Even when taking into account that the Internet is mainly accessible to a younger, urbanized, elite audience, the community that understands itself as producing "open content" is still very small. It is made-up of a small, internally well-connected group of individuals, mainly from Egypt and Jordan, the two countries in the region most oriented towards the Anglo-American West. Most projects struggle with small number of contributors, placing a great burden on those who do contribute. The community centers around two main projects, the Arab Wikipedia and the free and open source software (FOSS) localization / documentation projects Arabeyes. They could be described as the core of the 'movement'. Relatively well-established, connected to the international scene, partly supported in some way or another by international NGOs, and thus enjoying comparatively high visibility, locally and globally.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
