Access to eletronic journals: policies, strategies and programmes The Brazilian experience Luiz Valcov Loureiro, Director of Programs, Capes/MEC International Conference of Scientific Eletronic Publishing in Developing Countries, Valparaiso, Chile, October 1st 2002

What is Capes? a foundation attached to Ministry of Education created in 1951 mission “ to improve the quality of higher education institutions in Brazil” 800 PhD and 1400 MSc programs 150,000 students enrolled, 30,000 faculty 6000 PhD, MSc delivered in 2001

What Capes does ? support to graduate programs in Brazil (institutional scholarships and grants) support to institutional faculty training plans scholarships abroad (PhD, split PhD, Pos-Doc) international cooperation special programs to develop strategic fields assessment of graduate programs access to scientific information

Why ? Historical reasons Crisis = Opportunity Reduce gaps between institutions and regions all over the country Increase the inclusion of the Brazilian academic community in the international scene Increase the quantity/quality/visibility of the Brazilian scientific production

How ? Electronic access to scientific information Internet and intranet infrastructure upgraded Some money for specific needs As universal as possible, different Capes commitment levels

To Whom ? Clear and simple criteria to select participating institutions 97 institutions, revised every 3 years (Capes assessment) 1 million users (150,000 graduate students, 30,000 faculty)

What ? (i) Full text databases –Content available simultaneously or preferably before print (live) –Backfiles from 1995 minimum –Quality of the service, availability, search engine, alert, usage statistics –Archiving, some times not available –Links with bibliographic databases –In the beginning is easy to choose

What ? (ii) Reference and citation databases –Broad fields coverage as possible –Broad time period coverage as possible –Quality of the service, availability, search engine, usage statistics –Links with full text databases –Some are obvious, others don´t, overlapping

What ? (iii) It becomes a maze very quickly –The user browses the content that he or she is used to read –Organize the content to bring to evidence all publications in a certain field –Bring to evidence reference databases –Bring to evidence open access publications to authorized and non-authorized users

How to buy ? Negotiation and acquisition conditions varies a lot There are 2 types of publishers –Transparent pricing (normal) –Monopolistic behavior (as they want) Strong commercial interests in a changing context

Where are we now ? titles with a good field coverage 13 references databases Brazilian thesis database Good embedding daily visits + 1,5 million articles downloaded in million searches in references databases

Where are we going ? There are few big publishers not yet included It is difficult buy from small publishers (10=1000) Usage assessment and management of content Paying user Cross search engine (maze effect) Training, training and more training

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