Open access indicators and scholarly communications in Latin America

Abstract

As regional open access initiatives from Latin America have begun to produce and share indicators, this book on “Open Access Indicators and Scholarly Communications in Latin America” is a first attempt to systematically explore and describe them within the broader context of Open Science. In this process, the publication aims at identifying the presence, growth, use and reach of research results that are now “open” and freely available in the Web. This book is the result of a joint research and development project supported by UNESCO and undertaken in 2013 by UNESCO (Bhanu Neupane) in partnership with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP); the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO); the Network of Scientic Journals of Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal (RedALyC); Africa Journals Online (AJOL); the Latin America Social Sciences School-Brazil (FLACSO-Brazil); and the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) . This book aims to contribute to the understanding of scholarly production, use and reach through measures that are open and inclusive. This publication serves as an important milestone in the UNESCO’s Open Access Strategy that 196 countries have collectively endorsed. The publication has also received significant inputs from the PKP-FLACSO-IDRC’s project “Quality in Open Scholarly Communication of Latin America”, which was undertaken in 2012-2013 in collaboration with Latindex, SciELO and Redalyc.