SESSION VI. THE SPECIAL CONCERNS OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

THE SPECIAL CONCERNS OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Ana Maria Cetto
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

No papers were prepared in advance for this session; yet the oral presentations and the discussion that followed provided substantial material for recommendations.

Electronic publishing is considered to represent a unique opportunity for developing countries to promote the advancement of their scientific communication. These countries produce a meager percentage of the global scientific literature, and most of it remains within the local borders. The percentages of personnel and resources dedicated to S&T are also very small, and are unevenly distributed within and among countries. The development of electronic communications and publishing should therefore go hand in hand with the strengthening of the local scientific capacity and the establishment of closer links between the scientific and the educational systems, and special attention should be paid to the needs of the weaker or less developed countries.

Electronic publishing is seen not just as an opportunity, but also as a challenge. How is it going to be integrated and managed, who will take the responsibilities and initiatives? Journal publishing has been mostly in the hands of learned societies and universities; the State has been the main sponsor, and it will still have to take a major responsibility.

In many places, notably in African countries, Internet access is confined to universities in urban areas, under limited provision of bandwidth, hardware and software, at high cost and low transmission speed. An on- and off-line approach, with extensive use of CD ROMS, retrieval services, etc., would therefore be advisable. Publishers should consider using platform independent browsers which require no special plug-ins or other software. Agreements with international journal publishers for the provision of complete and updated journal collections on CD ROM are welcomed as a solution to problems of access to scientific literature.

It should be clear, however. that scientific knowledge is seen in developing countries as a public good, to which the local scientists must contribute. The local communities must increase their capacity to produce scientific material and put it on the Internet. A first few successful experiences, such as the Electronic Journal of Biotechnology from Chile, presented at the Workshop, show the potentialities of electronic publishing.

Regional initiatives are very important as a way of coordinating and articulating the efforts Of local communities to publish and disseminate their scientific production. Important examples are the SciELO project, presented at this Workshop, and the Latindex project, supported by ICSU Press and UNESCO, both in Latin America, and the African Journals On Line project, supported by UNESCO and INASFI. Such projects can serve also to eventually build up virtual scientific libraries on a regional level.

International cooperation is a key element in the realm of electronic publishing. It is by now clear that such cooperation should be based on genuine partnership rather than intervention, so as to strengthen the endogenous capacities instead of increasing dependency. International cooperation can be used for training, education, and joint projects involving local entrepreneurship.

An extension of the "twinning' concept of UNESCO is envisaged as a mechanism to establish specific partnership projects, with the aim to make the electronic publishing systems of developing countries operate in a compatible way with the systems operating in developed countries. Publishers should consider the creation of twinning or matching arrangements between scientific journals or groups of scientific journals in developing countries and counterpart publications in the industrialized countries. Such arrangements could facilitate the exchange of experience and best practices and the establishment of a common ground for electronic publishing.

Finally, it was noted that some countries were absent from the discussion, which meant in particular that the issues related to electronic publishing in different languages and different alphabets could not be properly addressed on this occasion