Open Access
From Devwiki
Iryna Kuchma
Open Access helps to enhance access to, and greater use of research findings, increase the efficiency of research and developments, accelerate use and innovation, stimulate economy. It is also a new model for scholarly communication, which changes University policies towards real openness. Wikimedia Communities are natural agents of Open Access changes in their institutions, countries and regions. Open Access journals, Open Access repositories and Open Educational materials help to gather and distribute free knowledge. Successful Open Access projects from developing and transition countries will be presented and challenges and models for collaboration discussed.
After three years, the eIFL-OA Program has emerged as the leading organization promoting and advocating for Open Access in developing and transition countries. Through the eIFL-OA Program, 2,220 libraries in 50 transitional and developing countries build capacity on Open Access projects to enable 800 million people to benefit from the content, which is made freely available through Open Access as well as ensuring, that the local content produced within their countries is widely distributed, used, shared and remixed. eIFL OA Program goals: increased understanding of Open Access within eIFL region, including key players within the scholarly communications network (librarians, university administrators, authors, publishers, funders and policymakers); adoption of Open Access policies by research funding agencies within the eIFL region; development of a network of institutional repositories within the eIFL region, providing training and advice on Open Access journals and Open Access education materials. Our target audience is scholars and researchers, doctors and lawyers, students and teachers. And in Open Access projects we set alliances with human rights groups, environmental organizations, patient groups demanding access to governmental information, Internet activists (Wikimedia communities, Creative Commons, etc.) modelling the approach of the Alliance for Tax Payers Access (a diverse and growing alliance of organizations representing taxpayers, patients, physicians, researchers, and institutions that support open public access to taxpayer-funded research). According to the catalogue of the World Universities and R&D Centres (http://www.webometrics.info/), there are 3,012 higher education institutions and R&D Centres with an independent URL domain in the eIFL.net countries. eIFL-OA program will work with these institutions to make their intellectual input more visible and more accessible to all. Open content licences (Creative Commons) allow sharing and remixing the content. Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikiversity, Wikiquote, and other Wikimedia projects need strong scientific platforms built on the widest possible access to research information. Permanent access to the widest possible range of publications and research is also a pre-requisite for successful Wikimedia projects. The workshop participants will discuss how they can participate in the low cost Open Access projects for the benefits of all. National and regional networks of Open Access advocates will be created by mapping Open Access activists, connecting them and organising national and regional meetings. The networks will also participate in the international and national campaigns for Open Access to publicly funded research in developing and transition countries. Student and academe activists will be briefed how they can educate the peers about Open Access and encourage them to make their research Open Access.
