User:Filippo Morsiani/Open access in Thailand

Open Access in Thailand; In Thailand, ICT applications are fostered though support and policy. The ICT Master plan (2009-2013) policy is to ensure that majority of the population will gain knowledge and capacity to access, create, and use information in an information-literate way in order to benefit in education, work, and everyday life. According to DOAJ, there are 14 open access journals being published in Thailand. Thai Digital Collection project is a cooperative open access initiative aiming to collect theses, eBooks, and ejournal collections of research output from different universities in Thailand coordinated by Office of Information Technology for Development Studies, which has also taken up a Thai Union Catalogue project.

Even as the open source phenomenon is gathering pace, the Thailand government is striving to embrace Open Access principles in its strict sense. Support for Open Access comes from educational institutions, research councils and research and development organizations. There are currently 11 OA repositories listed in OpenDOAR. University libraries implement IRs to publish intellectual outputs such as CUIR- Chulalongkorn University Intellectual Repository. Research Library of the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) is a national depository of research reports and theses which are collected from local universities and research organizations. Under the Science and Technology Knowledge Services project, initiatives like Thai Thesis Database, Online Resources, Thailibrary.org, eBooks, and eLearning were taken up, giving a major fillip to the Thai content. Thai LIS consortium is working to promote and advocate Open Access concept by developing OA resources using in-house application, such as Thai Academic Reference Database. The national repository, Thai National Research Repository (TNRR) houses and publishes research reports funded by four national institutions: National Science and Technology Agency (NSTDA), National Research Council of Thailand, Thailand Research Fund, and Health System Research Institute.

A central library of NSTDA, known as Science and Technology Knowledge Services (STKS), has initiated several OA projects since 1990s. These include NSTDA Research, Thai Glossary, Thai S&T Encyclopedia, e-Learning, and Bibliography of ASEAN Studies.

Enabling Environment
Academic and culture sector is showing keen interest to involve Open Source based applications for libraries, databases and repositories. Research, Science and Technology and culture sector are forerunners showing awareness and means to build OA collections through initiatives such as repositories or simple web pages of accessible links.

Potential Barriers
Socio-economic conditions, inequitable access to ICT, lack of content in English and lack of English language proficiency, lack of information infrastructure, political instability are the main barriers to Open Access growth.

ICT infrastructure in rural areas should be strengthened. More collaboration is required for making national initiatives in OA. OA awareness programmes are needed that encourage researchers to self-archive their work in local languages. A national OA policy is lacking.

Funding Mandate
There is currently no national OA policy in place and zero institutional/funders' OA policies registered in databases such as ROARMAP and SHERPA/JULIET.

Past and Future OA related Activities

 * 2-3 Jun 2014 - Inaugural OASPA Asian Conference on OA Scholarly Publishing, Bangkok: this was a big step of OA movement in Thailand.
 * The International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL), Bangkok, 2005.

List of Publications

 * Thaotip, L. (2011). Impact of Open Access Resources on LIS Scholars in Thailand.Asia Pacific Journal of Library and Information Science, 1(1).
 * Butdisuwan, S. (2009). Acquisition and Deployment of Technology in Academic Library Environment:  Experience in Thailand. Paper presented at International Conference on Academic Libraries (ICAL-2009)5th to 8th October, 2009, Delhi University Library System, University of Delhi (North Campus), Delhi, INDIA