Presentation by Elise Smith, Stefanie Haustein, Philippe Mongeon, Fei Shu, Valery Ridde & Vincent Larivière for HSR 2016, the Fourth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, in Vancouver, 14-18 november 2016.

1. Access to
global health research
Prevalence and cost of open access
Elise Smith, Stefanie Haustein, Philippe Mongeon, Fei Shu &
Valery Ridde, Vincent Larivière
@stefhaustein
Post-doctoral researcher
Université de Montréal / National Institutes of Environmental Health Science (NIEHS)
elise.smith@nih.gov

2. Background
Knowledge Gap

3. Background
Gold with APC BMC, PLOS, Lancet
Global Health
Gold without APC Bulletin of the WHO
Hybrid BMJ, Lancet
Green Public repository, PMC,
Institutional repository
Delayed Pediatrics, Health Affairs
• All fields: 46.9% of publications are OA (2011-2013)
Archambault, É., Amyot, D., Deschamps, P., Nicol, A., Provencher, F., Rebout, L., & Roberge, G. (2014). Proportion of Open Access Papers
Published in Peer-Reviewed Journals at the European and World Levels 1996-2013. (RTD-B6-PP-2011-2: Study to develop a set of indicators
to measure open access). European Commission.

4. Research Questions
1. What is the diversity of OA practices in
GHR ?
2. What is the cost of OA in GHR?
3. What types of OA have the highest
citation impact and broadest reach?

5. Methods
• PubMed search for research articles using MeSH
term “Global Health” 2010-2014
• 3,366 documents in 909 journals
• Determining journal access status and APCs
• Data from PubMed, Directory of Open Access Journals,
Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, Sherpa Romeo as well as
through manual verification of policies on journal or publisher
websites.
• Citation analysis
• Relationship between different OA types, their impact and gross
national income per capita of citing countries.
• Categorization socio-economic group based on World Bank Method

6. Results
Prevalence of papers based on accessibility
12,0%
8,6%
1,8%
6,8%
42,0%
27,2%
Gold OA article
(APC)
Gold OA article
(non-APC)
Delayed OA article
Hybrid article
Toll access
Green OA article

7. Results
Cost
$1,713,215 for 627 papers
APCs paid:
$2,732 per paper
$2,452 gold
$3,240 hybrid
APCs offered:
$1,864 per gold journal
$2,978 per hybrid journal
For-profit publishers:
23% Elsevier
18% Springer Nature
10% Wiley-Blackwell

8. Results
Citation impact

9. Results
Citing countries
Average distribution of citing countries per paper

10. Conclusions
• Even if sharing of knowledge is essential in GHR, 42.0%
of articles hidden behind a pay-wall.
• Despite a higher impact of green OA, 60.8% of
subscription journals are not self-archived.
• Particular high hybrid APCs
• Although hybrid papers are cited more than gold OA,
LMICs are underrepresented among citing countries.
• Overwhelming proportion of research funds funneled to
for-profit publishers.

11. for your attention!
Thank you
Post-doctoral researcher
Université de Montréal / National Institutes of Environmental Health Science (NIEHS)
elise.smith@nih.gov