I quite agree with Mike Smith and his concerns about the Third World.
Open Access is the only way for Third World countries to see their journals recognized and integrated in the international bibliographies. As a result, Third World scientists will be able to publish on topics of interest to their situation (while responding to the universal criteria of excellence). The Web of Science is notoriously deficient on Third World coverage. The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences is quite as bad. Their coverage is 70% in English in disciplines where national and local languages are still extremely important). People close to the SciELO project in Latin America, Spain and Portugal have published on this topic and are beginning to take measure to counteract these biases. Recently, the people responsible for the Shanghai ranking of universities have decided to use Scopus rather than the Web of Science because the coverage of journals was wider in Scopus. I will not delve on the irony of the situation; neither will I analyze the validity of the Shanghai rankings, but I wel
come the multiplication of evaluation and ranking services as they serve to dilute the judgmental monopoly of the (recent) past.
Yes, Open Access will help Third World countries greatly, and not only in placing the articles of Third World scientists in suitable repositories.
Jean-Claude Guédon
-------- Message d'origine--------
De: American Scientist Open Access Forum de la part de Michael Smith
Date: jeu. 15/11/2007 10:22
À: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Objet : OA in developing countries
It is good to know that there is considerable interest and work on OA in
developing countries, and this is not at all surprising. The intention
of my brief post was NOT to say "nobody cares about or is doing anything
about OA in developing countries" (and I certainly did not intend to
insult anyone). Rather, my intention was to point out what seemed to be
a bias in much of the talk and writing on OA: issues are typically
framed solely in terms of the US and Europe. I follow the OA literature
at a distance, and this bias seems pretty clear in things that I come
across.
Mike Smith
Dr. Michael E. Smith
Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Arizona State University
www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9
http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/
http://calixtlahuaca.blogspot.com/
Received on Fri Nov 16 2007 - 11:03:30 GMT