Friends: IDRC has adopted Open Access for all its public domain documents including research reports. Should not other research and donor agencies follow the IDRC example? Best wishes. Arun ----- IDRC Champions Intellectual Platform for Developing Countries Ottawa, Canada, December 23, 2005 Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is pleased to announce plans to create an Open Archive, the first among Canadian research funding organizations. The Open Archive will provide full access over the Internet to IDRC’s rich research archive. In addition to making information more freely available, this initiative will provide IDRC-funded researchers with a much-needed outlet to publish and showcase their work. The world of scholarly communications is rapidly changing. The emerging culture of protecting intellectual property, soaring costs of accessing research literature, and difficulties in having research published in traditional journals are restricting the development of research capacity in the South. The Open Archive will help Southern researchers to engage in the international dialogue on important development issues and increase the impact of their research. Throughout its 35-year history, IDRC has believed that to bring about positive change in people's lives, knowledge should be shared. Research results and documents generated by IDRC-supported projects, IDRC recipients, and IDRC staff represent a tangible intellectual output of the Centre’s mandate. The Open Archive will streamline and centralize the capture of IDRC project outputs and research documents. It will raise the visibility and facilitate the retrieval of the vast array of IDRC materials by consolidating them in a well-managed, indexed, secure, and permanent location. As a first step, IDRC will build a demonstration model in early 2006. By creating an Open Archive, IDRC promotes transparency of its results-based research and participates in the global movement to remove barriers — economic, social, and geographic — to the sharing of knowledge. -30- About IDRC Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is one of the world’s leading institutions in the generation and application of new knowledge to meet the challenges of international development. For more than 30 years, IDRC has worked in close collaboration with researchers from the developing world to build healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous societies. For information: Isabelle Bourgeault-Tassé (613) 236-6163, ext. 2343 ibourgeault-tasse@idrc.ca