This year, the fifth annual Publishers for Development (PfD) conference explored current developments in scholarly communication including their impact on publishers, researchers and information professionals in the global South. The rapid growth in open access, the potential for social media to increase communication of research and also new measures for the way research is used were all topics viewed from a Southern perspective. The one-day conference was held in London on 15 October and titled 'Forward Thinking: Developing a global research cycle which fully engages South and North'. It brought together publishers from 16 publishing houses, librarians and researchers from universities in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Also present were representatives of organisations involved in research access, production and use such as the World Bank, African Journals Online, Research4Life, Development Research Uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa (DRUSSA), Talloires Network and Partnerships in Health Information.

Aaron Hillel Swartz (8 de noviembre de 1986, Chicago - 11 de enero de 2013, Nueva York)1 fue un programador, escritor y activista de Internet. Recibió atención de los medios después de la recolección de artículos de revistas académicas JSTOR. Fue cofundador de Reddit y Demand Progress, y previamente cofundó la Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Asimismo fue director técnico de Open Library.2 También se centró en la sociología, la conciencia cívica y el activismo. En 2010 fue miembro del Centro de Ética de la Universidad de Harvard. Cofundó el grupo Progreso demanda en línea (conocido por su campaña en contra de SOPA)3 y más tarde trabajó con Rootstrikers grupo activista internacional y de EE.UU. y Avaaz. En junio de 2013, Swartz fue incluido póstumamente en el Salón de la Fama de Internet.4 5

To guarantee access to and uptake of knowledge by all. Research and innovation benefit from scientists, research institutions, businesses and citizens accessing, sharing and using existing scientific knowledge and the possibility to express timely expectations or concerns on such activities. A major challenge is to broadly implement Open Access - i.e.

Opening knowledge is great. Sharing knowledge is vital. In the past, publishers were the sole mediators for the dissemination of knowledge in printed form. In our, digital age, sharing has become easier thanks to the internet. Yet, although all areas of society have embraced the internet as THE sharing medium, scientific publishing has lagged far behind.

We live in a digital world with too much information and not enough knowledge. How do we find our way through the mass of information available via the internet on our laptops, mobile phones, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to meaningful interaction?

Open Access Publishing is the free distribution of research, whether it is as a pre-print (working paper) or a peer-reviewed article. Since the creation of the web, more and more journal are choosing open access as their business model. One of them was recently Economic Analysis and Policy, published by the Economic Society of Australia...

Completely. The short answer is that copyright law gives the copyright holder the right to make access open or restricted, and we seek to put copyright in the hands of authors or institutions that will consent to make access open. The long answer depends on whether we are talking about open access journals or open access repositories.

Why Open Access? Funders invest in research in order to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, encourage innovation, enrich education, and stimulate the economy - to improve the public good. They recognize that broad access to the results of research is an essential component of the research process itself.