Open access book on Open Access

7 Apr 2008

Open access to knowledge and information: scholarly literature and digital library initiatives – the South Asian scenario

Das, Anup Kumar (2008) Open access to knowledge and information: scholarly literature and digital library initiatives – the South Asian scenario. UNESCO, New Delhi, India. ISBN 9788189218218

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Abstract

The South Asia sub-region is now in the forefront of the Open Access movement within developing countries in the world, with India being the most prominent partner in terms of its successful Open Access and Digital Library initiatives. Institutional and policy frameworks in India also facilitate innovative solutions for increasing international visibility and accessibility of scholarly literature and documentary heritage in this country. This publication has its genesis in the recommendations and proceedings of UNESCO-supported international conferences and workshops including the 4th International Conference of Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL2001, Bangalore); the International Conferences on Digital Libraries (ICDL2004 & ICDL2006, New Delhi); and the International Workshop on Greenstone Digital Library Software (2006, Kozhikode), where many information professionals of this sub-region demonstrated their Digital Library and Open Access initiatives. This book describes successful digital library and open access initiatives in the South Asia sub-region that are available in the forms of open courseware, open access journals, metadata harvesting services, national-level open access repositories and institutional repositories. This book may be considered an authoritative Source-book on Open Access development in this sub-region.

10 Apr 16:12

Brazil: Not so open

By daniel

Brazil: Not so open access

[seen on the BOAI Forum]

Scientific Books in Brazil: Public Subsidy and Access to Knowledge

The report identifies public subsidies in 3 moments in the production of the scientific book in Brazil: in the funding of scientific research, in industrial production (by means of tax exemption to publishing houses) and directly through public university presses. The tax exemption alone costs annually US$ 560 million to the Brazilian public. The study also focused on the institutional status of national authors out of 2,000 books adopted in several graduate courses and found that in scientific areas 86% of them work full time in public institutions. The report also found out that public university presses produce about 10% of the books adopted.

Despite this high public subsidy to scientific books, Brazilian copyright law includes very confuse provisions for public access (through exceptions and limitations) and Brazilian public institutions have had very incongruent policies to guarantee public access to books. These weak and confuse policies are blocking the access to scientific knowledge. Our survey of 10 undergraduate courses in the University of Sao Paulo showed that about 90% of them would have to spend a whole monthly family budget to buy the yearly required bibliography.

The Spanish version of the Report can be downloaded here:
http://www.gpopai.usp.br/wiki/images/1/1b/Libro_tec_cienti_caste...

Original Portuguese version:
http://www.gpopai.usp.br/relatoriolivros.pdf

More info via the coordinator of the report.

11 Apr 05:35

In Pakistan , the biggest

By Abdul Waheed Kandhro

In Pakistan , the biggest and most reliable open books access treasure is HEC( Higher Education Commission)
Briefly, Open-access literature is digital literature that is available on the web, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Committing to open access requires dispensing with the financial, technical and legal barriers that are designed t o limit access to s cientific research articles t o paying customers. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

http://www.digitallibrary.edu.pk