There was a greater sense of urgency to the open access discussions here than I typically find in the US. It was a stark reminder of just how great the gulf in access to information between the developed and developing worlds still is, operations like HINARI notwithstanding. The delegates from Africa and Asia and throughout Latin America perceive themselves to be so far behind the US and Europe, and they see better access to information as a key element in economic and social development. A system of open access seems even more self-evidently the right thing to do for many of them than it does to the PLoS folks. And when you look at it from their perspective, the need is pretty compelling. What I did not see discussed, however, was much in the way of practical approaches to getting there, and of course that's the hang up. The Salvador declaration calls upon "governments to make Open Access a high priority in science policies" and on "all stakeholders in the international community to work together to ensure that scientific information is openly accessible and freely available to all, forever." The devil is in the details, and there is a far greater sense here that government ought to just "solve" the problem than one sees back home.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/28/2005 09:40:00 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.
