Open Access in Latin America: Embraced as key to visibility of research outputs | SPARC

"Developing and emerging countries searching for a model of Open Access publishing should take a long look at how the publishing system has evolved in Latin America. Before the phrase 'Open Access' was coined and the movement officially launched, academics in Brazil embraced sharing scholarly research online and the idea spread. In 1997, SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) was launched as a pilot program to coordinate academic publishing on the web for a collection of Brazilian journals. This pioneering effort was supported by both the research funder community, with the São Paulo Science Foundation (FAPESP) as a principle player, and the scientific information community, with the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information playing a leading role.