BioMed Central Blog

Open access and the developing world - read the latest

The South African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) recently held its Open Access Leadership Summit in Botswana, 20-21 November. The Minister of Education in Botswana, the Honorable J. D. Nkate, opened the event, noting:

“We recognise that the internet and associated digital technologies are creating new opportunities for developing alternative models of publishing and disseminating scholarly work. Limited access to publicly-funded scientific research resulting from the traditional models and roots of disseminating this research is no longer tenable in the African environment. There is a widening gap in research output and consumption relative to the rest of the world. Open Access approaches and models promote universal unrestricted free access to full-text scholarly materials and scientific research via the internet, which in turn accelerates knowledge transfer.

The public good requires us to remove and prevent barriers to this research and its publication. This new knowledge has to inform not only our scientists and great thinkers, it must also be a resource for all our citizenry, for rich and for poor, for decision-makers and planners, and for an informed and creative general population.”

The program is now available online.

Eve Gray attended the SARUA summit and briefly summarises the proceedings in her blog:

“Promoting Open Access for increased quality research, enhanced collaboration, and the sharing and dissemination of knowledge, is a central principle for SARUA’s work. The Association is already engaging with groups and networks of expertise and good practice locally and globally in order to support the development of Open Access benefits for HE.”

Alma Swan also attended the summit, and in her blog, OptimalScholarship, she notes that “University leaders are starting to understand the messages about the new opportunities for science and scholarship now that we have the web.”

Meanwhile, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) in India, again, calls for open access to publicly-funded research. In a recent letter published in Indiaedunews.net, to the Prime Minister Dr. Mammohan Singh, the Chairman of the NKC, Mr Sam Pitroda, suggests that India should use the broadband internet in order to disseminate high quality educational resources on a global scale.

Among his recommendations, Pitroda suggests that all research articles published by Indian authors who receive financial assistance from the government should be available under the open access format. The government should also invest in the digitization of books and journals, which are outside copyright protection....

The United Nations Environment Program, Yale University, International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publishers, and over 340 international publishers and prestigious scientific societies and associations announced on November 6, 2007, recently launched the second phase of ‘Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), providing developing countries with access to one of the world’s largest collections of environmental science research online, and for little or no cost.

The Open Society Institute-supported electronic Information For Libraries (eIFL) network has helped establish almost one hundred open access Institutional Repositories in developing and emerging countries. These repositories are now moving towards linking up with the EU DRIVER project. One of the objectives of DRIVER is to organize and build a virtual, European scale network (portal) of existing institutional repositories from the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Belgium.

In the New York Times, Donald McNeil looks at a new online medical journal, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He notes the editors’ decision to focus on neglected diseases such as visceral leishmaniasis in war-torn Somalia and a perplexing leptospirosis outbreak in Thailand. The journal, which is being funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is openly accessible to anyone and excludes ads from pharmaceutical and medical companies. The journal also allows those scientists with financial difficulties to publish their research.

The wave of low-cost laptops continues, with Everex recently launching the Zonbu notebook. It is hoped that this will encourage those living in developing countries to get online.

Posted by Charlotte Webber at 14:35    Comments (0)