ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING TRUST FOR DEVELOPMENT
last up-dated November 14th 2009

Open Access Week is now over - to see some of the exciting things that happened link to Open Access News

Petition for the EU Recommendation for guarenteed access to EU-funded research results continues to be supported,
and now reaches 27867signatures! A further 50 signatures during OA week.

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NOTE: For all recent OA developments, the first stop is Peter Suber's Open Access News - it is updated daily.
This is now supplemented by the beta version of an open access tracking project (OATP), a collaborative effort to track new OA developments worldwide. For definitive information on all aspects of open access (scholarly, technical, policy), link to OASIS

[1] Two new publications on the chain of communication from research publication to health workers have been published. One is as a Round Table discussion document in the August WHO Bulletin, and the other in the journal, Open Medicine.

[2] OASIS - the OSI-supported OA sourcebook for all needing information about OA. This is a global effort that will continue to evolve with new links and information as the international research communities contribute to the resource. OASIS was launched at the ELPUB2009 Conference, where abstracts are now available. Conference held in Milan, Italy, June 10-11, 2009.

[3] One day conference on Open Access: Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons, March 26th, 2009, New Delhi, India. Hosted by the CSIR and organised by the Centre for Internet and Society. Presentation, below, by Leslie Chan on Institutional Repositories in the Age of Open Scholarship. Details of all presentations at this, and a second OA conference in Bangalore, to follow.

[4] EPT urges Obama research appointees to support open access to publicly funded research

The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT) was established in 1996 to facilitate open access to the world's scholarly literature and to support the electronic publication of reviewed bioscience journals from countries experiencing difficulties with traditional publication.

Scientists and publishers in many countries face problems both in accessing the world's research information and in gaining high visibility for their publications and national research output. The cost of printing and distributing journals leads to low circulation levels which in turn leads to a reluctance by scientists to publish. The outcome is the loss of much important scientific information which either remains unavailable to the international scientific community or suffers long delays in publication. The transfer of e-publishing technology and online distribution of such journals can greatly increase visibility and enrich the global knowledge base.

The main activities of the EPT are to:

• provide awareness of the benefits of electronic publishing
• support open access (OA) initiatives and make them known to developing country scientists and publishers
• transfer e-publishing and OA technology through workshops, training and online resources
• support management and distribution activities
• provide e-publishing and OA advocacy through articles, presentations, workshops.

  The Trust focuses on the biological sciences which, in such fields as infectious diseases, public health, tropical medicine, biodiversity, environmental and agricultural sciences, require a global picture. Local scientific information is critical, particularly in the case of human, animal and plant disease surveillance and conservation.

  

  E-publishing workshop in Bangalore, India, November 2006

Registered Charity Number 1059867