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[BOAI] Valparaiso Declaration

From: =?windows-1252?Q?Tom=E0s_Baiget?= <baiget AT idescat.es>
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 16:10:28 +0100

Threading: ↑ [BOAI] February issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter from peters AT earlham.edu
• This Message
VALPARAISO DECLARATION
FOR IMPROVED SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION IN THE ELECTRONIC MEDIUM

On January 14 and 15, 2004, on the campus of the Pontificia Universidad 
Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV) in Valparaiso, Chile, a workshop was held 
on the possibilities of electronic publication, in which 120 delegates 
from 15 countries participated. Among others, the following experts from 
various academic disciplines, publishing houses and libraries took part: 
Jorge Allende (researcher from the Universidad de Chile), Atilio Bustos 
(Director of the PUCV Library System), Manuel Krauskopf (Rector of the 
Universidad Andrés Bello and editor of Biological Research), Claudio 
Menezes (Regional Advisor for UNESCO), Hooman Momen (editor of the 
Bulletin of the World Health Organization), Graciela Muñoz (member of 
ICSUs CDSI committee, and editor of the Electronic Journal of 
Biotechnology), Abel Packer (Director of BIREME), Erik Sandewall 
(President of ICSUs CDSI Committee), Carol Tenopir (academician at the 
University of Tennessee), and Jorge Walters (Coordinator of Information 
Technologies at BIREME). Tomàs Baiget (Project Leader, Statistical 
Institute of Catalonia, and editor of the journal El Profesional de la 
Información) acted as the scientific informant.

At the conclusion of the discussions, the following DECLARATION was drafted:

1. Experts and researchers must work in favor of scientific rigor, both 
adhering to the protocols of the established scientific methods in their 
experiments and research studies, and acting with honesty in their 
possible collaborations as referees when evaluating the work of their 
peers. Likewise, scientific rigor necessarily extends to the entire 
process of communication through scientific publications.

2. Journals must improve their production processes by using online 
technologies in order to reduce their publication times.

3. Assessments of reading habits and analyses of the market for 
electronic journals clearly confirm the fact that the Internet is 
already a place of convergence and the preferred medium for the 
transmission of scientific knowledge.

4. Managers of scientific journals are responsible for achieving their 
maximal dissemination, bringing with it greater visibility and 
accessibility. They should not only ensure that their contents and 
format are standardized but also that they are indexed in the greatest 
possible number of data bases and indexes, and that the complete texts 
are immediately available in multiple repositories.

5. Knowledge of the current bibliometric and scientometric indicators 
must be raised in order to ensure their proper application in the 
appropriate context and to prevent aberrations from occurring. To this 
end, the current vicious circle centralized in ISI must be broken, and 
we must evolve toward a different, decentralized model that does not put 
the science from determined zones and languages at a disadvantage.

6. Measures must be taken with governments, associations, professionals, 
and so forth in order to establish an alternative model for assessing 
scientific production, so that science that is not written in English is 
given the consideration it deserves in the global context. There cannot 
be second class avenues in the sciences.

7. Open software models and sources of information must be fostered to 
provide equal opportunity for everyone.

8. The gradual reduction in publishing costs as a result of electronic 
publication (given the fact that the costs of the production process are 
more and more being borne by the authors and readers) must inexorably 
lead to systems of communicating science that are open and managed by 
the scientific community itself.

9. Librarians and academicians are responsible for teaching students and 
users in general how to assess the quality of the information sources 
they use.

10. The scientific community must meet to analyze, discuss and propose 
publication norms in the electronic medium as soon as possible.

Further information on the II Latin American Workshop on Resources and 
Possibilities for Electronic Publication:
http://www.icsep.info/
Photos:
http://icsep.fotopic.net

Valparaiso, January 15, 2004
(published on February 4, 2004)
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