 26];37:264. Available from: https://www.ijcm.org.in/text.asp?2012/37/4/264/103478 |
Sir,
There are numerous journals available for medical literature in the world. But how many of them are open access journals?
Impact factor is a putative marker for quality of a journal. Unfortunately, most of the high impact factor journals of health sciences are charging money for access and referring. However, the practitioners and researchers from developing world are unable to utilize this knowledge in their practice or for research due to high exchange rates and lack of accessibility. The application of latest knowledge is mandatory to give quality care, to practice evidence based medicine, patient safety and the last but not the least for research. This scenario has a negative impact on healthcare practice and research.
There are some journals available with good impact factor which get the manuscript handling charges from researchers and make the articles open access. But again in this case, researchers have to pay "some" amount of money to the journal, which is actually a "huge" amount for a researcher in a developing country. Furthermore, because of these high payments "by" researchers to such journals, they (researchers from developing countries) probably prefer their research work to be submitted to a journal which is actually getting payment from the readers.
If one thinks thoroughly in both the above-mentioned cases, "payment to a journal with high impact factor," either by researcher or reader, is one of the important factors leading to increase in the gap between the researches in developing and developed world.
The problem is mainly due to inequity and uncommon rate of page charges. If the healthcare information from developing and developed countries is to be represented on a global platform then there should be differed page charges for developing countries.
On the other side, if articles from good impact factor journals are available as open access articles, it could give exposure to better quality research for the researchers in the developing world and would be a remarkable step for better global healthcare.
As far as Indian scenario is considered there are many journals which are open -access and are not receiving money from researchers as well. Currently there is a campaign HIFA 2015 (Healthcare Information for All) which is working in a similar direction globally and their work is acknowledged here. [1]
Therefore, there is need for making the policy for charge less availability of the medical literature to the developing countries for pursuing better global healthcare.
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| 1. | A global campaign: Healthcare Information For All by 2015. Available on-http://www.hifa2015.org.[Last accessed on 2012 September 30]. 
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