Scholarly Communication Strategies in Latin America's Research-Intensive Universities | SUSE Open Archive

The following citation comes from the Stanford University School of Education (SUSE) Open Archive. Citation: Alperin, J.P., Fischman, G.E. & Willinsky, J. (forthcoming). Scholarly Communication Strategies in Latin America's Research-Intensive Universities. Revista Educación Superior y Sociedad. A full text pdf of the article is available by following the link above. The introduction to the article begins: “Open Access—scholarship that is ―digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (Suber, 2011)—has dramatically changed the research landscape in universities worldwide in the twenty-first century.1 In Latin America, regional Open Access initiatives (if not officially labeled ―open access) have permeated most research-intensive universities and national science evaluation systems and have begun to alter the way that local research is perceived. Furthermore, the prominence of Open Access, regionally and globally, has become a significant force in transforming previous traditions and systems used by universities in Latin America in the production and access to scientific knowledge, having a profound influence on its position within what might be thought of as the global knowledge exchange. What has become clear is that Latin American journals are using the open access publishing model to a far greater extent than other regions arising out of both the sense of public mission among the Latin American University (LAU)2 and open access‘s effectiveness for sharing knowledge, and there is reason to believe that this is contributing to an increased presence and impact for this literature. As well, journals in this region are increasingly turning to large-scale non-commercial open access publishing portals to build the reputation of journals that meet accepted ―international editorial standards. And thirdly, journals in the region are employing open source software solutions, principally Open Journal Systems, to manage their publishing processes online. These current initiatives speak encouragingly to the region‘s growing contribution to a global knowledge exchange and to the research literature‘s standing as a public good. At the same time, this assessment of scholarly publishing in Latin America suggests that further advances could be achieved through increased coordination, technical efficiencies, and editorial support in the integration of these initiatives...”