See the English summary by Pablo Ortellado on the A2k mailing list, March 31, 2008:
... Our report identifies public subsidies in 3 moments in the production of the scientific book in Brazil: in the funding of scientific research, in industrial production (by means of tax exemption to publishing houses) and directly through public university presses. The tax exemption alone costs annually US$ 560 million to the Brazilian public. We also studied the institutional status of national authors of 2,000 books adopted in several graduate courses and found that in scientific areas 86% of them work full time in public institutions. We also found out that public university presses produce about 10% of the books adopted. Despite this high public subsidy to scientific books, Brazilian copyright law includes very confuse provisions for public access (through exceptions and limitations) and Brazilian public institutions have had very incongruent policies to guarantee public access to books.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 4/01/2008 03:03:00 PM.
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.
