1. Dealing with Knowledge Scarcity
In Developing Countries
Nominal Fee/ Free Access to Online
Refereed Journals
Hubert Shija

2. Introduction
• Key questions
• Importance of knowledge
• Knowledge production in developing countries
• Knowledge aid with a help of ICT (especially
the internet)
• Evidence on scarcity reduction
• Challenges
• Practice implications

3. Key Questions
• Is there knowledge scarcity in the South?
• Does the South need scientific knowledge
from the North?
• Is that scientific knowledge relevant for the
South?
• Does free/ nominal fee access reduce scarcity?
• To what extent scarcity has been reduced?

4. Why knowledge?
• Key for development
• For destiny control capability
• Most powerful engine of growth
• Lifeblood
• Important factor of production
– Example: Ghana and Korea
• 1960s almost same income per capita, 40 years later
Korea’s was 6x higher than Ghana’s.

5. Why knowledge? Cont’d

6. Knowledge Production in the South
Journal articles production across high, middle, and low-income countries
No. Country Years Income level
2001 2007
1 Israel 6,487 6,623 High
2 Norway 3,252 4.079 High
3 Sweden 10,314 9,914 High
4 United Kingdom 47,660 47,121 High
5 United States of 200,870 209,695 High
America
6 India 11,076 18,194 Middle
7 China 20,978 56,805 Middle
8 Brazil 7,205 11,885 Middle
9 South Africa 2,327 2,805 Middle
10 Tanzania 87 123 Low
11 Kenya 230 262 Low
12 Uganda 91 164 Low
13 Rwanda 4 12 Low
14 Burundi 3 3 Low
Source: Extracted from World Development Indicators// World Bank 2005 & 2011, pp. 314 – 317

7. Knowledge Aid
• Effective way to bridge a gap
– Acquisition and adaptation
• Global knowledge 97
• UN Millennium Declaration
– ICT supports the process of bridging the gap
• Internet users in Tanzania by 2010: 4.8 mil
– Initiatives are Research4Life, INASP/ PERii

8. Knowledge Aid Effectiveness
• REPOA resource centre users have an access to about
15,600 international peer reviewed journals worth
about Tsh. 40 billion (USD 20 Million) annually
• Usage information
– REPOA resource centre
• AGORA: 7% increase of pages visited (in 2009 543 & in 2010 585)
• Wiley: projected 21% increase of requested articles (in 2010 193 &
in 2011 236 articles)
• Oxford Journals 80% increase of downloads (in 2006 7 articles & in
2008 35 articles) but in 2011 usage fell down by 74% (failure to
update static IP address)
– Globally
• PERii: 93% increase of downloads (0.17m in 2003 & 2.4m in 2010)

9. Relevance
• Covered all disciplines and subjects
• Availability of local content
Tanzania vs Israel between 1961 and 2011
Database Country
Tanzania Israel
Oxford Journals (a publisher) 458 1,558
AGORA (more than one 930 3,359
publlisher)
OARE (more than one 5,025 7,730
publlisher)
HINARI (more than one 5,696 13,500
publlisher)
Wiley (a pulisher) 612 946
Sage (a publisher) 86 413
Total 12,807 27,506
Source: Oxford Journals, FAO, WHO, UNEP, Wiley, Sage, 2011

10. Challenges
• Unlimited access
• Sufficient contextualised content
– National researchers to build capacity
– Publish internationally
– More funds for research (> 1% of national GDP)
• Access and use sustainability
– Consortium
– Open access
• Information fluency
• Efficient and Effective Marketing to improve access and
usage

11. Conclusion
• Journals are relevant
– cover all disciplines and subjects
– International perspectives to local perspectives with adaptation
• Aid is helpful
– Increase of usage
– More journals to access
• the South still needs scientific knowledge from the North
– Low production in the South
– For development
• Challenges?
– good
– positive

12. Practice Implications
• Harmonization and providing unlimited access
• ICT environment, access, use, and skills should
be enabled
• Effective and efficient marketing must be
employed
• Improving research sector in the country

13. Discussion
• Thanks for listening
• Q&A