University of Bonn, Department of Ophthalmology, Bonn, Germany
Katherine Howard
Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
Dieudonne Kaimbo Wa Kaimbo
University of Kinshasa, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Patricia-Ann Laughrea
Laval University, Department of Ophthalmology and Head and Neck Surgery, Quebec, Canada
Fernando A. Lopez
Universidad Metropolitana para la Educación y el Trabajo, Centro de Innovación de los Trabajadores, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Juan D. Machin-Mastromatteo
Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico
Fernando K. Malerbi
Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Unidad de Investigación en Bibliometría, Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola, Lima, Peru
Vasilios P. Papastefanou
Royal London Hospital, Barts Health NHS Trust. Moorfields Eye Hospital, London, UK
Mufarriq Shah
Pakistan Institute of Community Ophthalmology, Hayatabad Medical Complex, Department of Optometry, Peshawar, Pakistan
Carol L. Shields
Wills Eye Hospital, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Ya Xing Wang
Beijing Institute of Ophthalmology, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Key Laboratory, Beijing, China
Vasily Yartsev
Scientific Research Institute of Eye Diseases, Moscow, Russia
Frederic Mouriaux
Univ Rennes, INSERM, INRA, CHU de Rennes, Institut NUMECAN (Nutrition Metabolisms and Cancer), Rennes, France
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 PubMed database. Each article was individually checked for OA. Full texts of non-OA (i.e., “paywalled articles”) were examined to determine whether they were available using institutional and Hinari access in each institution studied, using “alternative ways” (i.e., PubMed Central, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and Online Reprint Request), and using the website Sci-Hub. Results The number of full texts of “paywalled articles” available using institutional and Hinari access showed strong heterogeneity, scattered between 0% full texts to 94.8% (mean = 46.8%; SD = 31.5; median = 51.3%). We found that complementary use of “alternative ways” and Sci-Hub leads to 95.5% of full text “paywalled articles,” and also divides by 14 the average extra costs needed to obtain all full texts on publishers’ websites using pay-per-view. Conclusions The scant number of available full text “paywalled articles” in most institutions studied encourages researchers in the field of ophthalmology to use Sci-Hub to search for scientific information. The scientific community and decision-makers must unite and strengthen their efforts to find solutions to improve access to scientific literature worldwide and avoid an implosion of the scientific publishing model. This study is not an endorsement for using Sci-Hub. The authors, their institutions, and publishers accept no responsibility on behalf of readers.
