Rami Olwan

The World Bank will be adopting an Open Access Policy as of July 1, which will make World Bank research freely available online without charge or restrictions, making a wealth of knowledge available to anyone in the world. 

To underpin this new Open Access policy, the World Bank recently launched the World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) as its new home for all of the Bank’s research outputs. In addition, to facilitate use of online content, the Bank became the first major international organization to adopt a set of copyright licenses from Creative Commons that will allow anyone to use, re-use, and distribute Bank research and knowledge products free of charge as long as the Bank is attributed.

What makes these moves so significant? How can open access contribute to the goal of eliminating poverty? How does it impact Bank’s researchers and authors? How will the OKR benefit users of Bank knowledge, in particular those in developing countries?

The panel, moderated by World Bank Publisher Carlos Rossel, will answer these questions and address the challenges, successes, pitfalls and benefits other institutions experienced when they made similar game-changing decisions.

Featuring:

Peter Suber | Director of the Harvard Open Access Project and a leading voice in the open access movement
Michael Carroll | American University law professor and founding board member of Creative Commons
Cyril Muller | Vice President for External Affairs at the World Bank
Adam Wagstaff | Research Manager of the World Bank's Development Research Group.

Source:

http://live.worldbank.org/bank-open-access-policy-development-liveblog

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/32839