Communication flow in agricultural research

[Subbiah Arunachalam <arun@mssrf.res.in>]

Friends:

Agricultural research is probably the most important area of scientific
research for most, if not all, developing countries. Strengthening
agricultural research requires providing improved access to agricultural
research information to scientists in these countries and making their own
research findings easily known to scientists in the rest of the world. In
short we should aim at improving the communication flow. Unfortunately, we
do not see any major initiative similar to the Open Archives for physics
(arXiv) and the e-print services in the field of agriculture. The
technology is in place, all the software and expertise is readily
available and Open Archive evangelists like Stevan Harnad, Peter Suber and
Leslie Chan are willing to help. What is holding the world back from
setting up a worldwide Open Archive for agricultural and related research
and setting up institutional archives at major agricultural universities
and research centres?

Please alert me to anything coming close to an Open Archive in the area of
agriculture as well as institutional archives, if there is any. Thanks and
regards.

Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]