The business of the CGIAR [Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research]’s, Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property (CAS-IP), is to assist with effective IP & technology transfer management within the context of agricultural development, to benefit the world’s poor....
Victoria Henson-Apollonio
Access to correct and appropriate information is an ongoing challenge. Capacity to communicate, providing access to knowledge, networking, sharing of experiences, building capacity and access to professional advice and experience all play a role.
Many of our partners in developing countries are struggling to raise awareness as to why IP management is important and how IP management forms part of the bridge between researchers and users....
Kay Chapman
When thinking about access in terms of Open Access specifically it should be noted that articles from some ‘big-name’ journals — such as the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), can be read and downloaded from servers in developing countries for free.
This is a policy that could be encouraged more widely to address part of the problem for access in developing countries — but that, and indeed OA from large publishers in general, doesn’t fix the problem.
Journals from the developed world tend to deal with IP issues from the developed world. Unfortunately where communications infrastructure is weak, even Green OA can be problematic and here the informal IP management elements play a role — how can we transfer the skills necessary for ensuring successful data sharing in a particular project!
But this isn’t going far enough when considering how to tackle IP management challenges in developing countries. We need to be active as well as reactive to the IP issues. One cannot segregate IP as a problem in itself; IP mechanisms that are, for the most part–business tools....
Sebastian Derwisch
[System Dynamic Modelling] can...form the basis for trying to ask broader questions such as “what can be done to improve IP management in a development context?” ...
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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
