The Brazilian statements on the 50th Anniversary of IBICT, one of the world's oldest information science organizations, makes Brazil the first Latin American country to enter this arena and to support freer dissemination of scholarship and research results. At the same time, ISTEC as a sponsor of this conference announced that the President of the organization would be signing the Berlin Declaration at their next meeting.
There was an unexpected grass roots "open letter" and proposal from the participants that was read at the end of the final day. The gist of the proposal was that the "participants urge all funding agencies, research institutes, and their own universities to support open access through education, reallocated funding and dedicated digital library research projects." A general vote by conference attendees was in overwhelming support of the proposal.
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.
