Friends: An article in LIBRI, Vol. 56, No. 1, March 2006 questions the value of OA to developing country scientists. Here is the abstract of the article, followed by my response. "The Other Side of the Coin for Open Access Publishing - A Developing Country View" by JENNIFER PAPIN-RAMCHARAN AND RICHARD A DAWE Abstract. This article presents the Open Access publishing experience of researchers in an academic research institution, in a developing country, Trinidad and Tobago, namely at the University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Campus. It considers UWI researchers' knowledge of Open Access, their access to the scholarly literature, Open Access Archives/Repositories at UWI and related issues of Research and Library funding and Information Communication Technology (ICT) Infrastructure/ Internet connectivity. The article concludes that whilst Open Access publishing yields some obvious and well-documented benefits for developing country researchers, including free access to research articles and increased impact and visibility of "published" Open Access articles, there are some disincentives that militate against developing country researchers fully contributing to the global body of knowledge via Open Access. It finds that Open Access Journals are beneficial for scholars who consume information but are of little benefit for developing country scholars wanting to publish in these journals because of the high cost of page charges. Inadequate and unreliable ICT infrastructure and Internet connectivity also often limit access to information. It concludes that because of technical, financial, human and infrastructural limitations, Open Access via the Green Road of self-archiving is also often not an option for developing country researchers. These researchers are therefore unable to reap the real benefits, of making their research Open Access, that of increased impact and visibility. This study is to develop and evaluate methods and instruments for assessing the usability of digital libraries. It discusses the dimensions of usability, what methods have been applied in evaluating usability of digital libraries, their applicability, and criteria. It is found in the study that there exists an interlocking relationship among effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. It provides operational criteria for effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, and learnability. It discovers users' criteria on "ease of use," "organization of information," "terminology and labeling," "visual attractiveness," and "mistake recovery." Common causes of "user lostness" were found. "Click cost" was examined. Arun's response. 1. Not all OA journals charge author side publication fees. PLoS and BMC do charge author fees. But the majority of OA journals do not charge authors. Not a single Indian OA journal charges authors, for example. In most cases, even those journals which charge authors exempt authors from developing countries if the authors make a request to waive the fees. 2. There are technical problems - such as low bandwidths and high costs, I agree. But things are improving. Moore's law is making it possible to bring down the costs of both computers and connectivity. We have seen dramatic improvements in India in the past two decades. When I was in the university, people had to wait for years to get a telephone connection and even pay bribes! But Mr Sam Pitroda made it possible for us to have STD telephone booths in every town and most villages. The advent of many private players in the telecom sector and the independent telecom regulatory authority made it possible to bring down the costs of telephone calls. Mnay higher educational institutions and research labs have reasonable Internet access. Surely there is scope for improvement, but the situation is not bad. 3. What we need are people who will not throw up their hands when faced with even minor challenges. People who will work hard to achieve what they think is good for them. If OA is inherently goodfor science, scholarship and education in the developing world, then we should all work towards achieving it. We need people who can talk to their Ministers and policymakers about the need to adopt OA in a big way and explain why. We need people who can impress upon their governments the need to provide high bandwidth Internet access to higher education and research institutes. We need teachers and librarians who can take advantage of all that is good and available free on the Net such as the Open Course Ware (of MIT and other universities) and all the OAI-compliant archives. We need people who can motivate scientists and doctoral students to adopt the culture of OA in a big way. About a century ago USA was a large territory with no notable scientific achievement. By the Second World War the USA became a formidable powerhouse of scientific research. If USA can do it, the rest of us can do it too. Let us try. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam]