Massey Beveridge and three co-authors (all from the University of Toronto), The Ptolemy project: a scalable model for delivering health information in Africa, BMJ, October 4, 2003, pp. 790-793. An innovative project in which the University of Toronto Library makes its full electronic holdings available without charge to 100 East African surgeons through proxy servers in Toronto. The cost of adding these 100 affiliates to the university journal licenses is borne by the university. The holdings include the full texts of all 20,000 of Toronto's licensed journals, hundreds of medical textbooks, and many open access resources. Beveridge calls on other universities to adopt the project and extend its benefits. The project has received publicity from SciDev.Net and the BBC. The BBC story on the project quotes Beveridge: "The cost of having a few hundred affiliates in Africa is negligible for the university library. Any other university could do the same thing."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/22/2003 08:24:00 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.
