Many thanks to Dr. Helio Kuramoto for his excellent, accurate summary
http://blogdokura.blogspot.com/2006/11/2-conferncia-sobre-acesso-livre-ao.html
of the recent Open Access (OA) workshop at U. Minho, Portugal.
http://www.sdum.uminho.pt/confOA/index.htm
I just wanted to add that I (and other OA activists worldwide, notably
Eloy Rodrigues of U. Minho, organizer of the workshop) admire and applaud
the efforts of Dr. Kuramoto and IBICT.
http://www.ibict.br/
Brazil is already a leader on the "golden" road to Open Access (OA)
in the Developing World, namely, OA publishing, with its admirable
Scielo journals initiative;
http://www.scielo.org/index.php?lang=en
But this is definitely not enough. What is urgently needed at this time is
a strong Brazilian initiative along the faster, surer "green" road to OA:
OA self-archiving, and especially OA self-archiving mandates from Brazil's
research institutions and funders, exactly as summarised by Dr. Kuramoto:
"O estabelecimento dessa política e desse mandato só pode ser
conseguido por meio do convencimento dos dirigentes das agências de
fomento, das instituições governamentais, em espeical as universidades
e os institutos de pesquisas, além, obviamente, dos pesquisadores."
This was also the verdict of the recent OA congress in Bangalore,
http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/OAworkshop2006/
likewise attended by representatives from Brazil; its outcome, the
"National Open Access Policy for Developing Countries" was precisely
the one summarised above by Dr. Kuramoto.
http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/OAworkshop2006/pdfs/NationalOAPolicyDCs.pdf
I regret that I could not write this comment in Portuguese, but, with the help
of Ana Alice Baptista, I have tried to make up for that here:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/publicar-ou-perecer.pdf
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
Received on Thu Dec 21 2006 - 12:43:33 GMT