Dakar, 31 January 2006

International Workshop on Promoting Access and Capacity Building for Scientific Information Resources and ICT Infrastructure in Developing Countries

Hosted by the

Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Senegal

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences

The Chinese Academy of Sciences

on behalf of

The InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP)

Le Meridien President Hotel

Dakar, Senegal

30-31 January 2005

Suggested Recommendations

Dr. Francis MUGUET

ENSTA ( France )

chair WSIS Civil Society working group

on Scientific Information

http://wsis-si.org

A/ World Digital Solidarities Forum as a WSIS follow-up event to underline the importance of Open Access as a one of the crucial mechanisms for digital solidarities.

B/ Call to Scientists by the Academy of Senegal and others.

C/ Call to study the recommendations of the intergovernmental meeting : UNESCO between two phases of the World Summit on the Information Society

D/ Call to all moderator/facilitators of the WSIS actions lines to proceed with an itemized implementation concerning Open Access.

E/ Call to the government of Senegal and other african countries to pass laws enabling a global licence scheme for scientific material exchanged over P2P networks.

A/ Concerning the Follow-Up of the WSIS, it appears crucial that Open Access be recognized as an integral component of the various forms of Digital Solidarities. However there is unbalance in terms of events, in comparison with the Internet Governance issue concerning which a first meeting is scheduled around June in Athens. There it is proposed to organize a World Digital Solidarities Forum (WDSF ) or Forum Mondial des Solidarités Numériques FMSN, a back to back event occurring just after the first event of the Internet Governance Forum ( IGF) in Athens. The topics to be covered :

1/ Financial Mechanism ( Digital Solidarity Fund and other alternative mechanisms )

2/ Open Access to Scientific Information

3/ Open Educational Resources

4/ Free Software

5/ Volunteers

6/ Disabilities

7/Multi-Stakeholders partnerships

as well as transversal themes such as :

a/Linguistic diversity

b/Cultural diversity

It is therefore proposed that the Academy of Sciences of Senegal to support this proposal and to call the Government of Senegal, which played a key role during the WSIS in regards to innovative solidarity mechanisms to take the lead towards organizing this World Forum.

B/ On the basis of the WSIS recommendation adopted as a matter of principle by the WSIS in GENEVA (10-12 December 2003) in the Declaration of Principle : We strive to promote universal access with equal opportunities for all to scientific knowledge and the creation and dissemination of scientific and technical information, including open access initiatives for scientific publishing. It is proposed that the Academy of Sciences of Senegal together with all bodies supporting Open Access, should make a formal and solemn call to all scientists so that they better became aware of their world societal responsibilities and so that they make their research accounts be available using Open Access resources ( a specific web site could be created towards this purpose ). A good opportunity to launch this call would be the WDSF in Athens.

C/ It is called upon the Academies and other scientific bodies to study the recommendations of the intergovernmental meeting : UNESCO between two phases of the World Summit on the Information Society 17-19 May 2005, in St. Petersburg, and to call International Organizations and Funding Agencies to abide by those recommendations and to promote them.

2. Information / Knowledge Society Research

We recommend UNESCO, with the possible help of other UN specialised agencies, to create a number of inclusive, transparent, multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary international research / working groups with the following missions: ./. to explore and propose new Open Access strategies as the ICTs are evolving (by a permanent multi-stakeholder research bureau).

5. Science and Innovations in Knowledge Societies. We recommend UNESCO and other UN specialised agencies, as well as other public and private funding institutions in the world:

to concentrate their financial resources on supporting or implementing self-sustainable Educational, Scientific and Cultural Information systems without costly recurrent licensing fees, with the help of Open Access repositories as well as Free Software, Open Source, and proprietary Freeware tools;

to support creation of second disclosure Open Access information resources whereby authors are describing the results of their research that have already been published elsewhere;

to provide financial support to first and second disclosure Open Access resources to eliminate the need to charge publication fees;

to support the creation of an association of Open Access Publishers to reinforce their effectiveness in collaboratively raising financial resources and in gaining collective renown;

to create or support seed funding programs to create new Open Access information resources everywhere in the world and to promote the conversion of existing resources to the Open Access model;

to require as a grant or endorsement condition, publication in the Open Access model of any full report of research being even partially funded, or morally endorsed by them;

to support and endorse the initiatives of Funding Institutions to implement their own mandatory Open Access Archives;

to create or support the implementation of a free Digital Object Identifier system to retrieve and directly and freely identify digital documents; and

to build Open Access repositories in a way that would allow easy site mirroring as well as complete copying on portable media, such as CDs or DVDs, to allow access to knowledge in regions with little or non-existent Internet connections;

to provide funding and in-kind assistance to a Free Software project that implements the peer-to-peer functionality as recommended by the WSIS Plan of Action to allow efficient exchange of scientific information.

D/ Call to all moderator/facilitators of the WSIS actions lines to proceed with an itemized implementation of the WSIS recommendations concerning Open Access.

E/ Taking into account the recent legal developments (séance du mercredi 21 décembre 2005 ) in France concerning the the legalization of P2P with a voluntary Global License scheme which is akin to Radio license, and taking also into the WSIS recommendation [ Geneva Plan of Action e-sciences c) Promote the use of peer-to-peer technology to share scientific knowledge and pre-prints and reprints written by scientific authors who have waived their right to payment. ] concerning P2P, it is urged African and developing countries governments to study and pass laws adopting a Global License scheme for scientific material exchanged over P2P networks. Legally, this would not achieve exactly Open Access but a relatively unexpensive and form of equitable access, because the amount of the Global License shall be determined by law or decree by the Government.

2006-01-30T10:53:21