“The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) was launched at a special side event organised during the 36th session of the UNESCO General Conference at Paris headquarters. The portal is aimed at presenting a snapshot of the status of open access (OA) to scientific information around the world.

For countries that have been more successful in implementing OA, the portal highlights critical success factors and aspects of the enabling environment. For countries and regions that are still in the early stages of OA development, it identifies key players, potential barriers and opportunities.

The portal has country reports from over 148 countries with weblinks to over 2,000 initiatives/projects in member states. It is supported by an existing Community of Practice (CoP) on Open Access on the WSIS Knowledge Communities Platform that has over 1,400 members.

The GOAP, launched together with the revamped Open Training Platform (OTP) and the first UNESCO Open Educational Resources (OER) Platform, provides the information for policy-makers to learn about the global OA environment. They can also view their country’s status, and understand where and why OA has been most successful.

Development of the portal has been made possible with support received from the governments of Columbia, Denmark, Norway and the US. The portal will be a work in progress, and shall be further improved with the support received from the community of OA practitioners.

OA is reportedly at the heart of UNESCO’s mandate to provide universal access to information and knowledge. The UNESCO Open Access programme shall continue to facilitate policy dialogue in member states, share knowledge and best practices in the field of OA, and build and share local capacities through North-South and South-South co-operation to build knowledge societies for sustainable development.”

Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter (today)