BioMed Central Blog

The Global Open Access Portal: A snapshot of open access progress worldwide

The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP), recently launched by UNESCO, offers a current snapshot of the status of open access to scientific information around the world. It is designed to provide the necessary information for policy-makers to learn about the global open access environment and to view their country’s status to understand where and why open access has been most successful. For scientists and medical researchers in low income countries, restricted access to research can be a major impediment to their work, and can mean the difference between life and death. Enabling researchers to access and publish their work without  barriers is a major step towards helping scientists in developing countries to tackle the problems outlined in the millennium development goals, of hunger, health and poverty. The open access movement is now attracting the global recognition it deserves and many organizations are working together to find ways to make open access a reality across the globe. Open Access Africa, for example, is a collection of initiatives, led by BioMed Central, which are designed to increase the output and visibility of scientific research published by African research institutes. The initiatives include a commitment to allow researchers from low income countries to publish their research in open access journals without incurring any charges, a Membership scheme for institutions in those countries to help members to promote open access within their institutions, and an annual Open Access Africa conference. However, our initiative is only one of numerous initiatives run by various organizations globally.

In order to alert interested parties to these schemes and to help make open access a reality, excellent up-to-date information is needed. GOAP has now joined initiatives such as the OSI-supported Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS), led by foremost open access experts Dr Alma Swan and Professor Leslie Chan, and Peter Suber’s authoritative monthly report on the status of OA. It offers researchers a complete overview of the services and support available to them both locally and internationally. The portal will allow researchers to develop and sustain their open access policies, which will improve access to research and lead to more effective research. Detailed, region-specific information will offer inspiration and help to researchers and institutions to set up an open access journal, an institutional repository or an open access advocacy campaign, and will act as a reference source to show how others went about their open access developments and with which possible partnerships. The more we can encourage open access to research the quicker scientific, social and economic development can progress.

Posted by Guy Melzack at 16:04    Comments (0)