Lean Alfred Santos :
The Asian Development Bank launched Open Access Repository, a website that presently holds about 2,100 publications for anyone to access.
The Asian Development Bank joins the ranks of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which have embraced the open access principle and made all economic and development data and research available for public use.
The move, considered a “paradigm shift in the way ADB shares its knowledge” according to a bank official, is expected to spur more innovation, transparency and crowdsourced knowledge and solutions for Asia-Pacific’s rapidly growing and changing development landscape.
“Open access is based on the principle that publicly funded research should be circulated as widely as possible so that the knowledge can be built upon, which may lead to new and innovative ideas for development in Asia and the Pacific,” Matthew Howells, the Manila-based financial institution’s head of publishing, told Devex.
Howells added that open access also means bank publications and research dating back since its foundation more than 50 years ago will be “easily found, searched and used by anyone who wants to use it in the way they wish to use it” – something that could spark a knowledge revolution in the international community, and result in better-planned and implemented development programs as information sharing and open data become the norm.
Along with the announcement of the adoption of the open access principle is the bank’s launch of a website called the Open Access Repository, which presently holds about 2,100 publications for anyone to access. Howells said they expect to index the entire back catalog of the bank’s research by August 2015.
While ADB publications have always been accessible and available to the public, searching for certain documents used to require familiarity on how to navigate the bank’s website. ADB Vice President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Bindu Lohani said everyone in the region, “should be empowered with the right access and use our knowledge and expertise as they wish.”
Technology has certainly helped the international community improve operational efficiency and effectiveness both in an operational and monitoring sense. Informed decision-making generally leads to better implemented development programs. Having ready access to information also enables implementers to fix problems early on, saving them time and money.
Howells agreed, saying that “recent studies reveal that researchers prefer using databases.” He also shared the belief that making data and research is not the end goal; how data is presented is important as well.
Have you tried using ADB’s Open Access Repository? What suggestions do you have to make the site easier for everyone to use? Have your say by leaving a comment below.
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