Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Monday, February 12, 2007

Subsidized journal access in Chile

Paula Leighton, Online science library boosts access in Chile, SciDev.Net, February 12, 2007.  Excerpt:

A new initiative to spread the cost of subscriptions will give Chilean researchers access to a wide variety of electronic science and technology publications. 

Known as the National Library Online, the scheme is a partnership between the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) and the Consortium for Scientific and Technological Information Online (CINCEL).

Payments for annual subscriptions to online science databases, public libraries and journals — which are often unaffordable for one institution — will be pooled under the scheme.

The initiative, launched last week (1 February), will be part-funded by an annual grant of US$2.9 million contributed by CONICYT — which manages Chile's science and technology funding — until 2009. CINCEL's member institutions will contribute half the price of the subscriptions each year. Access will be made available to non-members....

The online library is similar to Brazil's Periodicos CAPES, which offers 188 higher education and research institutions full access to over 11,000 journals....

PS:  This is not open access but subsidized toll access, a topic I don't normally cover here.  But for other large examples in recent news, see (1) yesterday's story in The Hindu about subsidized JSTOR access in India and (2) Friday's story in CBC News about the $25 million grant from the Canadian government to the Canadian Research Knowledge Network to provide participating universities with access to social science and humanities research.