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Dear All,
As the time for our discussion draws to a close we would like to register our thanks to UNDP for providing this facility. I imagine that there will be an analysis of contributions and a summary of the discussions, which will be valuable to us all.
However, as an organisation working to promote equality of access to published refereed research both to and from the science communities in the developing world, we would also like to register our disappointment on two counts:
1. It is disappointing that there have been only 7 contributions so far from
the developing world (with the notable exception of our colleague, Subbiah Arunachalam),
and 3 of these were from India. Is this because few people in the less advantaged
countries are aware of the forum, or is it because they are not yet in the OA
loop?
2. It is also very disappointing that in spite of our efforts to distinguish
between OA Publishing and OA Archiving right at the start of this debate (see
message http://groups.undp.org/read/messages?id=97277), misunderstandings still
exist - as Steven Harnad's recent message clearly shows http://groups.undp.org/read/messages?id=97112.
We would like to emphasise once more Stevan's reminder that OA is not OA Publishing
(OAP), but OA Archiving (OAA) too, and that OAA is affordable and do-able by
all institutes straight away. The acceptance of this fact will have incalculable
benefits to us all, but especially to the poorest nations. Fortunately, this
is now becoming understood by governments and policy makers as the UK Select
Committee report and the NIH statements are now showing (see
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm
and the US http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/congress.html). Academic communities
in poorer countries can take advantage of servers anywhere in the world offering
OAA services, without the need to set up their own independent servers straight
away. This way they get immediate visibility for their own research output.
As an example, the Bioline eprints server http://bioline.utsc.utoronto.ca now
holds two thousands papers from developing countries and all articles are searchable
through Google, OAIster and many other search engines. All of the 220 archives
listed in the Directory of Institutional Archives http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?page=all
are interoperable.
We ask that UNDP and its sister UN organisations urgently consider how OAA can very quickly and at minimal cost change the science opportunities for those currently disenfranchised. Global participation could take place without further delay. Help is needed to raise awareness of both policy-makers and the research communities. The international agencies can make a strong commitment to support the establishment of OAAs (that close both the N to S, S to N and S to S information gaps). At the same time, workshops can be supported at key institutes in the different regions to provide the technical assistance that can help institutes set up their own archives. A start has been made in India, Brazil and China, but it is clear that much more needs to be done.
As the two messages highlighted above explain, OAA changes nothing else (neither current publishing nor refereeing practices), but immediately opens the door to equality of access.
Barbara Kirsop, Leslie Chan, Subbiah Arunachalam
Secretary and Trustees of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
http://www.epublishingtrust.org