Ophthalmology Commons^™

Worldwide Inequality In Access To Full Text Scientific Articles: The Example Of Ophthalmology., Christophe Boudry, Patricio Alvarez-Muñoz, Ricardo Arencibia-Jorge, Didier Ayena, Niels J Brouwer, Zia Chaudhuri, Brenda Chawner, Emilienne Epee, Khalil Erraïs, Akbar Fotouhi, Almutez M Gharaibeh, Dina H Hassanein, Martina C Herwig-Carl, Katherine Howard, Dieudonne Kaimbo Wa Kaimbo, Patricia-Ann Laughrea, Fernando A Lopez, Juan D Machin-Mastromatteo, Fernando K Malerbi, Papa Amadou Ndiaye, Nina A Noor, Josmel Pacheco-Mendoza, Vasilios P Papastefanou, Mufarriq Shah, Carol L Shields, Ya Xing Wang, Vasily Yartsev, Frederic Mouriaux

Wills Eye Hospital Papers

Background: The problem of access to medical information, particularly in low-income countries, has been under discussion for many years. Although a number of developments have occurred in the last decade (e.g., the open access (OA) movement and the website Sci-Hub), everyone agrees that these difficulties still persist very widely, mainly due to the fact that paywalls still limit access to approximately 75% of scholarly documents. In this study, we compare the accessibility of recent full text articles in the field of ophthalmology in 27 established institutions located worldwide.

Methods: A total of 200 references from articles were retrieved using the …