From: Richard Poynder <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 13:23:51 +0000

The mission of UNESCO, which was founded in 1945, is to “contribute to
the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable
development and intercultural dialogue through education, the
sciences, culture, communication and information.”

An important plank in that mission is a commitment to help build
inclusive and equitable knowledge societies. We should not be
surprised, therefore, that UNESCO supports the open access movement,
we should not be surprised that it was the first UN agency to adopt an
OA policy, and we should not be surprised that it now makes its own
publications open access.

Today UNESCO’s OA repository (OAR) provides free access to over 500 of
its own books, reports and articles in over 11 languages, and in
recent years it has created a number of OA portals, directories,
knowledge banks and Open Access indicators.

But what does UNESCO believe its role in the open access movement
should be, what does it view to be the current issues in open access,
and what are its plan for open access going forward?

An interview with Dr Indrajit Banerjee, Director of UNESCO’s Knowledge
Societies Division can be accessed here:

http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-open-access-interviews-dr-indrajit.html