Trends in the research and scholarly communication landscape for low-and-middle income countries

Scientific research, and equitable access to its outputs, is critical to the lives of billions of people across the globe. The world benefits from increased knowledge and understanding, a truism only reinforced by our recent experience of responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In support of advancing global access to research, we were asked to carry out an analysis and a review for Research4Life, a public-private partnership, launched in 2002, which aims to close the knowledge gap between high-income and low-and-middle-income countries.

Research4Life is backed by five United Nations agencies, approximately 175 scholarly publishers, Yale and Cornell University, as well as other stakeholders. The initiative aims to provide free or low-cost access to research publications and online resources, most of which would otherwise be locked behind paywalls. As of March 2020, it covered 23,500 research journals, 80,000 e-books and 120 other digital resources; accessible to more than 10,000 institutions in 125 countries.

Research4Life asked us to assess the partnership’s organisational effectiveness and inform their future strategic direction. For this work, we conducted a review of current global trends in the scholarly communications and research landscape, with a particular focus on low-and-middle-income countries to better understand the key developments and to inform future efforts. Our analysis used the PESTLE framework, assessing political, economic, social and technological trends globally, on research in and for low-and-middle-income countries and on scholarly communications.

We looked at 35 trends that had the potential to affect research and scholarly communication. Of these, we highlighted three key trends which we believed would be profoundly significant: the growing research base in low-and-middle-income countries, the increasing amount of open access research available and a growing digital divide in the world. To build on the insights generated via desk research, we carried out surveys, in-depth interviews with stakeholders in many countries and developed user journeys.

Our work also includes a separate addendum on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, where we reflect on recent developments and their implications on the findings of our full report.