Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 11:30:08 +0530 From: Subbiah Arunachalam <arun@mssrf.res.in> Friends: Here is a posting to the GKD97 list I sent in early 1997. I wonder if things have cahnged much. Regards. Arun Dear GKD97 members: Mr P Jayarajan, British Council Division, British High Commission, New Delhi, asked me to give my comments on the impact of electronic publishing on the developing countries, for inclusion in a discussion at a forthcoming World Bank Conference. I thought many members of this forum might be interested in this question (even if they might not care for my views on it!). I reproduce my letter to Jayarajan. Your comments are welcome. My address: <arun@mssrf.res.in> Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] Dear Jay: Here are some random thoughts on Electronic Publishing and its impact on the developing countries. As bullet points, of course! * The transition to electronic publishing from print will widen the gap between the advanced countries and the developing countries, especially in the field of production and dissemination of knowledge. * Many developing countries, especially those with large populations, do not have the necessary infrastructure (computer terminals, networks, communication channels, bandwidth, etc.) and will take a long time to have it in place to be able to take part as equal partners in the worldwide enterprise of knowledge production and exchange. * While communication revolution is perceived as a liberating influence, what is more likely to happen is that in many developing countries (including India, I am afraid) scientists and scholars will be among the last to be reached by the revolution and therefore the relative disadvantage they now suffer from (in the matter of access to information and knowledge) will only increase. The number of institutions and individual scholars having access to Email and Internet in developing countries and the rate at which this access has grown over time will support this contention. * The transition to electronic publishing will make it much easier for scientists and scholars in the advanced countries to interact with colleagues and invisible colleges, and most Third World scientists and scholars are most likely to be excluded from this "worldwide" network, not because they are intellectually inferior but because they do not have the technological backup. The already existing gaps in the levels of science and technology performed in the advanced and the poorer countries will be widened further and this could lead to increased levels of brain drain and dependence on foreign aid of a different kind (knowledge imperialism). * Mastery of technology has led the West to dominate the world to such an extent that even in areas where the traditional societies of the poorer countries had a lead of millennia (such as ethnobotany and plant-based medicine), now it is the West which is exploiting this knowledge base and converting it into products (of modern medicine) and profits. What has happened in the area of plants and medicine will happen with even greater vigour in the area of knowledge production and dissemination (including publishing and patenting). * Most journals and databases are produced in the advanced countries and developing country scientists read articles written by their own countrymen in expensive journals produced by commercial publishers in the West and gain access to the same articles through exhorbitatntly priced secondary services produced in the West! Electronic publishing and online access will only make the situation even worse. * There is another very serious problem. The traditional knowledge systems, because their practitioners are not well-versed in electronic communication, will die out very soon. This has already happened, even before the arrival of electronic publishing, thanks to the homogenising effect of western cultures which made many facets of other cultures extinct. -----------------------