Benefits of e-publishing

This page provides a source of documents, statements, and workshop reports of interest to people working in the area of electronic publishing and development (last modified August 14th 2008) with special emphasis on Open Access developments

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Registry of formal communications made by EPT:

- April 9th 2007- Letter to EU MEPs on Commissioners' Communication
- June 2nd 2005 - List of Open Access policy statements
- May 12th 2005 - Flyer on Open Access, for WSIS community
- May 2nd 2005 - Presentation accepted for IFLA meeting, Norway June 2005, ' "Improving access to research literature in developing countries: challenges and opportunities provided by Open Access", L. Chan, B. Kirsop, S. Costa and S. Arunachalam
- November 11th 2004 - Message to HIFnet@WHO highlighting importance of Open Access Archiving
 - November 23rd 2004 - Message to UK Science and Technology Ctee regarding DFiD Report on the use of science in development
- September 30th 2004 - Contribution to UNDP Open Access forum debate

Declarations, Articles and Web sites on Open Access:

Statements/Declarations

Budapest Open Archives Initiative (Soros Foundation), two recommended strategies to achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, February 14th 2002

Salvador Declaration on Open Access for Developing Countries, September 2005, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

Wellcome Trust Statement in support of Open Access: Published in October 2003, up-dated March 14th 2007

Berlin Declaration on the Open Access to knowledge in science and the humanities: October 2003, a Declaration signed by over 50 major institutions, universities, funding organisations and other interested bodies committed to open access to scholarly publications. Report on follow-up meeting (Berlin-3) February 2005.

Research Councils UK up-dated statement on OA. RCUK has delegated policy for OA to individual councils, all of which support the widest distribution of funded research. Six of the seven councils now mandate deposit in an OA archive, and one has still to decide on its final policy. NOTE: PPARC and CCLRC have merged into a single Science and Technology Facilities Council, which mandates OA archiving in Institutional Repositories.

Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) Statement advocating open access and providing $3 over 3 years for projects supporting 'alternative' journals and open archiving initiatives. Established eIFL Network for the advancement of electronic access to information (including OA repositories and OA publishing) in developing and transitional economies.

Public Library of Science, Statement signed by just under 30,000 individuals from 175 countries who support the concept of open access

U K Government Science & Technology Committee recommendations on science publishing now available. For Summary of Recommendations, click here. Richard Poynder's comments on the Government's response which was based on a misunderstanding of the Committee's recommendations, click here.

University of Namibia sets up Institutional Archive and defines Open Access policy

Links/Resources

Registry of Open Access Repositories Material Archiving Policies (ROARMAP), listing policies of organisations and mandates in place or under development

Registry of Open Access Repositories, listing over >900 institutional repositories (IRs) and the number of documents archived in each, together with other information

Directory of Open Access Journals, a directory of over 2800 free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, together with other OA information

Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Development of standard protocol (Open Archives Metadata Harvesting Protocol, OAMHP)

Bioline International open access publications for developing country - >60 OA bioscience journals published in developing countries, also archived in the eprints server

SciELO - > 200 OA journals from Latin America and other lusaphone countries

E-prints Handbook: guidance for researchers and managers setting up eprints servers for archiving institutional research output.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) files on Open Access: a) Budapest Open Access Initiative FAQ on OA institutional archiving; b) EPT FAQ for scientists and publishers in developing countries

Articles/Publications

ARIADNE publication, Issue 52, July 2007, 'Access to Scientific Knowledge for Sustainable Development: options for developing countries', B Kirsop, S Arunachalam, L Chan.

Open Access Archiving: the fast track to building research capacity in developing countries, Subbiah Arunachalam, Leslie Chan and Barbara Kirsop- published by SciDev.Net, November 2005. A paper describing the benefits of open access archiving for developing country scientists and publishers.

SciDev.Net article on importance of OA for global research information exchange from Donat Agosti, and response from Subbiah Arunachalam, Leslie Chan and Barbara Kirsop.

An article, 'Open Access to Science in the Developing World', by Peter Suber and Subbiah Arunachalam has been prepared for inclusion in the InfoPaper for the November 2005 meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society

The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper, July 2002 - prepared by Raym Crow

Setting up an institutional eprint archive, April 2002, Stephen Pinfield, Mike Gardner and John MacColl, ARIADNE issue 31.

Keystroke Economy: A Study of the Time and Effort involved in Self-Archiving, April 2005, Leslie Carr, Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, UK

The evolution of an institutional e-prints archive at the University of Glasgow, July 2002, William Nixon

Open Archiving Opportunities for Developing Countries, November, 2001, ARIADNE issue 30, Leslie Chan and Barbara Kirsop (contains many links to open access initiatives).

Briefing on electronic publishing:"Wake up to the Web", Nature, January 21st, 1999, page 195. (See also, Nature, January 7th, 'Internet may help bridge the gap')

Workshop Reports and ppt presentations

- The Berlin 6 OA conference (Dusseldorf, Germany, November 11-13, 2008) has just posted its preliminary program. There is a
plenary session on Open Access for Development, to be organised by EPT Trustee, Subbiah Arunachalam.-

- Full text downloads of papers presented at ELPUB Conference, June 2008 can be accessed from http://www.elpub.net/

- Full text downloads and video's of presentations at the recent ICTP workshop in Trieste, ' Open Access models for sciencedissemination' can be accessed from http://sdu.ictp.it/openaccess/.

- BERLIN 5 Conference, Padua September 2007, 'From Practice to Impact: Consequences of Knowledge Dissemination', programme and ppt presentations.

- CODATA Workshop, Atibia, Brazil, May 2007 on 'Strategies for Open and Permanent Access to Scientific Information in Latin America', with valuable ppt presentations, providing a picture of the current situation in Latin America.

- Presentations made at International Conference on Electronic Publishing, ELPUB 2007, 13-15th June, Vienna.

- November 2006: Two OA workshops in India! Workshops in Bangalore and Hyderabad accelerated the progress towards OA. The Bangalore workshop agreed a model National OA Policy for Developing Countries.

- A powerpoint presentation by Alma Swan (Key Perspectives Ltd.) has been presented at the Southampton University OA meeting, February 2005. It provides information resulting from a survey carried out on OA Archiving and the attitude of authors to this development.

- UK OA Institutional Archiving organisations meeting at the University of Southampton February 2005, to provide technical and policy support. The presentations are available online.

- Bangalore (Indian Academy of Science) e-publishing Workshops, March 8-10 and 12-14th 2002: Aims, Faculty and Programme. For full details, link to the workshops site. See also the extensive Report from the Indian Academy of Science, prepared by N A Prakash.

- Kyiv Open Access and Scholarly Communication Workshop, February 17-19 2005, Kyiv, Ukraine.
For full details of the workshop, link to the workshop site.

Pre- 2000 E-publishing initiatives in developing countries

- Statistics for usage (January 1997 -November 2000) of bioscience journals published in developing countries with the support of EPT, distributed by Bioline International

- Electronic Publishing in Zimbabwe, 1999, Dr Janet Hussein, University of Zimbabwe

- Report on Electronic Publishing in Kenya, 1999, Daisy Ouya, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology(ICIPE), Kenya

- Letter to Nature 'Closing the S-N knowledge gap' from EPT, published January 21st, 1999, 397, 201

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An Open Access Scholarly Communication Workshop was held for the first time in Central and Eastern Europe on February 17-19, 2005, hosted by National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (one of the oldest Central-European Universities), organized by International Renaissance Foundation (Soros Foundation­Ukraine), Open Society Institute (OSI), National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, International Association of Academies of Sciences and National University Kyiv Mohyla Academy, and supported by East-East Program: Partnership Beyond Boarders of OSI and the British Council Ukraine.

The workshop focused on the free availability of peer-reviewed scholarly articles online. Over 140 researchers, administrators, librarians, information managers from higher educational institutions and scientific research laboratories involved in e-journal publishing and institutional repository development from 17 countries discussed benefits of open access scholarly communication, best practices of launching open access journals
and converting subscription-based journals to open access, the development of institutional repositories,, reasonable copyright for open access scholarship and other related issues.

The workshop participants based their discussions on the principles of Budapest Open Access Initiative, Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, IFLA Statement on Open Access to Scholarly Literature and Research Documentation, and Declaration of Principles WSIS and made their own recommendations on open access to information and knowledge and reasonable copyright development.

The participants recommended that the Ukrainian authorities ensure the right of individuals and the public to access information and knowledge and to guarantee that intellectual property regimes are not the obstacles to
the public's access to knowledge, to encourage research and higher educational institutions to practice open access, to put an open access condition to state funded researches (except reasonable exceptions) and to
provide state fund and technical assistance to research and higher educational institutions to set up and maintain an open access repositories (a condition of government assistance should be that the institution adopt
a policy to encourage or require its researchers to deposit their research output in the repository except reasonable exceptions), to support ICT development in libraries, archives, museums and other organizations
providing access to information and to provide state fund and tecnical assistance to open access to cultural heritage.

The recommendations were addressed to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Ministry of Health of Ukraine, Ministry of Culture and Arts of Ukraine, Parliament Committee on Education and Science, Parliament Committee on Culture and Spirituality, Parliament Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information, International Association of Academies of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine, Ukrainian Academy of
Agrarian Sciences, Academy of Law of Ukraine, Academy of Pedagogical Researches, National Institute for Strategic Studies, State Fund for Fundamental Researches, Higher Attestation Committee, UNESCO International Scientific-Educational center on information systems and technologies of NAS of Ukraine and Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, and rectors of higher educational institutions.

Workshop proceedings are posted on the Access to Knowledge web-site:
http://www.a2k.org.ua/?lng=en .

Detailed information may be obtained from Iryna Kuchma, Social Capital and Academic Publications Program Manager, International Renaissance Foundation, kuchma@irf.kiev.ua, tel: +380 (44) 461 95 00, fax: +380 (44)
216 01 66, http://www.irf.kiev.ua/programs/inf/scaap

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Report on Workshops on Electronic Publishing of Scientific Information,

organised by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore

March 8-10 and March 12-14 2002

The following account provides the objectives, faculty and programme for the workshops. Complete details with links to PowerPoint presentations etc are available from the Workshops WebSite established during the workshops.

The workshops were initiated by Professor Subbiah Arunachalam (Trustee EPT) and organised by the Indian Academy of Science. The two facilitators were Professor Leslie Chan (EPT Trustee) and Barbara Kirsop (Secretary EPT).

Objectives

Handouts provided for participants:

Facilities

Facilitators

Other faculty

Programme

First day: Seminars and discussions

Morning:

9:00—9:30 Opening remarks

Prof. N. Balakrishnan, Chairman, Information Sciences Division, Indian Institute of Science

Professor S Arunachalam, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai

9:30 — 11:00

11:00 — 11:30 Tea Break

11:30 — 13:00

13:00 — 14:00 Lunch Break

Afternoon:

14:00 — 15:00: Demonstration

15:00 — 15:30 Tea Break

15:30 — 17:30

Second Day: Hands-on workshop

Morning:

9:30 — 11:00

11:00 — 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 — 13:00

13:00— 14:00 Lunch Break

Afternoon:

14:00—15:30

15:30 — 16:00 Tea Break

16:00 — 17:30

Third Day: Hands-on workshop

Morning:

9:30 — 11:00

11:00 — 11:30 Tea Break

11:30 — 13:00

13:00 — 14:00 Lunch Break

Afternoon:

14:00 — 15:30

Group effort in creating a portal of epublishing resources and links to scientific publications from India

15:30 — 16:00 Coffee Break

16:00 — 17:30

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Budapest Open Access Initiative

An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.

For various reasons, this kind of free and unrestricted online availability, which we will call open access, has so far been limited to small portions of the journal literature. But even in these limited collections, many different initiatives have shown that open access is economically feasible, that it gives readers extraordinary power to find and make use of relevant literature, and that it gives authors and their works vast and measurable new visibility, readership, and impact. To secure these benefits for all, we call on all interested institutions and individuals to help open up access to the rest of this literature and remove the barriers, especially the price barriers, that stand in the way. The more who join the effort to advance this cause, the sooner we will all enjoy the benefits of open access.

The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment. Primarily, this category encompasses their peer-reviewed journal articles, but it also includes any unreviewed preprints that they might wish to put online for comment or to alert colleagues to important research findings. There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

While  the peer-reviewed journal literature should be accessible online without cost to readers, it is not costless to produce. However, experiments show that the overall costs of providing open access to this literature are far lower than the costs of traditional forms of dissemination. With such an opportunity to save money and expand the scope of dissemination at the same time, there is today a strong incentive for professional associations, universities, libraries, foundations, and others to embrace open access as a means of advancing their missions. Achieving open access will require new cost recovery models and financing mechanisms, but the significantly lower overall cost of dissemination is a reason to be confident that the goal is attainable and not merely preferable or utopian.

To achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, we recommend two complementary strategies. 

I.  Self-Archiving: First, scholars need the tools and assistance to deposit their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives, a practice commonly called, self-archiving. When these archives conform to standards created by the Open Archives Initiative, then search engines and other tools can treat the separate archives as one. Users then need not know which archives exist or where they are located in order to find and make use of their contents.

II. Alternative Journals: Second, scholars need the means to launch a new generation of alternative journals committed to open access, and to help existing journals that elect to make the transition to open access. Because journal articles should be disseminated as widely as possible, these new journals will no longer invoke copyright to restrict access to and use of the material they publish. Instead they will use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent open access to all the articles they publish. Because price is a barrier to access, these new journals will not charge subscription or access fees, and will turn to other methods for covering their expenses. There are many alternative sources of funds for this purpose, including the foundations and governments that fund research, the universities and laboratories that employ researchers, endowments set up by discipline or institution, friends of the cause of open access, profits from the sale of add-ons to the basic texts, funds freed up by the demise or cancellation of journals charging traditional subscription or access fees, or even contributions from the researchers themselves. There is no need to favor one of these solutions over the others for all disciplines or nations, and no need to stop looking for other, creative alternatives.


Open access to peer-reviewed journal literature is the goal. Self-archiving (I.) and a new generation of open-access alternative journals (II.) are the ways to attain this goal. They are not only direct and effective means to this end, they are within the reach of scholars themselves, immediately, and need not wait on changes brought about by markets or legislation. While we endorse the two strategies just outlined, we also encourage experimentation with further ways to make the transition from the present methods of dissemination to open access. Flexibility, experimentation, and adaptation to local circumstances are the best ways to assure that progress in diverse settings will be rapid, secure, and long-lived.

The Open Society Institute, the foundation network founded by philanthropist George Soros, is committed to providing initial help and funding to realize this goal. It will use its resources and influence to extend and promote institutional self-archiving, to launch new open-access journals, and to help an open-access journal system become economically self-sustaining. While the Open Society Institute's commitment and resources are substantial, this initiative is very much in need of other organizations to lend their effort and resources.

We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish.

February 14, 2002
Budapest, Hungary

Leslie Chan: Bioline International
Darius Cuplinskas: Director, Information Program, Open Society Institute
Michael Eisen: Public Library of Science
Fred Friend: Director Scholarly Communication, University College London
Yana Genova: Next Page Foundation
Jean-Claude Guédon: University of Montreal
Melissa Hagemann: Program Officer, Information Program, Open Society Institute
Stevan Harnad: Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Southampton, Universite du Quebec a Montreal
Rick Johnson: Director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
Rima Kupryte: Open Society Institute
Manfredi La Manna: Electronic Society for Social Scientists
István Rév: Open Society Institute, Open Society Archives
Monika Segbert: eIFL Project consultant
Sidnei de Souza: Informatics Director at CRIA, Bioline International
Peter Suber: Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College & The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter
Jan Velterop: Publisher, BioMed Central

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Open Archiving Opportunities for Developing Countries:
towards equitable distribution of global knowledge

Leslie Chan, Barbara Kirsop

November 2001

Although the World Wide Web is less than a decade old, it already has had a profound impact on scientific publishing and scholarly communication. In particular, open standards and low-cost networking tools are opening many possibilities for reducing and even eliminating entirely the cost barriers to scientific publications. 1

One development that has great potential value for poorly-resourced countries is "open archiving", or the deposition of scholarly research papers into networked servers accessible over the Internet. 2 This process allows scientists in the south to retrieve research results from the north through an online interoperable mechanism. Equally, it allows scientists in the south to contribute to the global knowledge base through participation. The purpose of this article is to inform scientists and publishers in the developing world about this and related initiatives and so allow informed decisions to be made about participation. Our intention is not to provide technical details about electronic publishing and the set up of "eprint" servers for open archiving, but rather to focus on the strategic significance of open archiving for scientists from developing countries.

Background

Since 1991, researchers in high-energy physics around the world have been connected through an eprint archive set up by Paul Ginsparg at the Los Alamos National Research Laboratory in New Mexico. Since its inception, the scope of the archive (now known as arXiv) has expanded to include many areas of physics, mathematics and computer science and archived papers can now be accessed free of charge from over a dozen world wide mirror sites.3 The eprint archive receives two-thirds of its two million weekly hits from institutions outside the United States, including many research facilities in developing regions. The archive has become indispensable to researchers world wide, but in particular to research institutions that would otherwise be excluded from the front line of science for economic and sociological reasons.4

The success and wide adoption of arXiv has prompted new thinking about the reform of scientific publishing in other disciplines. Scientists have become aware of the many benefits conferred by open archiving, such as the removal of the cost barrier to high-priced journals, the reduction of time in announcing research findings, and the provision of access to all with Internet capability. As a result, other e-servers have been set up5 and the movement to free scientific publishing from financial restrictions has been growing steadily.6

Among the best known proponents of these developments is Stevan Harnad's advocacy for authors to self-archive their published papers (postprints) which, if adopted widely, would lead to the ultimate removal of cost barriers for the exchange of publicly funded research information.7 These developments have generated much debate and a number of international initiatives have evolved to refine and standardise the archiving procedure.

One important international movement is the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), which aims to develop and promote the use of a standard protocol, known as the Open Archives Metadata Harvesting Protocol (OAMHP), designed for better sharing and retrieval of eprints residing in distributed archives.8 With the OAI harvesting protocol, articles in OAI compliant servers will form a global library that facilitates searching, data retrieval, cross-linking, as well as stable long-term archiving.9

Types of Archiving

There are various forms of open archiving. The term 'self archiving' is often used to refer to the process whereby individual authors submit their own papers to a server or archive of their choice. There are 'institutional archives', where authors submit eprints to a server administered by an organisation or scholarly society, commonly their university or research institute; there are also discipline-based archives and other speciality archives.10

An important example of a speciality archive is the Electronic Research Archive in International Health (ERA), set up by the long-established international medical journal, The Lancet.11 This archive allows medical researchers to deposit papers of special relevance to health issues met in many developing countries. Papers submitted are reviewed before acceptance and are thereafter archived and available online free to all.

Benefits for developing countries

Archiving initiatives described above are of great importance to all scientists, but particularly for those in the developing world. Free access to research information from the north would have incalculable benefits for local research.12 Of equal importance is the opportunity for researchers in these countries to contribute to the global knowledge base by archiving their own research literature, thereby reducing the south to north knowledge gap and professional isolation.13 Equally, there now exists an increasingly available means to distribute local research in a way that is highly visible and without the difficulties that are sometimes met in publishing in journals (e.g. biased discrimination between submissions generated in the north and south).

A key benefit for developing country scientists is that global participation could take place without further delay. The academic communities in poorer countries can take advantage of servers anywhere in the world offering OAI services, without the need to set up their own independent servers or maintain them. Establishing partners, either S/N or S/S, can minimise infrastructure costs, share expertise and readily become part of the international interoperable effort.

Common misconceptions

Some of the recently established archives have not been as well supported as was hoped because of a number of misconceptions about the nature of the archives and the professional consequences of collaboration. Since any individual could 'publish' material online, there is a concern that self-archiving could lead to 'vanity press' that has not undergone quality control procedures. However, scholarly archives, while possibly containing both refereed (postprints) and non-refereed material (preprints), nevertheless provide clear options for readers to selectively retrieve material.14 The experience of physicist/mathematicians who have used open archiving for a number of years shows that quality of research is not jeopardised by the process, since researchers that submit material are concerned with their reputation and professional credibility and their work is open for review by their peers around the world. Therefore, 'vanity publishing' by individuals must be distinguished from the institutional or author-archiving of preprints of papers submitted for peer review.

Another concern is that the volume of material available online makes it more difficult to find and retrieve required material. However, efforts such as the OAMHP, with its emphasis on common metadata standards, are designed specifically to address the issues of accurate and efficient retrieval and interoperability with other OAI-compliant servers.15 It should be mentioned that there are a number of large-scale initiatives, such as PubMedCentral, 16 offering free access to papers that are not using the OAI protocols and are therefore not necessarily interoperable with the OAI-compliant archive. But increasingly, these open access archives are moving towards becoming OAI-compliant as the power of interoperability is now widely recognised.17

Indeed, due to the growing popularity of the OAI movement, commercial publishers are adopting the OAI protocols in some cases so that their publications are interoperable with free-to-all archived documents. Unlike true open archives, access to such servers are restricted to those who can afford the high cost of subscription, which creates access barriers even for some of the research institutions in the north. It is therefore important to remember that "open" archive does not necessarily mean that the content is available free of charge, as "open" refers to the open technical framework and the open architecture of the archive that promotes easy exchange of information between compatible servers.18

Copyright is also seen by many as a major concern. In the paper era, researchers routinely sign away their copyright to publishers in exchange for the opportunity to make their research known and to gain career advancements. However, in the electronic era authors are becoming increasingly aware of their rights and professional need to distribute their own research as widely as they can for maximum impact, while retaining academic credibility through peer review. Authors in developing countries who wish to publish in printed journals should ensure they retain the rights to submit to archives, either at once or subsequently. Some authors who are unable to obtain such rights from their preferred journal have elected to publish elsewhere,19 and increasing numbers of major journals are relaxing their restrictions on author self-archiving or institutional-archiving.20 Increasingly, authors archive the pre-print before submission to their chosen journal and, if archiving rights are not obtained, the linked corrigenda.

Limitations

For scientists in poor countries, a major obstacle to participating in these developments is the lack of awareness of the availability of the different mechanisms for distributing and accessing research documents. Since most of the developments and services are on the Internet, the lack of awareness is caused mainly by the lack of telecommunications infrastructure in the developing world. However, there are major international and local efforts to invest in the infrastructure and there is growing optimism that with time this problem of 'digital divide' will be resolved.21 Additionally, the development of telecentres, way stations or staging posts, radio communication and similar efforts will help regional development and encourage participation.22

Another cause of the lack of awareness is a lack of concerted effort from the archive institutions and the development agencies to inform and promote the new practices regarding the use of the technology. It is therefore important that the information in this short briefing is distributed as widely as possible.

Where are we now?

The OAI is widely consulting with institutions and library communities in refining standards and protocols that serve the researchers needs. New open archives are becoming established in many universities and libraries that will ultimately become part of the network of archives accessible to all [see directory of archives at www.openarchives.org]. Open source and free software have been developed and are currently being improved for use by institutions wishing to set up their own archives in an interoperable way.23

While this international movement is spreading rapidly and its potential is increasingly recognised, the process is at an early stage. Active testings of many of these developments are ongoing and it is important that the needs of developing countries are considered during the refinements.

Conclusion

This is an encouraging time for scientists everywhere as means of communication improve. Opportunities are great, but to ensure that the needs of academic communities in the developing world are not left out, further awareness, consultation and partnership building are required. We recommend that scientists keep aware of these initiatives, keep all publishing options open and inform colleagues of opportunities now underway through regional discussions. The EPT will continue to monitor progress and post new developments on its web site.24 An experimental server has been set up by one of the EPT Trustees and is ready for evaluation.25 The issues involved in open archiving and the movement to free scholarly literature are hotly debated on several online discussion fora hosted, for example, by American Scientist and Nature, the past contributions of which are archived and all available online.26 Readers who wish to familiarise themselves with these issues may wish to consult these archives and the references provided below.

Footnotes

1Declan Butler, 'The writing is on the web for science journals in print'. Nature 397, 195 - 200 (1999).
2Networked servers are often referred to as "repositories" or as "archives", hence the term open archiving. However, the servers are not archives in the technical sense or the library community's understanding of repositories or archives.
3Los Alamos Preprint Archive (arXive):http://www.arxive.org. Note that this archive moved to Cornell University in July 2001.
4Subbiah Arunachalam has written extensively on the obstacles scientists face in developing countries. See "Accessing information published in the Third World: Should spreading the word from the Third World always be like swimming against the current?" Journal of Scientific and Industrial Research, 53, 408-417. 1994.
5RePEc (Research Papers in Economics, http://www.repec.org/), CogPrints (for cognitive science, http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/), Economics and the PhilSci Archive (for philosophers of science, http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/).
6The Free Online Scholarship (FOS) newsletter published by Peter Suber is a highly useful source for keeping up to date with developments in all areas related to the electronic scholarly publishing: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/
7The many informed writings by Steven Harnad on the movement to free the refereed literature is available on his personal website: http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/intpub.html. Read in particular his more recent paper, "For Whom the Gate Tolls? How and Why to Free the Refereed Research Literature Online Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving, Now." http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm
8See key documents on the OAI web site: SIZE=2http://www.openarchives.org
9See Lynch, Clifford (2001) Metadata Harvesting and the Open Archives Initiative.
ARL Bimonthly Report 217 August 2001. http://www.arl.org/newsltr/217/mhp.html
10Op cit
11The Lancet's NetPrints for Clinical Medicine and Health Research: http://clinmed.netprints.org
12Godlee et al. Global information flow: Publishers should provide information free to resource poor countries. BMJ 2000;321:776-777 ( 30 September ). Online: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/321/7264/776
13Canhos et al. "Close the South-North knowledge gap", Nature, Vol 397, pg. 201, Jan. 1999
14See for example the Open Citation (OpCit) project at the University of Southampton: http://opcit.eprints.org/. See also Hitchcock and Hall, "How Dynamic E-journals can Interconnect Open Access Archives." Online: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~sh94r/elpub01-online.html
15see 9
16PubMedCentral: http://www.pubmedcentral.org
17Two notable services that recently announced their compliance to the OAI protocols are BioMedCentral http://www.biomedcentral.com, and the Chemistry Preprint Server http://preprint.chemweb.com/
18See the FAQ on the OAI web site: http://www.openarchives.org
19 The Public Library of Science, http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/ and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition supported by the Association of Research Libraries, are significant movements that are hastening significant reforms in scholarly publishing and lowering and removing barriers to access to publicly funded research results. See http://www.arl.org/sparc/home for details.
20The prestigious journals Nature and Science, and the American Psychological Association have all recently relaxed their policies regarding author self-archiving.
21The United Nation has been greatly concerned about the imbalance in access to communication facilities. An ICT Task Force of the United Nations has recently been set up by Secretary-General Kofi Annan "to find new, creative and quick-acting means to spread the benefits of the digital revolution and avert the prospect of a two-tiered world information society." See http://www.unicttaskforce.org
22Telecentres, Waystations/Staging Posts: http://www.iwsp.org
23The free 'eprints software' released by The University of Southampton, http://www.eprints.org, is designed to run centralised, discipline-based as well as distributed, institution-based archives of scholarly publications and 'Kepler' is a simple OAI repository tool that claims to allow individual researchers to participate in the OAI with a minimum of effort. Details about Kepler and how it is implemented can be found at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april01/maly/04maly.html
24The EPT web site: http://www.epublishingtrust.org. See also 'The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT): putting developing country journals online'. Proceedings of Scientific Communication & Publishing in the Information Age. 1999. Online: http://www.inasp.info/psi/scpw/papers/kirsop.html
25The eprint server is located at: http://eprints.utsc.utoronto.ca
26American Scientists forum on freeing the refereed scientific literature: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html. Nature's Forum on future e-access to the primary literature: http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/

 

Leslie Chan, Centre for Instructional Development Technology, is a Trustee of the EPT and the Associate Director of Bioline International that distributes journals from developing countries.

Barbara Kirsop is the Secretary of the EPT and an advisory board member for Bioline International.

November 2001

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JOURNAL PUBLISHING AS A BUSINESS:

IMPROVING THE BALANCE SHEET THROUGH ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING

Janet Hussein, 1999

Senior Editor, Zimbabwe Science News and President of the Zimbabwe Scientific Association, P O Box CY 124, Causeway, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Introduction

Thanks to Serah Mwanycky of the African Academy of Sciences for inviting me to write this short article. It is based on my presentation at the workshop of the African Journals Support and Development Centre (AJSDC), during the Zimbabwe Book Fair, in August 1998 . I discuss some of the problems facing us as journal publishers in Africa and highlight some benefits that electronic publishing may offer to reduce costs and increase income to publishers.

I have been involved in Scientific Journal Publishing for the last five years both as an editor and as the coordinator of our publications committee. I expect the problems that we face in Zimbabwe are familiar to many of you. These include dwindling financial backing from Government and corporate sponsors, spiralling publication costs and increasing competition with greater numbers of journals being produced. This means that our journals cost more, come out irregularly and may not look as attractive as they once were. This in turn leads to frustration from subscribers and authors who may then not continue to support the journals, leading to a downward spiral in support and income. However, we remain positive that it is worth the effort and frequent frustration to keep the long tradition of our journals going. We remain committed to producing good quality African Journals that can stand up and be counted with other quality journals around the world and that can give exposure to local research, education, development and technology.

Background

The Zimbabwe Scientific Association (ZSA) was founded in 1899 and celebrates its centenary next year. The ZSA publishes two journals:

The Transactions of the Zimbabwe Scientific Association. This is a multi-disciplinary, refereed publication, produced once a year. It is now in its 71st volume with about 550 subscribers. The Zimbabwe Science News (ZSN). This is a semi-popular, multi-disciplinary publication, produced four times a year. It is currently in its 32nd volume with about 1 000 subscribers.

Income and Expenditure

In order for a journal to operate as a viable business, income has to exceed expenditure. Given the current financial problems experienced by many developing countries, maintenance of this viability is an uphill battle.

Table 1 itemises the main income and expenditure of our two journals and includes some strategies that we have used to increase our income and decrease our expenditure.

Table 1. Current income and expenditure items for ZSA journals

INCOME

Relative contribution

EXPENDITURE

Relative cost

Subscriptions

XXXX

Printing

XXXX

Advertisements

X

Packing & postage

X

Sponsored theme issues

XX

Administration (subscription manager)

XX

Corporate sponsors

none

Typesetting

X

Government funding

XX

Stationery & sundries

X

Page costs (paid by author)

none as yet

Editorial costs

None as yet


Subscriptions

Subscriptions should keep reasonably affordable, as many subscribers are facing economic problems, including University and college libraries. However, the subscriptions must keep abreast of inflation. Subscriber numbers may fall if the journals are not produced regularly or if they are not produced to a good visual quality leading to an ever decreasing revenue base. Aggressive marketing can sometimes help to increase numbers but then the publishers have to deliver on time and up to standard! The readership base is also sometimes limited by the content of the journal.

Advertisements

Procuring advertisements is difficult due to the low circulation numbers and the sometimes erratic production dates. However, the advertisers can be charged comparatively low rates and can get good exposure to a targeted audience. We have found that advertisers are more keen if there are thematic issues which help to promote their products e.g. pharmaceutical companies may wish to advertise in health/medical issues.

Sponsored theme issues

This approach can frequently be successful. The journal may be used to publish proceedings from conferences or to publish results from donor-funded projects.

Corporate sponsors

This used to be a major source of income for our journals but sponsorship has decreased with increasing economic problems in the country. However, if appropriate corporate sponsors are found, this can provide regular income to the journals. The sponsoring company can then be afforded advertising space or receive acknowledgement in the journal.

Government funding

This has dwindled, but still provides basic support for which the publishers are grateful.

Page costs

Although we do not charge page costs, a number of international journals do so and this remains an option for the future. Page costs certainly provide a regular income but may sometimes penalise good scientists, who do not have the sufficient funds at their disposal to pay for printing costs. Scientists should therefore be encouraged to build in publishing/page costs when applying for project funds.

Printing

This remains the main cost of producing our journals with expenditure increasing by 100 % within the last few years. We have managed to cut costs by producing black/white instead of colour issues where possible, by using cheaper printing agencies such as the University and by using lower cost paper and cardboard. This means inevitably that we lose quality and attractiveness. However, we feel it is more important to try and get the journals out regularly rather than aiming for a "coffee table" appeal. If sponsorship is found, colour issues are produced.

Electronic publishing offers an opportunity to do away with printing costs. This is discussed in more detail in a later section of the article.

Packing and postage

These costs are kept to a minimum by using plastic sleeves instead of envelopes for postage and by using low cost flyers and address labels. Journals are sent by surface mail to overseas subscribers and we try not to exceed a final weight of 100 g for each journal as this keep our postage lower. Again, electronic publishing offers the opportunity to reduce these costs.

Administration (subscription/business manager)

It is necessary to have an active administrator or business manager to maintain subscriptions and monitor income and expenditure.

Typesetting, stationery & sundries

The time taken to typeset is minimised by ensuring that papers are submitted, then edited and stored on floppy discs. Stationery and sundries will inevitably increase with time but can be minimised with careful planning

Editorial costs

These are currently not costed, as they are provided through voluntary service of editors. However, this involves many hours of hard work which may not be forthcoming in the future.

Electronic publishing

Electronic publishing allows for greatly reduced production and distribution costs and fast output of journals. The ZSA first venture into electronic publishing about 3 years ago following advice from Profesor Ekwamu, editor of the African Crop Science Journal. We approached the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT) in conjunction with Bioline Publications. They kindly assisted us in putting our two journals online through the Bioline system. We also received a grant from the Southern Africa Book Development Education Trust (SABDET) in 1997 to assist us in improving our electronic publishing infrastructure and skills.

Some new journals are fully electronically distributed with no hard copies being produced whilst others, like the ZSA journals, use the dual mediums of print and electronic distribution.

There are many advantages to being online, some of which are discussed below:

Lower production costs compared to printing and distributing hard copies of the journal. Printing costs are borne by subscribers who locate papers online and then download and print out the papers at their home or office. Distribution costs may be reduced provided the costs of maintaining the web site and online subscriptions are less that packing/postage. Printing/postage time saved. Some journals may take 1 to 3 months to be printed and then a further 1 to 8 weeks to be posted and reach their destination. This time lag can be greatly reduced with electronic publishing, which allow the journals to be sent out timelessly. Greater exposure for the journals - which is wonderful for African publishers trying to expand their readership base. For example, Bioline is accessed (receives hits) from about 60,000 sites per year, leading to far greater exposure of our two journals. However, greater exposure means that the journals are exposed to much greater scrutiny and they must therefore be of good enough quality to sustain this exposure. Bioline can also provide monthly records of accessions to subscribing journals, so that editors can assess who/where is interested in their publication. Possible income generation by sale of papers. Internet users can buy "reprints" of journal papers through Bioline. This offers a possible source of income (foreign exchange!) after Bioline costs have been met. Hypertext links add value to the journal papers. For example an article on enzymes may have hypertext links to the world enzyme data bank. The value to the reader is thus greatly enhanced. More interest from potential authors. We have found the people are more willing to write papers and publish in our journals as they feel they are getting greater exposure.

Future developments

Many of our subscribers cannot afford access to the internet or live in rural areas which do not have internet facilities. So, for the foreseeable future, our journals will continue to be distributed both as hard copy and electronically. Further ahead, we would like to see a situation where sales of electronic material could help to subsidise more hard copies, which we could then send to readers/institutions that are unable to afford subscriptions. Alternatively, we could make electronic access free to certain deserving but poor institutions.

Our editorial team needs to improve their electronic publishing skills through proper training in the production of html files, graphic files, web pages and electronic marketing of our journals. We also need to think about future electronic storage and archiving of our journals. i.e. how long is the shelf life of floppy and hard discs, CD ROMS? Is any new software we use going to be fully compatible with old software? How do we best store our contents' lists and databases?

Acknowledgements

We extend our grateful thanks to ETP, Bioline Publications and SABDET for assisting us to get online and for improving our electronic publishing skills and getting us linked to the World Wide Web.

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ICIPE'S ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING EXPERIENCE MARCH 1998-MARCH 1999

from the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology

Nairobi, Kenya

 In August 1997, the editors of Insect Science and Its Application (ISA), the International Journal of Tropical Insect Science, were shown a flyer from the Zimbabwe Book Fair, detailing the vision and collaborative activities of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT) and Bioline Publications. The same month, the journal contacted EPT to explore the possibility of obtaining assistance for the on-line publication of ISA. Electronic Publishing Trust responded positively, and undertook to source the necessary funding to support a collaborative effort for the electronic publication of ISA, once a mutual agreement was reached. In January 1998, ISA learned that EPT had secured a SABDET grant to put the journal on-line on a 1-year pilot project starting in March 1998.

 ICIPE had a number of distinct advantages at the start of the project:

 *          During a major restructuring exercise two years earlier, ICIPE had acquired new, faster computers loaded with the latest typesetting, graphics and word processing software, which permit the direct conversion of documents to html.

*           ICIPE had recently established its own internet server, and had leased a permanent telephone connection to the local internet service provider, allowing for reliable and efficient e-mail communication with Bioline. Furthermore, the recently installed Web navigation programs facilitated better comprehension of the e-publishing training offered by Bioline.

*           Since 1987, ICIPE had been publishing ISA in-house using PageMaker desktop publishing software, and all the journal's staff were computer-literate.

*           Two years earlier, ISA had started to scan and edit electronically, all of the journal's graphics. In addition, the journal's compositor had recently taken a local course in electronic image management (Adobe Photoshop).

 Against this backdrop, Bioline Publications provided easy-to-follow instructions via e-mail, and provided an environment in which ISA could ask questions and receive prompt, authoritative responses. Any problems that arose were in this way ironed out, and ISA was able to proceed speedily towards preparing the journal for the Web.

 Overall, the technology transfer went smoothly, and solutions to the few bottlenecks below were quickly found by Bioline.

 *          ISA initially attempted to send to Bioline diskettes containing the journal's text in ascii format. This did not work. ISA then exported PM documents to html and ran a Word macro written specifically for this purpose by Bioline.

 *          The journal's PageMaker Tables would get distorted during conversion to html. Bioline offered directions that enabled ISA to easily and elegantly go around this problem.

 There remain only a few problems in Web formatting of the journal, which should be solved with the next issue. ICIPE is very pleased about the prospect of eventually becoming fully competent in Web publishing, and in the near future being able to build this capacity within the region in a collaborative, not-for-profit manner. We feel it is important that publishers retain their independence and do not enter into commercial partnerships that might affect their freedom of action in the future.

 We were gratified to hear that our progress was well received by SABDET. We hope that this will lead to further support for the on-line publishing of ISA and similar journals in Africa. We would like to express our willingness to assist, in any way possible within the means available, other publishers in this region that would be interested in learning from our experience.

 Daisy Ouya
Science Editor

Insect Science and Its Application

For ICIPE, Kenya
8 April 1999

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Usage of Journal from Developing Countries January 1997-November 2000 (Bioline Web Statistics)

Usage Chart

Key to journals

BA - Biotecnologia Applicada
CA - Central African Journal of Medicine
CS - African Crop Science Journal
EA - East African Medical Journal
FB - Ichthyological Bulletin
FS - Ichthyological Special Publications
IB - Indian Journal of Biochemistry and Biophysics
IE - Indian Journal of Experimental Biology
IM - Indian Journal of Marine Sciences
NS - African Journal of Neurological Sciences
OC - Memorias do Oswaldo Cruz
TB - Tropical Biodiversity
TI - Insect Science and its Application
ZN - Zimbabwe Science News
ZS - Transactions of the Zimbabwe Scientific Association

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ONLINE GUIDELINES ON USING THE WORLD-WIDE WEB FOR SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING

Announcement of a planned resource

A tool for publishers in developing countries

Traditionally, scientists distribute the results of their research in refereed journals. Until recently, these have been bound, printed and published by commercial companies or scientific societies. The advent of the World Wide Web (WWW) provides scientists and scientific publishers with a new mechanism for the distribution of research that has the potential to contribute significantly to its accessibility and value. This is particularly important for research published in developing countries since it provides the opportunity to vastly increase visibility of hitherto poorly distributed research while at the same time using the power of the Internet to enhance the value of their publications.

The ability to format material in Web-compatible format and increase awareness of science generated in the poorer countries not only closes the scientific knowledge gap from South to North (particularly important in such areas as conservation, environmental sciences, taxonomy and the medical sciences where a global picture is essential), but provides international recognition for local scientists. This in turn stimulates the development of the national science base, the establishment of international partnerships, joint grant applications and, with time, income from increased subscriptions or sale of single documents.

Perhaps, most importantly, Web visibility removes the sense of professional isolation so often felt by developing country scientists. As the recent Development Report from the World Bank says, "Knowledge of how to treat common illnesses or improve crop yields is critical, but the power of knowledge goes beyond the impact of specific techniques. As people grasp the ways in which knowledge can improve their lives, they are encouraged to seek out new knowledge and become agents of change themselves".

The Manual will provide the technical and management skills needed to move from the printed to the electronic environment. It will be written by a distributed group of authors working in different organisations and countries with different expertise and experiences. It will be published both as a traditional printed booklet and as an information resource available to all on the WWW. The latter will benefit from a substantial number of links to other resources and can be downloaded in sections to suit readers' needs. It will not be a static document but will be developed as new technologies appear and new applications become apparent. The printed version will serve as an essential tool for electronic publishing workshops.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

1.1 Purpose of the Manual
1.2 Closing the knowledge gap: the importance of the Web for developing countries
1.3 Changing nature of scholarly and scientific publishing and communication
1.4 What publishers and scientific societies in developing countries can do to ensure equity of access to scientific knowledge

2. Introduction to the WWW

2.1 A brief history and current development
2.2 HTML and Web protocols
2.3 Tools for the Web: hardware and software requirements
2.4 Evolving standards and the next generation HTML

3. What is Electronic Publishing?

3.1 Differences between print and the digital environment
3.2 A typology of e-publishing activities: from simple to complex projects
3.3 E-publishing as value-added publishing: linking to databases, inter-journal linking, multi-media adjuncts, feedback and collaboration

4. Languages and tools of e-publishing

4.1 SGML and document structuring, HTML and XML
4.2 Determining the needs and choice of tools and languages
4.3 When to use PDF

5. Workflow in the Digital Environment

5.1 Publishing manuscripts and journals on the Web
5.2 Practical design principles
5.3 Preparing and submitting documents for e-publishing (file formats)
5.4 Graphic formats, sound and animation

6. Management options

6.1 Planning: parallel publishing, hybrid and electronic only
6.2 Team work and partnerships
6.3 Economic considerations (funding support, grants, institutional partnerships)
6.4 Access, subscription and pricing

7. Archiving and permanence

7.1 Storage and cataloguing
7.2 Partnerships with libraries. Central/regional repositories.

8. Open issues

9. Glossary

10. Bibliography and Links

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Letter from EPT to Nature, 21st January 1999, page 201

Sir -The rising cost of journals and difficulties associated with hybrid journals severely limit access to knowledge by scientists in poor countries 1. The economic and technical difficulties that contribute to the North to South knowledge gap will not be resolved until alternative mechanisms for the distribution of information are developed and scientific societies take steps to revise the present tradition. Until this happens, scientists in developing nations will continue to be disenfranchised.

Although the North to South gap is widely acknowledged, the gap that exists from the South to the North is less appreciated. Yet this deprives the global scientific community of much essential information from developing countries. It is caused by problems faced by publishers in these countries in meeting the rising costs of printing and distributing their peer-reviewed journals. This is particularly serious in the biosciences. Scientists in such regions have difficulties in publishing in high profile journals. As Richard Horton, Editor of the The Lancet has said, "The invisibility to which mainstream science publishing condemns much third world research thwarts the efforts of poor countries to strengthen their indigenous science journals - and with them the quality of research - in regions that most need them".

Fortunately, electronic publishing can resolve many of these problems (see Briefing, page 195). The feasibility of this has been shown by organizations such as the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT)2 and through workshops organised by the British Council 3. The EPT has facilitated the online publication 16 peer-reviewed bioscience journals published in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and is working to extend this activity. With a small investment, publishers can readily learn to prepare their academic publications in Web-compatible format and benefit from the increased visibility. The independence so gained allows developing countries to establish their own distribution sites, so strengthening their national science base and providing freedom of action for determining their own pricing and distribution policies.

Thanks to online journals much previously unknown research now forms part of the international knowledge base. The heightened awareness that electronic distribution provides leads to renewed enthusiasm for publishing in local journals and the sense of isolation often felt by the scientific community begins to diminish.

The gap from North to South will take time to close as new mechanisms are developed and attitudes change. The gap from South to North can be closed more swiftly since the technology is easy and low cost and, importantly, access to the Internet is not immediately essential if partnerships can be made with non-profit facilitating organisations and scientific societies. The opportunity for science in developing countries to leapfrog into the public domain has been shown to be possible.

Vanderlei Canhosa, Leslie Chanb, Frances Giaquintoc, Barbara Kirsopd, Anthony O'Donnelle, Judy Ugonnaf

a University of Campinas/Base de Dados Tropical, R. Latino Coelho, 1301 Parq Taquaral, 13087-1010 Campinas, SP, Brazil
b Centre for Instructional Technology Development, Bladen Library, University of Toronto, Ontario, M1C 1A4, Canada
c BioDiversity, Brunel Science Park, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, UB8 3PQ, UK
d EPT Secretariat, Stainfield House, Stainfield, Bourne, Lincs, PE10 0RS, UK
e University of Newcastle, Dept. of Agriculture and Environmental Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK
f British Council, Medlock Street, Manchester, M15 4AA, UK

[1] Annapoorani, B. et al, Nature 395, 739-740
[2] http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/bioline/, (now http://www.epublishingtrust.org)
[3] http://www.britcoun.org

 

Report on Workshops on Electronic Publishing
(March 2002, Bangalore)
organized by
Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore

Background

A suggestion that the Academy host a workshop on electronic publishing, for the benefit of publishers of Indian science, technology and medicine research journals, was made in April 2001 at a meeting convened at the Academy. The editors of the Academy's own journals, and some special invitees, were present. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam of the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, and Prof. N. Mukunda, Editor of Publications of the Academy, conveyed some of the highlights of the Second ICSU-UNESCO International Conference on Electronic Publishing in Science (http://associnst.ox.ac.uk/~icsuinfo/confer01.html), held in Paris during February 2001, and which both had attended.

At the Academy meeting both Prof. Mukunda and Prof. Arunachalam drew attention to two regional electronic journal server initiatives. These are SciELO, Scientific Electronic Library Online, a service delivering full text of journals from several Latin American countries (http://www.scielo.org), and AJOL, African Journals OnLine (http://www.inasp.info/ajol/index.html). The Academy's own efforts in providing its journals (http://www.ias.ac.in/journals.html) free on the Internet was reviewed. And, while there was no proposal for Academy to create an electronic journal service for Indian journals, the suggestion was made that Academy could act as a catalyst and promote the practice of electronic publishing to other publishing organizations in India through a workshop.

Preparations for the workshop were begun in December 2001. Prof. Arunachalam, in cooperation with Academy, played a key role in identifying suitable resource persons and approaching funding agencies for support.

Two workshops were proposed, one in Bangalore and one in another city, preferably elsewhere. Efforts were made to find suitable institutions with the required facilities. After considering the responses received it was finally decided that both workshops would be held in Ban