This guide, published by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), was a result of a project designed to build capacity for science communication at the Vietnamese Academy of Social Science. It draws on international good practice and discusses how three tools — the policy brief, the research brief and the story of change — can be used to communicate research through print media. The guide presents case-studies that illustrate policy processes in Vietnam; describes the principles and process of communication, and offers advice on how to write effectively and how to develop policy briefs. The guide is presented as a 'working document' that will be revised to incorporate users' views, and stresses that practice is the best way to improve writing skills.

This document, published by the European Association of Science Editors, provides guidelines on editing and translating scientific publications for the international community. Topics covered include how to structure a publication, scientific content and use of English language. The guide links to online references and further reading.

This report, published by Thomson Reuters, uses a collection of data to provide an overview of the patterns of research activity in Africa. The authors note the drain of talent away from the continent and suggest that this is partly due to a chronic lack of investment in research.

The authors identify networks of collaboration both within and beyond the continent but conclude that it is unclear whether these networks reflect long-term research links, or current research interests.

This article, published for The Rockefeller Foundation's conference series 'Making the eHealth Connection', assesses the barriers to quality health information in developing countries, which hamper the development of health systems and services. While the Internet has improved access to health information in developed countries, obstacles remain in developing nations — the most common being unreliable connectivity and expensive Internet access, especially in rural areas.

Other barriers include a lack of medical writing skills; language diversity; copyright issues; economic constraints; poor visibility of scientific outputs from developing countries; low levels of information technology literacy; cultural and lifestyle hurdles and a lack of appropriate public policies and funding.

The authors assess the current status of such barriers and explain how training, open access publishing and recent innovations in Internet access can help. They argue that the digital divide, and its consequent disparities, also exists in pockets within developed countries.

These guidelines, produced by the UK Social Issues Research Centre, the UK Royal Society and the Royal Institution of Great Britain, address the issues of health reporting and science reporting on health-related issues such as new drugs and medical technologies.

The first section is addressed to print and broadcast journalists reporting on health matters, laying out fundamental questions – credibility of sources, significance of findings, accuracy and communicating risk – that need to be addressed when reporting on science or health issues. The section for journalists also includes guidelines for editors and subeditors.

This is the written evidence given by Britain's largest science and technology publisher to a UK parliamentary inquiry on scientific publications.

In the statement, Reed Elsevier defends the traditional 'user-pays' model of scientific publishing.

It argues that by introducing an 'author-pays' model, open access "risks undermining public trust in the integrity and quality of scientific publications that has been established over hundreds of years". Furthermore, the financial viability of open-access models of scientific publishing has yet to be proven, it says.

This is an extract of a letter from Richard Charkin, chief executive of Macmillan publishers, which was submitted as written evidence to a UK parliamentary inquiry on scientific publications.

In the letter, Charkin argues that the 'author-pays' model used by open-access journals "potentially undermines the integrity of the world's highest quality journals, with unwelcome consequences for the scientific community, and for the wider public".

The publisher estimates that it costs £10,000-30,000 to publish a research paper in Nature. "Such an amount would be hardly affordable to most research scientists, and so journals such as Nature would be forced to reduce editorial criteria, and publish more, lower quality papers, and/or favour wealthy authors that were in a position to afford such a fee," the statement says.

This is an overview of the open-access movement and its potential, designed for members of the research and academic communities.

It highlights the key points to consider in thinking about and discussing open access, gives examples of open-access implementation, and provides sources for more information.

Issues addressed by the document include: why access to information is important, and what obstacles limit access. It also lists initiatives that call for open access and gives links to other resources.

This is a statement of principle that was drafted at a meeting in April 2003 at the headquarters of the US-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The statement spells out significant concrete steps that all relevant parties — including scientific research organisations, scientists, publishers and librarians — can take to promote the rapid and efficient transition to open-access publishing.

Signed by more than 20 senior figures, the document includes statements from working groups on institutions and funding agencies, libraries and publishers, and scientists and scientific societies.

This document is designed to guide institutions on how to create digital collections of the intellectual output of a single university or a multiple institution community of colleges and universities in an 'institutional repository'.

It outlines the benefits of this approach to organising and disseminating information, and addresses cost and intellectual-property issues.

The document also gives guidance on: organisational, administrative and cultural issues; content policies; faculty outreach and participation; and technical and infrastructure issues.

This is a list of frequently asked questions on self-archiving of research papers.

It provides information on what self-archiving is, and gives advice on how researchers, libraries, publishers and research funders can facilitate self-archiving. 

The questions also address concerns that researchers may have about self-archiving their research, including issues about copyright and peer review.

This declaration was signed by key players in the open-access movement at a meeting organised by the Open Society Institute in Budapest in February 2002.

It calls for barriers to open-access publishing to be removed, with the aim that research articles from all academic fields be made freely available on the Internet.

Other individuals and organisations are now invited to sign the declaration to pledge their support and help ensure a transition to open-access publishing. More than 3,000 individuals and 200 organisations have added their name to the initiative.

This survey, conducted by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications, gives an overview of the activities and views of publishers regarding access to their information within the developing world either free or at reduced cost.

The results of a short questionnaire, which was distributed widely on ListServs and email lists, highlight a number of small publisher-specific programmes already in place, mostly associated with learned societies and society membership. Countries eligible to join the initiatives are listed.

The survey also underlines the complexity of the publishing environment, where involvement in any initiatives to promote readership are dependent on other partnerships – with other publishers, with other societies, and with membership requirements.

This comprehensive study of the current status of the global science publishing industry was commissioned by the UK-based Wellcome Trust and completed in September 2003.

It reviews how the current market structure functions - in terms of supply and demand - who the key players are, and how its operation affects the scientific community and progress of scientific research. It then considers how the electronic revolution has impacted the current system, and evaluates the changes it makes possible.

The report ends with a study of the future possibilities for scientific publishing, depending on how the key players react (and interact) to the new possibilities offered by information technologies. As a conclusion, the Wellcome Trust gives its endorsement to open access in science publishing.

ICSU has published four brochures on: universal access to scientific knowledge; decision making and governance; policy issues for scientific information; and improving education and training.

The brochures were published following a meeting on 'Science in the Information Society' held in Paris in March 2003 by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

This workshop brought together scientific experts, managers and representatives from several inter-governmental agencies to try and identify the major issues for science in relation to the World Summit on the Information Society.

[The brochures are available in English, French and Spanish.]

This document - compiled on behalf of the international scientific community - suggests amendments to the Draft Declaration of Principles and Draft Plan of Action Plan for the World Summit on the Information Society, the first stage of which was held in Geneva, Switzerland in December 2003.

The document underlines the central role of science in the information society, and says that information and communications technologies "provide an historic opportunity to reduce the scientific divide: they improve and increase the transfer of scientific knowledge between developed and developing countries".

It specifically urges the Summit to "promote electronic publishing, affordable pricing schemes and appropriate open source initiatives to make scientific information affordable and accessible on an equitable basis in all countries".

This statement, published in the first issue of the open-access journal PLoS Biology, outlines the philosophy behind the journal – the first to be published by the Public Library of Science.

PLoS Biology has been launched to demonstrate that high-quality journals can flourish without charging for access, say the founders of the initiative, Patrick Brown, Michael Eisen and Harold Varmus. The aim is to cause a revolution in science publishing.

The statement also explores the financial 'producer pays' model adopted by PLoS, and refers to examples of the recent surge of awareness and support for open-access publication, both within the scientific community and in the public at large.

This declaration was made at a meeting on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities held in Berlin, Germany in October 2003. It aims to promote the Internet as a "functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base", and says that "content and software tools must be openly accessible and compatible".

It has been signed by more than 20 international research and cultural heritage organisations, including seven large German research organisations.

The signatories encourage their researchers and grant recipients to publish their work according to the principles of the open-access paradigm, and encourage the "holders of cultural heritage" to support open access by providing their resources on the Internet.

[The declaration is available in English, French and German.]