Begun just 18 months ago, ICTP's eJournals Delivery Service has expanded to nearly 250 journal titles. Elsevier is the latest publisher to join the effort.

Ready Access

When the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics / Third World Academy of Sciences (ICTP/TWAS) Donation Programme launched the eJournals Delivery Service (eJDS) in autumn 2001, ICTP staff scientist and Donation Programme head, Hilda Cerdeira, hoped that the effort would help overcome a chronic problem faced by scientists who live and work in the developing world: limited access to the most current literature in research fields where new discoveries are often made and announced monthly, if not weekly (see "ICTP's Journals Delivery Service," News from ICTP, Autumn 2001, pp. 2-3).
The deceptively simple solution masked the truly breakthrough strategy that was involved. Instead of seeking information directly on the web, eJDS subscribers, who often found themselves short on bandwidth, money, or both, could quickly download files on their email--a solution that was fast, cheap and instantaneous.
Some 18 months later, the project's success is revealed by its numbers. More than 300 scientists from 62 countries now subscribe to the service. As a result, a growing number of scientists from the developing world's most impoverished countries now have the ability to download the most up-to-date scientific literature from a growing list of publishers that includes Academic Press, American Physical Society, Optical Society of America, World Scientific Publishing Co., and, most recently, Elsevier. All told, subscribers can currently tap, via email, the contents of nearly 240 journals, a list that likely includes the most prominent publications in their fields.
Last autumn, e-Journals Delivery Service hosted a roundtable discussion in Trieste to more fully examine the options that are available to provide 'ready' information access to scientists working in isolated areas of the developing world. The meeting, attended by some 50 individuals--representatives of universities, research centres, information providers and publishers--concluded with a list of recommendations outlining the major issues that need to be confronted if the promise of electronic communications is to be realised by all scientists and not just those who are fortunate enough to reside in countries that have the resources to fully partake of these information technologies.

Round Table on Developing Country Access to On-Line Scientific Publishing: Sustainable Alternatives, 4-5 October 2002

Participants first and foremost concurred that efforts should be made to broaden programmes like eJDS that provide web-to-email access. Such efforts, it was agreed, offer the fastest and cheapest solution to the developing world's information access problems.
Broadening such initiatives, however, will require encouraging additional publishers to join the programme as well as forging strategies for 'literally' spreading the word about the service to scientific communities throughout the developing world, especially scientists in the least developed countries (LDCs).
Participants also agreed that it would be necessary to provide broadbased training to developing world scientists on issues related to communications, networking, and web-enabling technologies. Such training, they added, must take account of local needs and skill levels.
Finally, participants agreed that it was essential to monitor in real-time the rates of connectivity among those working in research and educational institutions in developing countries. Such baseline information is necessary for determining where the bottlenecks exist and ultimately measuring the progress (or lack of progress) that may take place in the future. Efforts to fulfil this goal were put in place last November. To date, 20 developing countries have been surveyed with the help of the PingER project at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the United States.
New electronic information technologies hold the promise of creating a level playing field for researchers from the North and South. That promise, however, could well be overshadowed by a research landscape marked by sharp peaks and valleys unless scientists from the developing world are able to attain rapid and inexpensive access to the most current literature in their fields.
The recent roundtable discussion in Trieste issued a challenge to scientists and publishers alike not to allow this to happen. The broad framework set out by the participants is designed to ensure that information technologies fulfil their promise by providing universal access to the most current scientific literature to scientists in poor and rich countries alike. It is a challenge that lies at the heart of ICTP itself.

For additional information about the ICTP/TWAS Donation Programme's eJournals Delivery Service and the full text of the Trieste Recommendations, see http://www.ejds.org and http://www.ictp.it/ejournals/meeting2002/index.html, or email ejds@ictp.trieste.it.

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