Seminar on Open Access for Scientific Information

In India, there is a large opportunity for open-access publishing. There are many non-commercial research and development institutions, both academic and research laboratories. For example, there are approximately 300 universities that offer both graduate and research programs. There are also many R&D laboratories operating within government science agencies, which cover domains like industrial research, defense research, agricultural research, medicine, ecology, environment, information technology, space, energy, and ocean development.

Many of these institutions, and also several professional societies, publish science journals. Tools like the Open Journal Systems could help many of these journals to come online in an open-access environment. Open Access is  relevant to India because most  research is funded from public money, institutional framework and information infrastructure, trained manpower and financial resources are  adequately available.  It  widens distribution of information and knowledge and  lowers the cost of reaching a fairly wide audience while maximising return on public money. The OA movement is being supported by research funding agencies, academic institutions, researchers and scientists, teachers, students, and members of the general public. 

Open access publishing can foster the exchange of research results amongst scientists from different disciplines, thus facilitating interdisciplinary research, whilst providing access to research results to researchers world-wide, including from developing countries, as well as to an interested general public. 

Access to and sharing of information, including scientific information, goes through dramatic changes because of rapidly emerging new communication and information technologies (ICTs) and the societal transformations that they generate. But what are the long-term strategies to efficiently harness the open access potential for developing new approaches to knowledge acquisition and sharing? What needs to be done to effectively integrate these strategies into forward looking and sustainable policy making? How can we harness the potential of open access to develop knowledge societies that are people-centred, inclusive and development oriented?  What are the global environmental trends that will influence open access  in the next few years?  What are the main needs of the open access stakeholders in India and  South Asia ?  Which are the publishing models for open-access journals  and  what does it imply to finance and sustain open access journals in developing countries; how to overcome language and other barriers ? 

These issues are of strategic relevance to UNESCO as they address key challenges linked to building knowledge societies, one of the overarching objectives of the Medium Term Strategy 2008-2013.

UNESCO, jointly with the Centre for Internet Society is well placed to mobilize interested stakeholders to develop efficient implementation strategies in the area of acquision and sharing of scientific information  and to integrate them into forward looking and sustainable policies. 

UNESCO believes that open access is an enriching part of the scholarly communication process that can and should co-exist with other forms of communication and publication, such as society-based publishing and conferencing activities. Open access publications are also more easily included and searchable in search engines and indexing databases.

In order to initiate a sub-regional dialogue on democratizing access to scientific and health-related information, on the economics of scientific publishing and the  implications of the various open-access models  and the copyright and intellectual property issues, UNESCO convenes a one day seminar on 16 March 2011 in New Delhi. The  concept of « open access »  and the inter-relationships between academic institutions, researchers,  scientists and publishers will be  examined, as well as the challenges and barriers which OA is currently facing in this part of the world. 

Overall objectives 

• Strengthen awareness of UNESCO’s stakeholders on the potential of open access  in scientific knowledge  sharing that are dramatically accelerated by ICTs; 
• Provide analysis for anticipating foreseeable trends end emerging challenges  in order to enable Indian and South Asian stakeholders to develop strategies and policies to take them up;
• Develop a partnership and collaboration among interested stakeholdesr in order to improve access to and sharing of scientific information and research  through open access 

Expected results