OA Policy Guidelines - a UNESCO publication by Dr Alma Swan

If you want to know all there is to know about Open Access policies, read this now:
unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002158/215863e.pdf.

This is a recently released document commisisoned by UNESCO and prepared by the highly reliable OA advocate, Dr Alma Swan. This is an important publication that should be the basis for all organisations wanting to know about how to embrace Open Access, or wanting to understand better the needs and mechanisms with which to accelerate access to essential research. For researchers in emerging nations, OA is the route to providing access on an equal basis and to ensuring their research becomes part of the global knowledge base.

Our congratulations to Alma Swan for such a comprehensive and sound document - and to UNESCO for supporting the need for it.

China EPT OA Award runner-up, Dr Xiaolin Zhang, praised for his work

One of the runners-up of the EPT OA Award, Dr Xiaolin Zhang received his Certificate from Bev Acreman. The citation from the EPT was read out in his honour, and was as follows:
 

"The Open Access movement stems from the simple but powerful belief that all human progress depends on the dissemination and sharing of scientific and cultural knowledge. That philosophy cuts across the vested interests of many powerful groups. The success of the Open Access movement then relies on the tireless efforts of selfless and usually anonymous individuals who promote and build the infrastructure to make such sharing of scientific research normal rather than an exceptional activity. The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development has therefore instituted an annual award to recognise those individuals in developing countries who have made unstinting efforts to enssure the widest possible access to research publications.

The EPT is therefore privileged to honour the work of Dr Xiaolin Zhang. Dr Zhang is a man of exceptional and international standing; he has promoted publication in Open Access journals such as BioMed Central; he has promoted awareness, developed OA policy for the Chinese Academy of Sciences and forged links worldwide to promote Chinese science. CAS institutes hold almost a quarter of a million journal articles and the CAS Portal provides access to some 160 journals.

The list of his efforts could be extended at length, but suffice to say that in the first inaugural year of its awards, teh EPT is privileged to recognise the contribution of Dr Zhang."

Presentation video of EPT OA Award to Francis Jayakanth

Please link to :  http://www.mssrfnva.in/Events/EPT-Award-function-at-MSSRF/21552958_nSdsMP#!i=1718491385&k=32CgbfH to view the presentation ceremony that took place in India to mark the award to the winner, Francis Jayakanth. The opportunity was taken to include a presentation on the benefits of OA to developing countries. The Swaminathan Research Foundation provided the camera skills and tools to record the event and Professor MS Swaminathan himself presented the Award.

Congratulations to all concerned!

An interview with Francis Jayakanth, winner of the 2011 EPT OA Award

It is very good to hear the views of the winner of the EPT OA Award, Francis Jayakanth, on the current status of access to research findings - he knows from first hand and from working in this area over many years the exact situation of researchers in the developing world with regard to access to research findings. See
http://cis-india.org/openness/interview-with-francis-jayakanth. He understands precisely the twin benefits afforded by open access, namely a) access to the world's literature that can impact on research in India, and b) the enhanced visibility of local research and the opportunities this provides for collaborative research programmes and future partnerships. That is, the need for S to N, N to S and S to S exchange of information that the EPT and like-minded organisations have been advocating. He knows from personal contacts the existing needs of researchers - but says, ' . . So still a long way to go in achieving 100 per cent OA to scholarly literature! If all the research institutions set up their IRs and ensure that copies of post-prints are placed in the IRs then 100 per cent OA to scholarly literature could be achieved, at least, from now onwards.' Jayakanth has been working tireleesly to achieve this optimal situation.

The Hindu publicises India's progress towards full Open Access to research publications

The Hindu has an article describing India's progress towards Open Access to research publications, see http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/article2893901.ece. This coincides with India's announcement by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in which 2012/2013 was declared the year of science.

The Hindu article says '... there is a lot of effort being made all over the country to not only intensify the quantity and quality of research but also ensure greater access for all' and includes quotes from EPT Trustee, Subbiah Arunachalam, and the winner of the EPT OA Award, Francis Jayakanth, announced here earlier.

Berlin 10 OA Conference to be in Africa for the first time

From Ina Smith, runner-up of the EPT OA Award and Repository Manager of the University of Stellenbosch (SUNScholar):

****  First Announcement  ****
Berlin 10 Open Access Conference to be held in Stellenbosch, South Africa

Stellenbosch University, in partnership with the Max Planck Society and the
Academy of Science for South Africa, has the pleasure of announcing that the
prestigious Berlin 10 Open Access Conference will be held in Stellenbosch,
South Africa. This will be the first time that the Berlin Open Access
Conference will be held in Africa. As is tradition with the conference, it
will explore the transformative impact that open, online access to research
can have on scholarship, scientific discovery, and the translation of
results to the benefit of the public.
The Conference will be held at the Wallenberg Research Centre, Stellenbosch
Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS). STIAS is situated on the historic
Mostertsdrift farm in the heart of Stellenbosch.

Conference date:                   7-8 November 2012

Pre-conference date:            6 November 2012

The theme, programme, speakers and other relevant information will become
available in forthcoming announcements which will also be available on the
conference website (www.berlin10.org).
*************************

Ina Smith

E-Research Repository Manager (SUNScholar) | Library and Information Service
| University of Stellenbosch | Private Bag X5036, 7599 | South Africa
http://scholar.sun.ac.za | http://oa.sun.ac.za | E-mail: ismith@sun.ac.za |
Tel:  +27 21 808 9139 | Skype: smith.ina | Office hours: Mo-Fr: 08h00-16h30


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An attempt to block OA distribution of US published research findings - the RWA

The EPT has written to a number of publishers/organisations that are signed up members of the American Association of Publishers, which supports the recently presented Research Works Act (RWA) submitted to Congress as HR3699. This Act seeks to undermine the existing open access distribution of published research, via such outlets as the NIH, and is clearly a move by the publishing industry to undermine the great advances already made towards the free and fair distribution of publicly funded research findings. The EPT has written to publishers that have existing OA policies, pointing out that the RWA act is in conflict with these policies and requesting clarification and preferably dissociation from the stance taken by the AAP.

Fur further information on the RWA, follow Peter Suber’s blog on https://plus.google.com/u/0/109377556796183035206/posts/QYAH1jSJG6L

and read other comments here (http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/867-guid.html).

Below is an example of the letters we have sent:

"We write from the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, a long-established UK-based registered charity which works to support access to current research by the vast majority of the world’s researchers who live in low-economy countries.

The US Research Works Act currently proposed totally undermines this effort. This Act has been introduced by Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), both of whom appear to have received substantial sums of money from the publishing industry over the past few years. The Act would prevent open dissemination of publicly-funded research, undoing all the good done by the NIH open access policy and preventing the world’s disadvantaged researchers from accessing the findings from US research.

The American Association of Publishers has openly welcomed and supported the Act. Your company/organisation is a member of the AAP.  As a publisher with a mission to disseminate research as widely as possible, we would expect you to dissociate yourselves, clearly and loudly, from this proposal. Support for the RWA is clearly in direct conflict with your stated policy in support of Open Access.

Open Access has been a life-line to the researchers in developing and emerging countries, their institutes and ultimately to their national economies, providing the potential for building on past research to the benefit of the global community (think infectious diseases, all public health issues, climate change, agricultural problems, energy provision, water conservation, engineering developments . . .).

The economic returns to countries from freedom of access to global research and the developments that follow from it are vastly greater than those from the small service provided by the publishing industry. The former is almost immeasurable in comparison. This Act has been driven by those that are putting commercial gain before the health and indeed survival of many of the world’s populations. This is not the purpose of public investment in research.

Yours sincerely,

The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development

Web site:http://www.epublishingtrust.org

Blog:http://www.epublishisngtrust.blogspot.com"

EPT OA AWARD 2011- announcing the winner!

Press Release January 1^st 2012

INAUGURAL EPT AWARD for OPEN ACCESS

The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development is pleased to announce the winners of a new annual award to be made to individuals working in developing countries who have made a significant personal contribution to advancing the cause of open access and the free exchange of research findings.

We received 30 proposals from organisations in 17 developing countries on four continents, naming individuals who have worked hard to promote Open Access and who have achieved substantial progress. The selection of a single winner was extremely difficult as we received nominations for so many individuals who have made impressive strides by any or all of the following means:- 

• establishing OA institutional repositories;

• setting up or encouraging conversion to OA journals;
• achieving establishment of OA mandates requiring research to be OA on  publication, or other policy developments;
• advocating OA via seminars, publications, workshops, videos;
• training others in the technology of setting up IRs;
•  preparing and establishing e-learning projects;
• working towards the acceptance of Creative Commons licensing arrangements for research publications;
• developing software for use in OA practices.

Because of the high standard of the applicants, we have decided to name a single winner, but also to recognise three other individuals who were very close runners-up. All will receive a certificate and the winner will receive in addition an engraved plaque in the next few weeks.

We are very happy to announce that the winner of the inaugural award is Dr Francis Jayakanth of the National Centre for Scientific Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.  Dr Jayakanth played a significant role in the establishment of India’s first institutional repository (IR) (http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in). He now manages the IR and has provided technical support for establishing IRs in many other universities and institutes in India. He has been the key resource person at many events to train people in setting up IRs and OA journals. He has delivered presentations on IRs, OA journals, the OAI protocol, OAI compliance, the benefits of OA to authors and institutions and the role of libraries. He has developed a free and open source software tool (CDSOAI), which is widely used. 

The Indian Institute of Science is the most prestigious institute in India and its IR now holds >31,400 records, making the century-old institute's research far more globally visible than before. The University Grants Commission in India has been impressed by the IISC’s IR and has directed all universities in India to replicate this effort.

Francis Jayakanth can indeed be considered an OA ‘renaissance man’, an advocate and technical expert in all aspect of Open Access development and an inspiration to all, both at the research and policy level.

The EPT is proud to congratulate Dr Jayakanth as our first Award winner. We believe this Award and the example of our first winner will inspire many others and lead to similarly impressive nominations  in 2012.

The runners-up for this award were (in alphabetical order): 

  - Ina Smith, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa;

  - Tatyana Zayseva, Khazar University, Azerbaijan;
  - Xiaolin Zhang, National Science Library, Chinese Academy of  Science.

The EPT wishes to congratulate them and all who have been proposed, since without exception they have made a significant personal contribution to the sharing of research findings across the world.  We will be sharing some of their stories and successes on our blog over the next few weeks.

Electronic Publishing Trust for Development

Web site http://www.epublishingtrust.org

Ept Blog http://www.epublishingtrust.blogspot.com

=================================================

MANY CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR INAUGURAL WINNER!

Dr Francis Jayakinth 
---------------------------------------------------------------------

We wish to stress once more that the selection of a single winner was exceedingly difficult since all nominees were very worthy and their work of such a high standard. Nominees ranged from those working on long-established developments to those setting up new ‘starter’ efforts, making progress in one or all of the aspects of Open Access, listed above. We were very encouraged to learn how much impressive work is underway around the world to achieve equitable access to research findings and hope that this Award will encourage further developments in the years ahead.


While established efforts in the ‘North’ now debate the finer points of Open Access and are frustrated at the too-slow speed of adoption, the developing world is marching ahead with establishing essential infrastructure, recognising the great benefits that OA can bring to authors, their institutes and indeed to the progress of research in their regions.


We will be posting further details of the excellent work of some of our nominees in the weeks ahead. 

The Impact Factor as a measure of research quality is no longer appropriate - OA has the answer

Leslie Chan, Director of Bioline International and EPT Trustee, argues that the continuing use of the Impact Factor as a measurement of research quality is no longer appropriate and excludes much valuable research carried out in the developing world. Researchers from developing countries feel the need to publish in journals with high impact levels as measured by the Thomon Reuter's IF and their research agenda is consequently often dictated by this, rather than by  national and regional needs for research effort. Other metrics are more inclusive and should replace the IF in this open networked climate. Click on SciDevNet to read his opinion piece.

JISC offer to promote OA activities - forwarded

From: Internal announcement list for JISC Advance [JISC-ADVANCE-STAFF@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Daniel McCaffrey [danmccaffrey@RSC-SOUTH-WEST.AC.UK]
Sent: 16 November 2011 15:16
To: JISC-ADVANCE-STAFF@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: JISC Open Campaign Steering Group-Request

Dear Colleagues,

I'm one of the JISC Advance representatives on the steering group orchestrating JISC's national "Open" campaign.

The group are engaged in planning promotional activities for JISC to push the "open" agenda to supported Institutions.  Can any RSC/JISC Advance colleagues avail me of any Open-related comms activity coming up in the new year that would benefit from being promoted on a corporate level, as JISC aim to  create a calendar of relevant activities to push throughout the campaign.

If you have anything of interest, please let me know.

Best Wishes, Dan McCaffrey

IFLA establishes OA Task Force

The International Federation of Libraries Association (IFLA) has endorsed open access and established (Bordeaux, October 11^th 2011) an OA Task Force to take this forward. The Task Force will work on the following issues:

-          Advocate for the adoption and promotion of OA policies within the framework of the UN institutions;

-          Build capacity within the IFLA Memebership to advocate for OA at the national level, through the development of case studies and best practices for OA promotion;

-          Connect to various organisations working for OA – such as SPARC, COAR, OASPA, EIFL, Bioline International & DOAJ, among others.

The first step is to produce a road map for the work to be presented to IFLA Governing Board in December 2011, and to begin collecting case studies and best practice as to how the library associations can promote national policies and programmes to foster the progress of OA.

Dedicated web pages will be created in cooperation with IFLA Head Quarters.

The Task Force has the following members (two of which are Trustees of the EPT):

- Lars Bjornshauge,1st Vice President Swedish Library Association  (contact, see below)

- Christoph Bruch, Member Ellen Tise´ Presidential working group on OA

- Leslie Chan, Associate Director Bioline International, Trustee EPT, University of Toronto,    Scarborough, Canada;
 - Jan Hegerlid, Programme Coordinator of OA se, National Library of Sweden

- Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Net, OA Manager, Rome, Italy

      - Derek Law, Professor University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom, Chair EPT

- Rick Luce, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries, Emory University, USA

- Felipe Martinez, Director, University Center for Library Science Research, Autonomous University of Mexico

- Reggie Raju, Member Ellen Tise´ Presidential working group on OA

- Bas Savenijie, Diector, National Library of Netherlands

- Xuamao Wang, Associate Vice-Provost, Emory University Libraries, Emory University, USA

- Qiang Zhu, Director, Peking University Library, Beijing, China

From announcement sent by:

Lars Bjornshauge

Independent Libraries & Scholarly Communications Professional

1st Vicce President Swedish Library Association

mobile phone +45 53510603

Skype id: lbj-lub0603

e-mail elbjoern0603@gmail.com

EPT Award for indviduals in developing countries working for OA

THE 2011 EPT AWARD FOR INDIVIDUALS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES WORKING FOR OA

Open Access Week arrives again this October, and is a time to celebrate all that has been achieved in the previous twelve months. The Electronic Publishing Trust is a long standing advocate of OA and the difference it can make. As our contribution to this year’s OA Week, we are launching an annual international award to recognise the impact that individuals can make. It is to be hoped that such international recognition will acknowledge the very real efforts being made by many individuals throughout the world, and will accelerate the development of models for achieving the open and free transfer of essential information for the progress of research.

---

ANNOUNCEMENT : The Electronic Publishing Trust* is pleased to announce that it is launching an annual award for individuals in developing and transition countries** who have made significant advances to the cause of open access and the free exchange of research findings. 

 Nominations are sought for the first such award. Individuals or organisations may nominate themselves or others, sending a statement using the attached form to the chair of the EPT Board, (d.law@strath.ac.uk) outlining the achievements of the individual. Please find the nominations form below.

 Nominations should be received by 30th November 2011. Selection of a winner will be made by a panel of three EPT Board Members which will be chaired by Dr Alma Swan (http://bit.ly/aQXNEy) a well-known figure in Open Access advocacy.

 The result will be announced in January 2012 and it is intended that a presentation will be made at a location convenient to the winner. The prizewinner will be publicly recognised through the presentation of a certificate and an engraved award. It is also hoped to have a “fringe” event at future OA meetings to celebrate the work of the winner.

---

*The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT) was established in 1996 to facilitate open access to the world's scholarly literature and to support the electronic publication of reviewed bioscience journals from countries experiencing difficulties with traditional publication.

**As defined by the UN at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm#transition

---

EPT Award submission form for nominations

1. Nominations may be made by individuals or organisations.

2. The EPT Award is for individuals who have made an impact on the progress of open access to research findings.

3. Please supply the following information:

Name of nominee:

Affiliation of nominee:

Position or role of nominee:

Contact address and email of nominee:

Contact address and email of proposer:

Please provide a brief statement to describe the ACTIVITIES of the nominee in support of Open Access (no more than 250 words):

Please describe the RESULTS of these activities (no more than 200 words):

Please describe the SIGNIFICANCE of these activities and results for Open Access (no more than 200 words):

Please send your proposal by 30/11/2011 to: EPT Chair, Derek Law, at derek.law@strath.ac.uk

 October 1st 2011

An important OA meeting in Brussels

This is just to inform you of an important open access meeting in Brussels, on September 28th 2011. Here is the link to the programme:

Many congratulations to EIFL for its outstanding work and for winning the SPARC 6th award!

EIFL Open Access programme wins sixth SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications

The EIFL Open Access (OA) programme has been chosen as the winner of the 2011 SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications for its awareness raising, advocacy and capacity building activities over the last three years, and for its success in developing a large number of repositories and open access journals in EIFL partner countries.

“With the sixth Award, SPARC Europe wishes to encourage the EIFL Open Access programme to continue its excellent work and to provide inspiration to other organizations with EIFL's approach and activities. SPARC Europe believes the EIFL Open Access programme sets a perfect example for others who aim to take up advocacy work and run activities to further the open access movement”, said Drs Astrid van Wesenbeeck, Executive Director, SPARC Europe.

“It is a great honour for EIFL to receive the sixth SPARC Europe Award. We embraced the open access movement from the beginning when we signed on to the Budapest Open Access Initiative a decade ago. It is gratifying that our efforts have been recognized by the international community. We are fortunate to have Iryna Kuchma, a passionate open access advocate, managing the EIFL-OA Programme,” said Rima Kupryte, EIFL Director. “We are also grateful to the Open Society Foundation Information Program who have supported our work on open access throughout this time.”

Over the last three years, EIFL-OA has organized over 40 awareness raising and training events with participants from over 50 countries, and has advocated nationally and internationally for OA policies and mandates by institutions and governments. EIFL partner countries in Europe now boast over 210 open access repositories and more than 2,340 OA journals, ten higher education institutions have newly adopted open access mandates, and hundreds of library professionals, scholars, educators and students have been empowered to become open access advocates.

 

“I would like to thank SPARC Europe for this award that recognizes the achievements of EIFL and our partner countries. I would also like to thank the network of EIFL-OA country coordinators and the many experts who have contributed greatly to the success of the programme,” said Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access programme manager. “Without their hard work and commitment, we would not have been able to achieve these impressive results.”

  

Note: there is a link to the EIFL Newsletter on the right column of this blog.

OA by numbers - getting the sums right

Richard Poynder has once more carried out an authoritative interview, this time addressing the complex issue of calculating the progress of open access. The interview focuses mainly on the work of Yassine Gargouri, working recently with Stevan Harnad, but includes calculations made by others. The interview is here: http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/06/open-access-by-numbers.html.

There are a number of charts showing the progress recorded, including the highly significant impact of institutional mandates on the speed of progress - the numbers of articles that are open access rising from 22% to 64% in repositories where a mandate operates.

There is a link from this interview to one carried out with Alma Swan previously, in which the future of scholarly communication is discussed.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. This permits you to copy and distribute it as you wish, so long as you credit Richard Poynder as the author, do not alter or transform the text, and do not use it for any commercial purpose. If you would like to republish the interview on a commercial basis, or have any comments on it, you may email Richard Poynder on richard.poynder@btinternet.com.

Liege leads the way in OA understanding

An interview by Richard Poynder with the Rector of Liege University, Bernard Rentier, provides a perfect understanding of the way to implement Open Access. His personal commitment and ability to make the critical arguments that will inform his colleagues at the University have resulted in its institutional repository, named ORBi, the Open Repository and Bibliography, being ranked the top and most active OA repository, with more than 62,000 records in its archive, of which 37,500 are full text publications.

When asked what were the key arguments that have persuaded his colleagues to embrace the OA philosophy, he answered:'Concern about the cost of scholarly journals; concern about having an inventory of the university’s production; and concern about having a showcase of the university’s research performance.'

To see the full interview, click here.

Fortunately, the creation of the Enabling Open Scholarship, of which Rentier is Chair, allows his clear vision and experience to be extended to academic organisations everywhere.

If you read nothing else this weekend, read this interview. Our thanks to the work of Richard Poynder.

EPT article selected for WHO/PLoS World Health Report 2012

An article authored by Leslie Chan, Subbiah Arunachalam and Barbara Kirsop has been selected for inclusion in a WHO/PLoS Collection of articles for the World Health Report 2012. See here for the collection, or here specifically for this article.

Open Access in a nutshell

When you need to persuade people about the value of open access, short briefing papers can often help. Busy people will have time to read them and they can answer their concerns quickly, where more in depth articles may stay at the bottom of the pile. Here are four useful papers from experienced practitioners who have traveled the road successfully. They are titled:

• Open Access: in support of research - Paul Ayris
• Open Access: beyond the numbers - Martin Hall
• Open Access: embedding repositories - Susan Ashworth
• Gold Open Access Publishing - Jill Russell

They come from the Centre for Research Communications, based at the University of Nottingham.

UNESCO announces GOAP (Global Open Access Portal)

While we greatly welcome UNESCO’s acknowledgement of the value of Open Access, and are interested to hear about its plans for a global open access portal (see http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31316&URL_DO=DO_PRINTPAGE&URL_SECTION=201.html), we have concerns about the aims of this initiative. The announcement says GOAP “is supposed to be the first destination for users seeking information on OA. OA experts will collect, analyse and filter information related to the subject from different countries.” It also states “GOAP aims to assist UNESCO Member States in understanding the current state of Open Access and in taking appropriate decisions.”

These aims are admirable, but our concern is that they are already underway through a number of well-established initiatives, such as the OSI-supported Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS), see www.openoasis.org, or Peter Suber’s authoritative monthly report on the status of OA, see http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm, to name but two. There are many other OA developments of which UNESCO must be aware and will not want to duplicate.

As a platform for OA, OASIS is led by foremost OA experts, Dr Alma Swan (Key Perspectives) and Professor Leslie Chan (University of Toronto), with input from many academic authorities around the world. Peter Suber’s SPARC-supported reports are unmatchable in authority. We would like to know what is different about the GOAP concept and how does it complement and support existing initiatives? Perhaps there are real differences planned. Perhaps UNESCO has identified gaps that could be filled?

Funding is limited in today’s environment and it would surely be wise to avoid duplication and complement existing efforts? ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’ is the oft-quoted concept that underpins progress in research. We can think of very many open access initiatives (such as the EIFL network in developing and emerging countries, the global network of OA institutional repositories, the established consortia of OA journals  - SciELO, Bioline International, MedKnow Publications), the progress of which would be significantly accelerated with UNESCO providing support and global outreach.

All OA advocates and experts will welcome UNESCO’s wish to strengthen OA in its member countries and we hope it is not too late to consider further and take advice from the international network of open access communities before finalizing plans for GOAP. UNESCO is a ‘new boy on the OA block’ and if it can reach out to existing developments and experts, it can make a real difference to the free exchange of essential research knowledge.

Publishers withdraw Bangladeshi access to 2500 journals

The news (BMJ 2011; 342:d196) that a number of commercial publishers partnering in the HINARI programme have pulled out their services to Bangladesh by withdrawing 2500 journals comes as no surprise. Intermittent withdrawals have been recorded from time to time, and indeed other withdrawals may not have been reported.

Publishers have every right to protect their markets and profits, and this is why advocates of the Open Access developments have been working hard to promote instead the benefits of OA as a reliable, research-driven means to provide peer reviewed publications for the research communities, both through interoperable OA institutional repositories and OA journals. The UN programmes (HINARI, OARE, AGORA) have always discriminated between countries because they are based on the arbitrary criteria of national GDP. Even for qualified countries, access is barred to those where publishers have existing markets (India and South Africa, for example, are denied access). Moreover access is only through registered organisations so that individual researchers in other laboratories are similarly barred from access. EPT colleagues have repeatedly warned that these donor programmes cannot be depended upon as sustainable fixtures and have continued to work to persuade the UN agencies to put their weight behind OA and all its benefits. It remains a mystery that these powerful organisations, while purporting to approve the OA movement, do little to help raise awareness, support training and advocacy.

Meanwhile, organisations such as EIFL, Bioline International, MedKnow Publications, SciELO, EPT and many others have made great progress in providing research publications and practical services to promote not only access to the global science base but also to provide a platform for national journals to ‘become international’ through OA-provided increased visibility – a South to North and South to South flow of research information as well as the invaluable North to South flow (see ‘Pre-OA national journals become post-OA international journals’ on http://epublishingtrust.blogspot.com/2011/01/pre-open-access-local-journals-become.html). This link includes a very interesting video (see http://vimeo.com/10169351) of Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango discussing the importance of Open Access for research in Kenya and other African countries.

Globally, the recent review of OA progress in 2010 by Peter Suber (see http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-11.htm) stated "The growth of OA over the past year was deep, wide, and steady" and provided a summary of the many new developments – the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) added 4 new titles/day, Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), recorded 10 new repositories/week, and so on. This movement is steadily becoming accepted as the future mechanism for the distribution of essential research findings - and now is the time to make renewed efforts in raising awareness of the vast and growing volume of articles that OA has already delivered.

Commercial publishers cannot be expected to donate free access to their journals indefinitely and it is up to the research communities to renew efforts to consolidate what has been achieved so far. There is no need to despair that all is lost, and EPT calls on academic communities to recognise the importance of OA in the support of research in poor regions of the world. This matters to us all, since the research generated in these regions completes the global picture of the situation in health, agriculture, climate change, energy provision and all other aspects of our existence. Rather than try to reinstate the HINARI donations, only to be disappointed further down the line, better by far to work with all OA advocates and initiatives to ensure that everyone is aware of what is available to them already - or of what they are missing by not accessing OA resources. See the OASIS resource for practical information on how to implement Open Access http://www.openoasis.org.

Let’s make 2011 the year all researchers in the information-deprived regions are made aware of OA resources. Why depend on the vagaries of the market when alternatives are there at the click of a mouse?

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