I sympathise with developing country authors who have to go through the
process of asking for a dispensation of document management charges if
they can't afford these. This doesn't feel like a level playing field.
But I fail to understand why some of the recent correspondents to this
list are totally ignoring the BOAI-1 eprints archive route to OA.
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
As has been said many times already, let authors who cannot afford the
charges of publishing in OA journals (BOAI-2) continue to publish in non-OA
journals and at the same time archive their published papers in an
eprint archive. This way their research is guaranteed maximum exposure
and impact and it is achievable at almost nil cost. And in India, for
example, the first eprints archives have been set up and a series of
meetings are arranged in the sub-continent to raise awareness about the
potential of this for Indian science and to show other institutes how to
set up similar archives.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3312.html
http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/
Moreover, scientists in developing countries are even now distributing
their papers through OA journals working with Bioline International
http://www.bioline.org.br
a non-profit Brazil/Canada service)- where NO charge is made for document
management - and simultaneously archiving the papers in an OA-compliant
eprints archive on bioline.utsc.utoronto.ca. The increase in numbers of
refereed papers from some 27 journals published in the developing world,
and now in this archive, is increasing rapidly and approaching 1000
already. The aim of BI is to transfer the document management technology
to developing country publishers so that they too can set up their own
institutional archives, if they wish.
This route for authors from less developed nations offers a wonderful
opportunity that is steadily becoming recognised as news gets around.
The best of all worlds and a level playing field at last.
Barbara
Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
www.epublishingtrust.org
Received on Wed Feb 11 2004 - 13:10:41 GMT