Mendeley User Analysis Shows Open Access Is Critical For Low-Income Countries

The Mendeley collaboration company has published the Global Research Report (http://mnd.ly/global-research-report), an analysis of two million scholars' research activity in relation to economic indicators and research productivity. 

The report details the extent to which a country's GDP per capita and R&D expenditure per capita limit its researchers' access to academic papers. Developing countries face considerable challenges - to afford an additional 50 research papers for each scientist would require a ten-fold increase in R&D expenditure per capita.

The recent trend towards Open Access publishing helps researchers be able to understand and cite other works without onerous costs - and that  is a pathway towards true Open Publishing, where both access and publication are free of charge...