[Upd-discuss] Education and scientific research in developing countries

[Andrius Kulikauskas]

Maria Agnese Giraudo, Thank you for your statement and I look forward to 
seeing you! Richard Stallman, thank you for your feedback! Andrius 
Kulikauskas, ms@ms.lt
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Education and scientific research in developing countries

My reflections come from my experience in Tanzania with projects in 
support of Primary schools and as librarian in a scientific research 
institute about food and nutrition (INRAN) in Rome, Italy.

Education in Developing Countries
In Tanzanian Primary schools the rate of provision of textbooks for 
children is about 1/6-8 and in Secondary school parents have to buy 
books that are quite expensive, while schools haven’t any library there 
are and only few public libraries around. Considering the unacceptable 
inequality between north and south also regarding information/knowledge 
provision and the availability of contents and learning opportunities by 
digital and internet technologies, it seems no more avoidable taking 
measures to rethink the whole copyright system.

I don’t have the competence to enter into the technical aspects of the 
copyright but the possibility of rethinking and redesigning Copyright 
system and of inverting the system and the role of “Exceptions and 
Limitations” into a hypothetical new frame of general Human Rights 
recognition (1) seems a revolution of the trend mainly conceived to 
defend author and publisher/distributor economic interests.

The Digital Divide is inequality of access to the Internet as well as to 
the content, while there is in digital contents and Internet a 
“potential for explosive distribution, especially in tertiary 
institutions and libraries in developing countries”.(2) In a globalized 
world the less restrictions are in developed countries digital content 
the more developing countries benefit of it.
Indigenous Content. Developing Countries are more and more aware of 
their heritage: of their socio-cultural traditions and of peculiarity of 
their natural environment. They are creating contents as well as 
collecting written and oral documents. The reconsideration of their 
culture is progressing in proposing original approaches of research at 
the university level in international collaboration.

The OA impact to Scientific Research dissemination
The development of Open Access Movement has offered to all scientists 
all over the world the possibility of publishing in Open Archives, 
whether institutional or tematic or in open access journals to 
disseminate their works without bottleneck restrictions of commercial 
publishers. The controversial tool of Impact Factor has been challenged 
by Open Access and its mechanism of citations has been treated by the 
increasing amount of on-line OA publications. Although IF has been the 
main means of selection of scientists in their career progression, now 
it appears to be totally inadequate to evaluate such amount of 
publications not only in English while scientists of developing 
countries, before excluded by “ the scientific world” can take part in 
the scientific community.

(1) P. Bernt Hugenholtz & Ruth L. Okediji (Institute for Information Law 
University of Minnesota /University of Amsterdam Law School) Conceiving 
an International Insrument on Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright. 
Final Report March 06, 2008
(2) The first thing to realize is such access techniques are hybrids of 
digital and analog technologies, therefore requiring that only one 
person in a sharing community have a computer and access to the 
internet. Coupled with analog copying and reprographic technologies such 
as photocopiers, as well as public communication devices such as radio, 
televisions and mobile phones, this makes information potentially widely 
accessible and easily distributable. For example, where individuals have 
computers but few can access the internet, one person or
institution with a CD-burner can distribute many copies of the same 
document by burning a CD. (Shabalala, 2007, p.41).