The Brazilian Model for Free Access to Scientific Publications

摘要

Although Brazil lacks a cohesive national policy for free access to scientific publications, local initiatives by universities, funding agencies and state and federal government make up the framework for a full policy for free access. The paper aims at putting together the pieces and presenting a general picture of what such policy might be: free access to all Brazilian theses and dissertations through digital repositories; institutional protection for the copying of books for academic purposes; fomenting publicly funded peer-reviewed non author fee free access journals; qualitative (instead of quantitative/ impact based) evaluation for scientists publishing in free access journals. The paper also points to the deficiencies of existing policies and reflects about the limitations of national policies for free access journals in the context of globalized science.