Developing countries need OA
Donat Agosti, ‘Free’ access to research should not be limited, SciDev.Net, December 28, 2006. Excerpt:
All scientists — rich or poor — should have free and open access to published data; any attempt to restrict such access is unacceptable….
[T]he high cost of journal subscriptions can prevent scientists in developing countries from learning about the latest research….
One initiative intended to address the access issue is the Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE) initiative launched in October 2006. Like its sister programmes, the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) and Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), OARE seeks to benefit developing country researchers by offering them access to scientific journals at heavily reduced prices.
But all three programmes are setting a poor precedent for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. These initiatives should be promoting a roadmap for open access to all published scientific articles. But instead, they have settled for a halfway house of limited access and unhelpful restrictions.
OARE, supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Yale University in the United States, will provide scientists in the developing world with free access to over 1000 online environmental journals. But to benefit from the scheme, scientists must belong to a local, public and non-profit institution….
Countries with a gross national product (GNP) per capita of less than US$1000, as defined by the World Bank, qualify for free access to the materials; those with a GNP per capita under US$3000 must pay US$1000 per year for access. However certain countries, namely Brazil, China, India and Indonesia — whose scientists outnumber all the other OARE beneficiaries — are excluded, despite meeting the second criterion….
If UNEP and Yale University really want to support development they should not be teaming up with commercial publishers to create an unnecessary layer of control over scientific literature….
Knowledge transfer is a key ingredient in many international medical, agricultural and environmental treaties, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances. Providing unconditional open access to all new information generated around the globe — if combined with a one-off cost to digitise libraries’ published records — would allow countries to meet rapidly, without recourse to external agents, a large part of these commitments….
[O]pen access to information can spark scientific creativity in unexpected ways. Free access to high-resolution spatial data from the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) and Google Earth (a map of the Earth using real photographs and satellite images), for example, has triggered a surge in geospatial research and innovative applications. Amazonian Indians, for example, have started using Google Earth to protect their local rainforest by mapping the forests they live in to monitor deforestation and guard against illegal intruders….
source: Developing countries need OA
