[GOAL] The Finch Report and its implications for the developing world

[Richard Poynder]

The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development responds to the Finch
Report.

 

Extract:

 

"It is difficult not to sound unprofessional and populist when describing
the huge imbalance between the importance of sharing essential research and
that of retaining the profits of the publishing service industry, but
publishing exists to support research, not the other way round. The
resolution to solve publishing deprivation via the Gold route will take many
years and significant financial input to achieve, whereas the far smaller
costs and 'do-ability' required to set up repositories are immediately
achievable. There are now 33,914,611 articles deposited in institutional
repositories to date. How can the importance of this strategy which has both
scale and momentum have been so trivialised by the Finch team?

 

"There is a myth circulated regarding developing country access problems -
'There is no evidence of a lack of access', 'We have established the HINARI
Research for Life programmes that solve the problem'. . . But our
decade-long experience working with researchers in the South, and many of
the stories collected for OA Week and which are available from our web site
demolishes the first myth, while the problems with the HINARI programmes
have been well documented - sudden withdrawal by publishers of journals,
availability only from designated libraries, selection of journals by
publishers rather than according to research needs and so on."

 

More here:
http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-finch-report-and-its-implications.
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