Open Access: UNESCO has published “Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Open Access” which is largely about open access to scientific information and is designed “to promote Open Access in Member States by facilitating understanding of all relevant issues related to Open Access.“ Comments are being solicited here.
There are nine sections are:
Section 1: The Development of Open Access to Scientific Information and Research, gives an overview of the definitions used, and the history of the OA movement – Budapest–Bethesda–Berlin.
Section 2: Approaches to Open Access, enumerates the ‘green’ and ‘gold’ routes to OA.
Section 3: The Importance of Open Access, explains how OA is important for scholars, research institutions
and for developing knowledge societies.
Section 4: The Benefits of Open Access, emphasizes that OA enhances research process, improves visibility and usage of research works, and therefore, the impact of research works is also increased through citations and impact outside the academia.
Section 5: Business Models, analyses the traditional business models in scientific communications and describes the new emerging models in the context of OA.
Section 6: Copyright and Licensing, provides an overview of the legal issues in a non-legal language to explain that copyright is at the heart of OA. Copyright owners consent is essential to make OA happen, and authors and creators can retain rights to increase use of their works through different mechanisms, including Creative Commons licensing.
Section 7: Strategies to Promote Open Access, describes policy- focused, advocacy-based and infrastructural approaches to OA. While all the approaches are important, it also lists a number of organizations engaged in promoting OA.
Section 8: Policy Framework for Open Access, presents an overview of the growth of policies, and a critical appraisal of the issues affecting OA policies. It also presents a typology of OA policies to explain the difference in different types of policies adopted around the world. The chapter should be seen along-with the examples in Appendix 1.
Section 9: Summary Policy Guidelines, is the key section of this document and explain the various components that a standard policy should consider, and suggests the best policy decision to be included. This section should also be seen along-with the templates in Appendix-2.
Public Finance: A new report entitled Technology for Transparent and Accountable Public Finance, has been published by the Open Knowledge Foundation.
Publish What You Fund: David Hall-Matthews has been named the new director of Publish What You Fund. He comes from an academic background, having lectured in international development at the University of Leeds. He has also taught at LSE, SOAS and Oxford University and worked as a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Administration of Relief in New Delhi.
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