Re: Communication flow in agricultural research

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

I know this is not quite what you had in mind, but please do have a look
at TEEAL:

TEEAL -- The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library:
http://teeal.cornell.edu/

See also the Developing Nations Initiatives site of the LIBLICENSE web
site, for other related activities, at:

www.library.yale.edu/~llicense

I believe that the FAO is soon to establish a program to share peer
reviewed journals with developing nations, along the lines of WHO's HINARI
project.  We should hear news of that initiative soon... If anyone on this
list knows more about it, do please share the information.

Sincerely, Ann Okerson
___

> 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]