[Forwarded message from EPT via GOAL mailing list]<br><div class="gmail_quote"><br><div link="blue" vlink="purple" lang="EN-GB"><div><p class="MsoNormal">The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT) has announced the winner of its inaugural award to<u> individuals</u> in developing and emerging countries that have made a significant impact on the development of Open Access. The 2011 award went to Dr Francis Jayakanth, of the <span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:#333333">National Centre for Scientific Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore,</span> who has worked tirelessly helping organisations in India set up institutional repositories, training others, lecturing about the benefits of OA, helping researchers archive their articles and developing OAI compliant software tools. This modest man was presented with his award by Professor Swaminathan of the MSSRF in India. The following link is to a video made of the occasion: <span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.mssrfnva.in/Events/EPT-Award-function-at-MSSRF/21552958_nSdsMP#%21i=1718491385&k=32CgbfH" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">http://www.mssrfnva.in/Events/EPT-Award-function-at-MSSRF/21552958_nSdsMP#!i=1718491385&k=32CgbfH</span></a>.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" lang="EN-US">The EPT received many excellent nominations from 17 countries and the worthy runners up were from South Africa, Azerbaijan and China. It was very encouraging to hear of the vigorous and effective work being carried out to establish OA in these regions - reinforcing our understanding of the importance that access to OA research has for economically restricted countries. It is not always recognized by OA advocates in the North that as well as providing access to essential research findings, OA also allows the global distribution of research arising from the developing countries themselves, thus strengthening their research base and opening opportunities for collaboration and N/S partnerships.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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