Survey on infrastructure to support Open Access for scientific journals in Latin America

For the sake of the strengthening of non-commercial Open Access

Latin America has stood out for building a non-commercial Open Access (OA) scholarly communication model that relies on cooperation from universities and governments, which supports scientific journals, platforms and repositories that make up a collectively sustained infrastructure where public funds play an important role.

However, it is vitally important to quantify the investment made in this regional system, the distribution of costs and key stakeholders; with the aim of showing the complexity of this cooperative scheme and its evolution.

In a context in which the dominance of commercial OA publishing industry is gaining ground through the transfer of subscription costs to author fees, it is important to offer strong evidence about the infrastructure that supports non-commercial publication models and through it improve the understanding of them on a global scale. This, it is intended to contribute to identifying channels and strategies to strengthen and preserve non-commercial Open Access in the region, which enables inclusive and equitable scholarly communications.

The survey for Latin American journal editors, available here, will document the infrastructure (resources and business models) that supports Open Access journals in Latin America and will help identify their needs and challenges. The results will be part of a report that contributes to making informed decisions and promoting the strengthening of non-commercial OA.

The survey is carried out by the CLACSO Working Group “Open Knowledge as a Common Good” supported by Invest In Open Infrastructure (IOI), Redalyc, the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico and AmeliCA. It takes around 14 minutes to be answered and it will remain open until July 30, 2020.