[WSIS CS-Plenary] ITU and open access recommendations of WSIS

[Zielinski, Christopher]

Karen,

As someone who has managed publishing activities in a number of UN
organizations, I can attempt a generalized answer to your question about
"content access in UN organizations" (although there are of course a
number of specific exceptions). 

Most UN organizations produce both "priced publications" (which are
often given away) and "documents" (which are never sold). Priced
publications are mainly sold in industrialized countries, while they are
generally given away in developing countries, according to various
criteria. The money earned by UN organizations through selling priced
publications is generally recycled through a Revolving Fund to support
the cost of production of new titles, staff, promotion, etc. - and to
pay for the free distribution. 

With the arrival of the Internet, organizations have found themselves
wavering at the banks of an economic and developmental Rubicon - should
they give away pdfs of their priced publications online or not? 

As most of those who can access the pdfs of these publications on the
Internet will be in industrialized countries, will such open access in
any way help those in developing countries (which is, after all, the
main reason why these organizations publish anything)?

In fact, they wonder, might this instead be a classic case of the magic
bullet being aimed at the foot? You give the books for free to those who
can afford them anyway, and thus kill most of your print sales. The
result of this is that you also kill the income used to finance the
printing of books on paper - mainly needed in developing countries.
(Against this argument, however, there is research to suggest that
offering free pdfs is a great sales leader - people prefer buying the
printed and bound book rather than either reading a pdf on screen or
printing it out on the office machine and binding it with a stapler.)

The sub-category principally addressed by the open access movement,
however, is not books, but academic journals. Interestingly, policy is
quite varied in the UN system regarding open access to its journals. A
quick web survey shows that WIPO and the ILO make everybody pay for
electronic access to their journals, the ITU seems to have none, while
WHO allows open electronic access to its journal (the Bulletin), while
also selling print subscriptions. 

Hope this is "brief and succinct" enough for you, Karen - I can be wordy
and garrulous as well, if you prefer...

Cheers,

Chris

Chris Zielinski (writing in personal capacity)
STP, Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research
RPC/EIP, World Health Organization 
Avenue Appia, CH1211, Geneva, Switzerland 

-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org] On
Behalf Of karen banks
Sent: 07 April 2005 09:45
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: RE: [WSIS CS-Plenary] ITU and open access recommendations of
WSIS

dear parminder and all

I agree with you that ITU's case needs to be reviewed. Most of the UN
>organisations have book sale facilities, but at the same time, unlike
ITU, a
>good amount of the titles are made available through websites as well,
>typical example UNESCO and World Bank. If we have to implement the POA
text,
>ITU should open its repository of knowledge.

i'm interested in this particularly at the moment as the WGIG is
finalising 
the 'assessment' papers of existing governance mechanisms in respect the

'basket' of issues identified as important in the governance landscape.

there is one section on content accessibility and i would really
appreciate 
more/additional factual comments as regards the extent to which 
organisations - particularly UN agencies, make their content available,
and 
under what circumstances - but also, interested in government policies
that 
promote open access models..

would need this pretty quickly though.. and, the info needs to be as
brief 
and succinct as possible..

karen


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