Allam Ahmed and William E. Nwagwu, Building Open Access in Africa, International Journal of Technology Management, forthcoming in 2009.
Abstract: Inequality of access to social, economic and technological advantages among scientists becomes a crucial factor in formal science. Some poor DCs, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), can be said to be suffering from scientific information famine. The expectation that the Internet would facilitate scientific information flow does not seem to be realisable, owing to restrictive subscription fees of the high quality sources and the beleaguering inequity in access and use of the Internet and other ICT resources. This paper aims to assess and evaluate Open Access Movement (OA) as a proposed solution to avoid the restrictions over accessing scientific knowledge particularly in SSA. More importantly the paper will outlines opportunities and challenges of implementing OA in SSA. However, there are often mismatches between what "donor" countries can reasonably offer and what SSA countries can implement. Finally, the paper will discuss the slow uptake of the OA in Africa, the perception of African scientists towards the movement, the non-expression of concern by policy makers, among others, in addition to their implications on scientific activities in Africa.
PS: I've found the abstract in a couple of places (here too), and a longer summary, but not the full text. If I'm overlooking something, please drop me a line.
Update (11/11/08). The full-text is now OA. (Thanks to David Bradley.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/24/2008 09:01:00 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.
