Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
In Open Access, the old tradition — of publishing in benefit of the investigation,
of the knowledge distribution and acclamation by peers — and the new technology
— the Internet — converged in order to enable a public asset without precedents: “the
worldwide electronic distribution of the literature of journals reviewed by peers” 10 .
Brazil is a leader within the Open Access movement. Its endeavors were led by
the Ministry of Sciences and Technology and by the Scientific Electronic Library
Online — SciELO, an institution related to BIREME [Regional Medicine Library]
and to the World Health Organization, along with public federal and state universities,
are currently examples throughout the world.
The endeavors oriented to openness and to a more inclusive educational system
do not end here. Open Access deals with materials that are more adequate to the
levels of graduation and post-graduation, which, albeit important, are neither the
only materials nor the only educational segments to which we should pay attention.
In countries like Brazil, with high indexes of illiteracy and low indexes of people
in graduation and post-graduation, there is a large need of increasing the amount
of materials made available, being also concerned with those who support a more
democratic and inclusive learning, since the initial stages of schooling.
Open Educational Resources
A large part of the open educational resources is limited to a set of traditional
performers, being the access to such resources limited to those enrolled in a teaching
institution or those who receive training in their workplace. Furthermore, the
access to many educational materials faces high costs of access and, in case the
access is free of charge, the restrictions relative to copyrights block the creative
reutilization, restricting actions of use, adequation and remix — pedagogic activities
essential to the learning process, when one has the purpose of encouraging a
culture of participation. This happens because the educational resources market
is a typical market of content sale. The educational materials have all their rights
reserved by copyright, and shall, therefore, be purchased in a store or accessed
through courses demanding fees, in repositories with restricted access or directly
10. Ditto 20.
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