The launching ceremony was held at the Orange BD Office at Dhaka's Karwan Bazar Friday morning, with researchers, academics, journalists, publishers, IT specialists and librarians present.
In the initial stages of its Bangladesh chapter, Open Access has formed a fifteen-member committee. Prime Minister's Office librarian Kanok Monirul Islam has been made the convener, while Dr Susmita Das and Engineer Shuvra Rani Kar have been named as joint convener and member secretary respectively.
Kanok gave a presentation during the ceremony highlighting on the possibilities of Open Access in the country.
He said: “This is a platform for advocating open access and sharing success stories of the open access movement in the world and Bangladesh. It invites everyone who is involved and interested in such a movement.”
The committee will work with policy makers, managers, researchers and scholarly societies to adopt a policy to take the open access movement forward in Bangladesh, he added.
He further said: “We promote open access, open education and open data that can be used by the public and those who are in universities. Open Access is a platform where anyone can find research articles for free with the rights to use the articles fully.”
Golam Mustafa, publisher of Hakkani Publishers, said: “Knowledge cannot be restricted. There is much authentic and useful information in the horizon that we need to access and use to make our society better.”
Biologist Dr Anisuzzaman Khan said: “The age of hiding information has ended with the pace of new technologies. If we want to develop our nation, it is mandatory that the necessary information is made available for the people.”
Open Access Bangladesh is a local window of a broader international academic movement that seeks free and open online access to academic information, such as publications and data. Open access is also the term for a new business model for academic publishing that makes research information available to readers for free.
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