The Indian government has launched OA "knowledge portals" on water and energy, the first two in a series. From yesterday's press release:
A national drive to ensure access to knowledge and learning can transform India’s potential for development, lift young Indians to new levels of understanding and competence, and make India one of the leading knowledge societies in the world. This is the central affirmation of the National Knowledge Commission in its 2006 Report to the Nation, released here today. The Report was presented to the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, by Commission Chairman Mr Sam Pitroda. The special function was also marked by the Prime Minister’s inauguration of two national knowledge portals, opening public access to knowledge and ideas on the issues of Water and Energy.
Appointed by the Prime Minister in October 2005 with a three-year mandate, the Commission is assigned to prepare a blueprint for radical improvement of knowledge access, knowledge creation and application, by and for the Indian people....The Commission has already submitted wide-ranging recommendations for action to the Prime Minister. The Report today made these recommendations public....
The inauguration of the two national web portals on Water and Energy marks the Commission’s bid to enhance public access to information and knowledge on these two critical development issues. To ensure that the recommended knowledge flow and outreach is available to everyone, similar access is envisaged through the media of print, audio-visual communication, library and information institutions and services, and live interaction processes, in all languages. The promotion of web portals on internet is just one of the Commission’s initiatives to open up knowledge sources and resources for public use. The portals are designed to be interactive, and will offer the user public web space to share information and ideas and to create knowledge resources. The Commission has sought the partnership of expert organisations to lead and ‘champion’ the development of the portals. The Water portal has been developed by the public charitable Arghyam Trust, and the Energy portal by TERI. Public use portals and other communication outreach are also likely on the issues of environment, health, citizen’s rights and employment....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/13/2007 11:47:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
