User:Filippo Morsiani/Open access in Cuba

Open Access in Cuba;

The heath information regional meeting issued the Havana Declaration that included open access promotion back in 2001 (Habana Declaration at the 5º Health Information Regional Congress) and health journals and libraries adopted first open access initiatives, mainly in collective initiatives.

A recent study (Open Access Indicators and Scholarly Communications in Latin America) shows that, as of 2014, 2.39% (129) OA journals indexed in Latindex; 3.15% (22) OA journals indexed in RedALyC and 5.35% (48) OA journals indexed in SciELO are published in Cuba. IDICT is the national focal point of Latindex in Cuba. A project of Scielo together with the Health Network of Cuba (Red Telemática de Salud en Cuba - INFOMED) and the Cuban Health Library. Six digital OA repositories are registered in OpenDOAR, with strong presence of health contents. No mandates are registered in ROARMAP.

Since 2009, the creation of a National Commission for the Development of Open Access in Cuba, has promoted inter-institutional collaboration, training and events for open access in all disciplines, and the creation of new institutional repositories. The Open Access Week 2009 and 2010, were organized by the Scientific and Technological Information Institute (Instituto de Información Científica y Tecnológica- IDICT), the Cuban Society for Information Sciences (Sociedad Cubana de Ciencias de la Información - SOCICT), the Academy of Sciences of Cuba (Academia de Ciencias de Cuba - ACC), the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (Dirección de Ciencia del Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Medio Ambiente – CITMA) and the Health National Information Center (Centro Nacional de Información de Ciencias Médicas, INFOMED). In 2010, the event received support from INASP for an OJS workshop for journal editors. Cuba has received support from Unesco for several open access initiatives.

The International Information Congress (INFO) includes an open access forum, and INFO2012 also will include the II Forum on Open Access. With support also from UNESCO.

The inter-institutional events and training activities were planned and organized by the National Commission for the Development of Open Access in Cuba, that has research groups on issues related to digital repositories, open access journals and open access policies. Based on research results of the situation in Cuba, and following best international practices, this Commission has built a strategy for open access in Cuba. The Scientific and Technological Information Institute (Instituto de Información Científica y Tecnológica- IDICT) is coordinating a project for the development of a Cuban Network of Digital Repositories, a National Portal of Open Access Scientific Journals in OJS (today, 37 journals in the country use OJS for their open access journal management). and a Science National Harvester.

The Cuban Network of Science (Red Cubana de la Ciencia – Redcien) Virtual Library (Biblioteca Virtual de las Ciencias de Cuba) with full-text contents, and the open access bibliographic database CUBACIENCIA, developed by the National Library of Science and Technology (Biblioteca Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología – BNCT), are both contributing to the open access movement in Cuba.

The output of a collaboration project of IDICT with Redalyc, within a collaboration program of CITMA (Cuba) and CONACYT (México) to improve Cuban journal quality and visibility, is the Journal Portal Cuba in Redalyc with 20 full-text open access journals, results of training activities organized by Redalyc and IDICT. As of June 2014, 66 open access journals from Cuba are registered in DOAJ.

The Network of Scientometric Studies for Higher Education, National Center for Scientific Research, Havana, has prepared for INASP a “Bibliometric study of Latin American countries supported by INASP 1996-2008” with research results for several countries of the region.

Cuba also participates in The Global Network for Science Academies (IAP) project Open Institutional Repositories Infrastructure network for Central America and the Caribbean, coordinated by the Academy of Sciences from Cuba.

Together with other countries of the region, Cuba participates in open access regional subject repositories with a growing number of full-texts, examples: health (BVS), agriculture (SIDALC), science (PERIÓDICA), education (Relpe), public management and policies (CLAD-SIARE), social sciences (CLACSO, FLACSO, CLASE), work (LABORDOC), marine sciences (Oceandocs), information science (E-Lis), among others.

5-8 March 2013: 30 experts and Policy specialists from 25 countries including Belize; Virgin Islands; St Vincent and Grenadines; St Kitts and Nevis and St Martin; Argentina; Brazil; Chile; Costa Rica; Dominican Republic; El Salvador; Guatemala; Uruguay and Mexico gathered in Kingston to develop strategies and a road map to implement open access policies in the Latin American and Caribbean Region. This was the first regional consultation on open access to scientific information and research organized by the UNESCO Kingston Cluster office in collaboration with Ministry of Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, Ministry of Information, Government of Jamaica, University of West Indies and UNESCO National Commission for Jamaica. Workshop participants had the opportunity to contribute towards highlighting priority areas for intervention to achieve “Openness” in the region and individual countries. Participants reviewed the UNESCO OA policy templates and worked out specific policies for their own country/institution.

List of Publications
2014: "Open Access Indicators and Scholarly Communications in Latin America" is the result of a joint research and development project supported by UNESCO and undertaken by UNESCO in partnership with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP); the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO); the Network of Scientific 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).