Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2006 13:36:44 +0000 (GMT)
From: Subbiah Arunachalam
Friends:
Here is what Fred Noronha, Goa-based journalist and
open source software champion, has written about the
Bangalore workshop on electronic publishing and open
access in SciDev.net.
Arun
[Subbiah arunachalam]
-----
Scientists push open access for developing nations
Scientists in developing countries hope to promote
open access for scholarly articles
Frederick Noronha
29 November 2006
Source: SciDev.Net
Scientists from Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India and
South Africa have set guidelines for developing
countries to freely access publicly funded research.
The success of their draft national policy will depend
on whether the relevant governments, funders and
research institutes adopt its recommendations.
The guidelines were agreed at a workshop in Bangalore,
India earlier this month (2-3 November) where 44
international participants including scientists and
policymakers discussed ways to promote open access.
Open access is the free online availability of digital
content, especially of peer-reviewed scientific and
scholarly journal articles.
Scientists in the developing world have long
complained that their work is invisible to scientists
in North America and Europe, said Alma Swan,
co-director of Key Perspectives Ltd, a UK consultancy
company for scholarly information.
"Now the developing world has the opportunity to
create the level playing field it has so long cried
out for," she told SciDev.Net.
While participants agreed on the policy, there was
lively debate on how to make governments adopt it,
Barbara Kirsop, secretary of the UK-based Electronic
Publishing Trust, told SciDev.Net.
The participants said financial barriers prevented
researchers in developing countries from accessing the
research information they need.
Their policy urges governments to require all publicly
funded research published in peer-reviewed journals be
deposited in an institutional digital database as soon
as publication is accepted. This should be a condition
for research funding for any papers partly or fully
funded by the government.
Eve Gray, a fellow at the Open Society Institute in
South Africa said that policymakers in governments and
institutions have the power to determine the reach of
scientific research.
"They can make [the research] instantly visible, or
they can fail their staff," she told SciDev.Net.
Large research funders in rich countries such as the
Wellcome Trust and Research Councils United Kingdom,
she argued, have recognised this and shown the way.
The workshop revealed that Bioline, an online
publisher for developing countries, saw a huge
increase in requests for scholarly papers when it
became open access.
This shows "how much information was unused, unknown,
un-accessed before open access", says Kirsop.
She added that developing nations should lead the way
towards promoting open access as "they have so much to
gain and so much to contribute".
The workshop was funded by the Open Society Institute
and organised by the Indian Academy of Sciences, the
Indian Institute of Science and the M. S. Swaminathan
Research Foundation.
*
Related SciDev.Net articles:
Universities urged: 'share benefits of health
research'
Scientists get free access to environment journals
China unveils plans to boost scientific data sharing
