ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING TRUST FOR DEVELOPMENT
last up-dated August 14th 2008

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Recent OA news items:

NOTE! There is so much activity both in the establishment of new OA journals (or conversion of toll-access journals to OA) and new Institutional Repositories, and in the growing usage of both, that the best way to keep track of these developments is to monitor Peter Suber's Open Access News routinely - it is updated daily.

[1] Cuba, September 2-5, 2008: International Workshop for Open Access to Scientific Literature and other Digital Scientific Information Resources in Central America and the Caribbean: Focus on Education and Health for Sustainable Development, organised and supported by the IAP and the Cuban Academy of Science.

[2] The Open Society Institute has agreed a grant to develop an online OA Sourcebook. This much needed tool, to be called OASIS, will be launched shortly. Watch this space for further news

[3] Following on from the NIH and European Research Council's recently agreed OA mandates, further announcements of institutional/funder OA mandates have come from Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the University of Southampton and the University of Sterling. Further, the European University Association (representing nearly 800 European Universities) has unanimously recommended the establishment of university interoperable OA repositories. Now the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology has announced its OA mandate policy statement and news of many other mandates are in the pipeline . . . Now there are 46 such requirements, and others on the pipeline. For policy details, see the ROARmap site. For implications for developing countries see the EPT Blog.

 

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.

• 

• E-publishing workshop in Bangalore, India, November 2006

  The main activities of the EPT are to:

  • provide awareness of the benefits of electronic publishing
  • transfer e-publishing technology through training and online resources
    
  • provide management and distribution support
  • support open access initiatives and make them known to developing country scientists and publishers

  The Trust focusses 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.

Registered Charity Number 1059867