7. Growth of mobile phones in Africa Source: African Mobile Factbook 2008 International Telecommunications Union report (2009) “ The increase in the number of mobile cellular subscriptions over the last five years has defied all predictions and Africa remains the region with the highest mobile growth rate” Although number of Internet users has also grown faster than in other regions: “ Africa’s ICT penetration levels in 2009 are still far behind the rest of the world and very few African countries reach ICT levels comparable to global averages”
This is an example of one of BMC’s journal authors involved in a malaria prevention project in Zambia using a mobile phone network to get access to the latest information. There is huge potential now for internet technology to help with access to knowledge around the world but there are also many barriers and I want to talk about how Open Access can address some of these barriers And it is open access publishing that taps into this new world of access to knowledge.
more than 500 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa now, up from 246 million in 2008. According to Facebook statistics tracker Socialbakers, there were around 10.5 million Facebook users in Africa in 2010
Just changing how the service is paid for. Community retains control of research Copyright handed over to the publisher Publisher sells copyright back to users Subscription barriers to research restrict access
Many OA journals published by OA and elsewhere corts are covered centrally by an organisation which runs the journal, so no fees for authors or readers
A $US7000 editing give-away.
Mostly online only…
BMC received over 35k submissions in 2010
A major part of why we’re here - last few years of collab with ComputerAid - started with donating commission from T-shirts
We will let the world know your institution is a member
Really has demonstrated what a truly international forum the open access model can deliver
Bring together research from across BioMed Central’s journals
![Open Access Africa 2011 ,[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)