First Regional Latin American and Caribbean Consultation on Open Access to Scientific Information and Research

 

2013-05-03

 

30 experts and policy specialists from 25 Countries Argentine, Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador El Salvador, Guyana, Grenada, Guatemala, Jamaica Mexico, Peru Suriname, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and Grenadines, St. Martin, Uruguay and Venezuela will gather in Kingston from 5 to 8 March 2013 to develop strategies and a road map to implement open access policies in the Latin American and Caribbean Region.

 

UNESCO Kingston Cluster office in collaboration with Ministry of Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, Ministry of Information, Government of Jamaica, University of West Indies and UNESCO National Commission for Jamaica is organising this first Regional Latin American and Caribbean Consultation on Open Access to Scientific Information and Research. The funding support for this consultation is provided by the Government of Japan and by Regular Programme IFAP funding.

 

The main objective of the Regional Consultation is to share how free and unrestricted access to research and scholarly communication can increase the impact of research and benefit research institutions, authors, journal publishers and the society as a whole. The Consultation will examine also how the context of Open Access in the region can add to the productivity, visibility and accessibility of research and research outcomes.

 

It is expected that the Consultation will create an enabling mechanism to assess contexts of mandates or policy framework that surrounds Open Access and that it will provide an opportunity for reflecting upon case studies and examples of how Open Access has influenced teaching, research and development in the region.  Workshop participants will also have an opportunity to contribute towards highlighting priority areas for intervention to achieve “Openness” in the region and individual countries. Participants are also expected to review the UNESCO OA policy templates and workout specific policy for their own country/institution and develop a work plan on how to implement the same with specific timeline.

 

Among others, the Regional Consultation of the Open Access, organized also as a follow up to the Action Plan of the UNESCO/IFAP Conference on Building Caribbean Knowledge Societies (Grenada, June 2011), is expected to achieve the following results:

• National stakeholders enabled to specify trends and emerging challenges related to the impact of open access  on scientific information acquisition and sharing;
• Context and the utility of Open Access policy and regional specificities analyzed and barriers or support for Open Access Policy adoption identified;
• Specific technology generated trends, and their consequences for development in scientific information and research sharing better understood;
• Collaborative and collective efforts and actions behind the Open Access movement discussed and their policy implications are appreciated;
• Best practices of Open Access Initiatives from the region and beyond shared.

 

The strategy action plan generated in the consultation will provide road map for implementing Open access in the region in the years to come.

 

 

Source: IFAP Portal