Berlin 5 Conference

Submitted by Subbiah Arunachalam

The series of follow-up meetings to the Berlin Declaration on open access (http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html) reaches Berlin-5 at Padua, Italy, on September 19-21st. The theme of the meeting is 'From Practice to Impact: Consequences of Knowledge Dissemination'. At this meeting I was invited to organise a session titled, 'Open access in developing countries'. I will chair the session and the panellists include Barbara Kirsop (EPT, UK), D K Sahu (MedKnow, Mumbai), Stephen Katz (FAO, Rome). Summaries of the presentations and ppt files will be available from http://www.aepic.it/conf/program.php?cf=10.
This session will give us the opportunity to present the great benefits that open access to research findings offers developing country science.
In addition, I am also requested to speak on open access developments in India.
There will be another major event later this year: GK3 (the Third Global knowledge Conference organised by GKP at Kuala Lumpur, 11-13 December 2007) where Leslie Chan and I are organizing a panel discussion on "Open for Business: The Emerging Collaboration Economy" and I am organizing another session on "Accelerating inclusion through knowledge sharing". Speakers in these panels include Marjorie Whalen of IDRC, Mr Hindawi, Dr V Balji of ICRISAT, Dr Peter Ballantyne of IAALD and possibly Arthur Sale from Tasmania, Australia.