It is with great pleasure that the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development announces the winners of the 2015 Award for individuals that have made a significant contribution to the progress of Open Access in the developing world. Candidates have been nominated from around the world according to the criteria for the EPT Annual OA Award.
The winner this year is Bianca Amaro, information coordinator at the Brazilian Institute for Information in Science and Technology (IBICT). Bianca has been directly responsible for the development and continuing progress of over 70 Institutional Repositories and regional networking to coordinate these activities. She has also worked to establish the Brazilian Portal of Scientific Publications in Open Access – oasisbr, holding more than a million documents related to Brazilian scientific output. Further, she has worked to establish a new system for the distribution of theses and dissertations among 60 educational and research organisations and setting up a portal for the Brazilian Digital Library. In addition she has been responsible for the Directory of Open Access Policies and the organisation of the 6th Luso-Brazilian Conference of Open Access (CONFOA), and previous conferences. Working tirelessly to improve the distribution and quality of OA journals and research knowledge emanating from Brazil, she is a highly active proponent of Open access and her achievements are proudly acknowledged by the EPT. Many congratulations to Bianca.
Another highly active and motivated advocate for Open Access is Dr Roshan Kumar Karn from Nepal. Starting a mere year ago, he has organised OA national conferences – the first in the country, and as a result of the good reception of this event he launched “Open Access: Greater Reach for Research”, which will work to integrate all the universities and research institutes in Nepal in the sharing of research publications and data. He has also begun the process of establishing an institutional repository in the largest medical school of the country, with government library support. He is now included as a member of the National Working Group on Open Access and Open Education Resources that was formed by the Government of Nepal this year. A South Asian regional meeting on Open Access, Data and Educational resources is planned for 2016 and he secured funding for this event from UNESCO and the Ministry of Education. His activities continue and also include editing work, translation and OA promotional writing. His enthusiasm and energy are commendable and he has achieved so much in a small country facing difficult challenges, and in such a short time, that the EPT wish to recognise this by awarding a Special Recommendation for his work. We wish him every success in the years ahead.
We received excellent nominations from Algiers, Bolivia, Brazil, El Salvador, India, and Nepal, demonstrating the strong reach of OA in the global south. All participants involved in the nominations are to be highly congratulated and encouraged onwards to even greater activities. The winners were selected because of their efforts to embrace both Green and Gold OA developments, national and institutional policy development, training and teaching efforts, general advocacy as well as activities within and beyond their own and regional countries. The multi-pronged approach leads to a growing understanding of the benefits of OA to the sharing of essential knowledge, which is the underlying objective of all OA initiatives.
Our congratulations and thanks to all.