Plathe, Axel

English

edoc Publication server

Opening Session
  "Scientific information for equitable knowledge societies" 5 
"Scientific information for equitable knowledge societies"
Paper presented by Axel Plathe 
Senior Programme Specialist 
Information Society Division
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
Scientific information for equita-
ble knowledge societies
Ladies and Gentleman. Dear colleagues and friends
It is a great pleasure for me to be with you this after-
noon for the opening of the sixth international confer-
ence on electronic theses and dissertations.
It is both an honor and an obligation for UNESCO -
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization - to be associated with your movement,
which is exemplary for making scholarly information
more easily and more widely accessible. 
Indeed, to ensure "free flow of ideas and images" - an
informational principle - and to "maintain, increase and
diffuse knowledge" - a prerequisite of scientific work - are
essential elements of my Organization’s mandate. 
Let me, therefore, discuss the role that scientific infor-
mation may have for constructing equitable knowledge
societies.
You may wonder why I use the term "knowledge socie-
ties" rather than "information society". I would like to de-
vote some minutes to try to explain why UNESCO
makes this distinction in a time when the international
community prepares a World Summit on the Information
Society, an event that will be held in December this year
in Geneva and in November 2005 in Tunis.
The rapid evolution of ICTs continues to provide new
means for achieving progress in all sectors of work and
life. However, while ICTs have greatly facilitated the
movement and handling of data, the process of generat-
ing and validating information and knowledge remains es-
sentially one of human creativity. Access to the informa-
tion highways themselves is still a real problem in many
countries, and questions of access to scientific and devel-
opment data and information in the digital world, including
questions of intellectual property rights, are attracting
growing debate.
Science and education are at the very centre of de-
bates on the challenges and opportunities of today's so-
cieties. We face a paradox, however. On the one hand,
the accelerating spread of the Internet and new oppor-
tunities for free or low cost publishing are generating real
benefits. On the other hand, the new economic and
technological environment is raising concerns about the
erosion of access to certain information and knowledge
whose free sharing facilitated scientific research and edu-
cation in past decades.
Before proceeding to outline some aspects of
UNESCO’s approach to addressing these concerns, I
would like to stress two fundamentals which govern our
action.
Let me first look at the concepts of "information socie-
ty" and "knowledge societies". 
The concept of "Information Society" relates to the
pervasive influence of computer based networks and
thereby the globalization of information, communication
and control technologies. It assumes that collecting, cop-
ying, storing, transmitting, incorporating, manipulating,
simulating, and managing information about every aspect
of collective and individual life penetrate and shape all
these aspects.
The concept of “knowledge societies” emphasizes in a
complementary way the problems and strategies of mak-
ing sense of information. The knowledge work of re-
searchers, experts, analysts and users depends much on
and contributes to information - but what makes this
work important is its use of theories, models, scenarios,
evaluation criteria, decision strategies, experimental de-
signs, and implicit experience in order to establish orien-
tation and certainty.
Whereas the concept of "Information Society" is main-
ly characterized by "technological innovation", the con-
cept of "Knowledge societies" includes a dimension of so-
cial, cultural, economical, political and institutional trans-
formation and a more pluralistic and developmental
perspective.1
In UNESCO’s view, the concept of ”knowledge socie-
ties” is preferable to that of the ”information society” be-
cause it better captures the complexity and dynamism of
the changes taking place. The knowledge in question is
important not only for economic growth but also for em-
powering and developing all parts of society. Thus, the
role of ICTs extends to human development more gen-
erally - and therefore to such matters as intellectual co-
operation, lifelong learning and basic human values and
rights.
The second fundamental is that of "techno-apartheid"
and the so-called digital divide. Most developing coun-
tries have thus far been unable to take full advantage of
the advances offered by ICTs in terms of access to scien-
1 Wolfgang Krohn. - in : International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2002
  6 "Scientific information for equitable knowledge societies"
Opening Session
tific and technological information and learning opportu-
nities, at least relative to the situation in the industrialized
countries.
If knowledge societies capable of generating new
knowledge in a cumulative, cooperative and inclusive
process are to be created, they need to be based on a
foundation of shared principles, particularly that of equi-
table access to education and knowledge. National poli-
cies, supported by international frameworks, can be a
tool to facilitate access for all to essential information. A
key component of such frameworks and policies is the
work of the United Nations SYSTEM, under the leader-
ship of the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), to develop balanced and consistent internation-
al standards for copyright and neighboring rights as ex-
emplified in the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT)2 and the
WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT)3
adopted in 1996. UNESCO’s policy is to encourage and
assist Member States to promote access to information
and knowledge for the progress of science and the diffu-
sion of education, keeping in mind the necessity of rigor-
ous conformity with international conventions on intel-
lectual property.
It is in this spirit that UNESCO has been working to
elaborate an international instrument entitled ”Recom-
mendation concerning the Promotion and Use of Multi-
lingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace”4 to be
adopted by the 188 Member States of UNESCO.
Two of the four main sections of the proposed Draft
Recommendation - ”development of public domain con-
tent” and ”reaffirming the equitable balance between the
interests of rights-holders and the public interest” - bear
directly on scholarly information.
Public domain information is publicly accessible infor-
mation, the use of which does not infringe any legal right,
or any obligation of confidentiality. It thus refers to the
realm of all works or objects of related rights, which can
be exploited by everybody without any authorization.
While many people associate the public domain mainly
with classical and traditional literature, an equally impor-
tant store of public domain information for development,
and undoubtedly most important for science, is public
data and official information produced and voluntarily
made available by governments or international organiza-
tions.
Another paradox arises here. Public domain informa-
tion, which is free of copyright, is often not sufficiently
well-known to potential contributors and users, and in
some countries there are growing restrictions on the
availability and use of public information and data. Such
restrictions arise, for example, when information and da-
ta which are in the public domain become, through a
process of repackaging, privatized or commercialized.
In fact, the electronic public domain forms an interna-
tional virtual public library that is vast and growing. This
electronic public domain, furthermore, is both an invalu-
able support for productive, commercial and creative
sector activities in developing and industrialized countries
and a world heritage. All would gain if governments and
other public service organizations identified and digitized
their rich and diverse information stocks and made them
available through the Internet.
Thus, the UNESCO Draft Recommendation encour-
ages Member States to ”recognize and enact the right of
universal online access to public and government held
records” and to ”identify and promote repositories of in-
formation and knowledge in the public domain and make
them available to all”.
UNESCO is encouraging this process in international
forums such as the present one, and also in its advice to
Member States, notably through the preparation of ”Pol-
icy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of
Public Domain Information”, which are already available
in draft form5. 
Let me now turn to the question of open access and
voluntary authorizations. The public domain principle can
be conceptually extended by the assimilation of ”open
access” information made freely available by its rights
holders without cost. One well-known example of open
access is the open source software license by which
computer programmes are distributed free of charge by
their authors for exploitation and cooperative develop-
ment. Another is the vast amount of documentation pro-
duced and made available free of charge by the United
Nations and its specialized agencies. Yet another is the
movement of educational institutions around the world
to provide their educational resources on the Internet
free of charge for non-commercial usage, typified by the
OpenCourseWare project of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT).
The UNESCO Draft Recommendation urges Member
States and international organizations to encourage open
access solutions, and UNESCO itself is strongly commit-
ted to promoting information-sharing in education, the
sciences and culture, and to disseminating information
and software for development under open access condi-
tions.
The question of access to commercially published in-
formation, which is of great importance to science, is a
different one. It is to be noted that many publishers are
interested in providing their works electronically under
preferential conditions for science and education, partic-
ularly to users in developing countries, provided their
copyright is strictly respected. Numerous international
programmes are now showing that affordable access to
commercial publications in developing countries is possi-
2 http://www.wipo.org/eng/diplconf/distrib/94dc.htm
3 http://www.wipo.org/eng/diplconf/distrib/95dc.htm
4 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=4969&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1053237099
5 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=8376&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1053237223
Opening Session
  "Scientific information for equitable knowledge societies" 7 
ble: notably the Health InterNetwork Access to Research
Initiative (HINARI) of WHO; the PERI initiative of the In-
ternational Network for the Availability of Scientific Pub-
lications (INASP), created by ICSU and UNESCO in
1991; the electronic-Journals Delivery System (eJDS) of
the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical
Physics in Trieste, Italy; and the more recent ambitious in-
itiative of the revived Alexandria Library, from its begin-
ning a UNESCO project, to make virtually all of the
world’s books available through the Internet. 
UNESCO is looking carefully at ways to promote this
type of initiative; for example, through model frame-
works of voluntary permissions by which publishers and
other rights-holders could assign specific rights to users
in developing countries, either definitively or on a limited
time basis. 
Another quite distinct matter concerns provisions for a
fair balance of interests in the use of copyrighted works
in the digital environment. This refers to the limitations
and exceptions to copyright and related rights protection
which are authorized in national legislation - as required
in the two WIPO treaties mentioned earlier - provided
that they are applied only in certain special cases which
do not conflict with normal exploitation of the work and
do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of
rights-holders. Such provisions for equitable use in the
public interest, which vary from country to country, are
sometimes called ”fair use”, ”fair dealing” or ”limitations
and exceptions authorized by the law” in specific legal
SYSTEMs. They typically provide for exceptional free re-
production of copyrighted information for such uses as
education, research, library services, journalism and ac-
cess for disabled persons.
These equitable use provisions, which in the pre-digital
world made possible the public library, are potentially of
even greater importance in the digital world. 
However, they also present greater risks to the legiti-
mate interests of rights-holders given the ease with
which digital information can be redistributed once re-
leased. UNESCO recognizes the importance of equitable
use provisions in national policies in education, the sci-
ences and culture, particularly for the developing coun-
tries. We also recognize the importance of a fair balance
between the interests of rights-holders and those of us-
ers when cultural works and performances are exploited
in the digital environment in the fields of teaching, scien-
tific research, libraries, dissemination of information and
the needs of the visually impaired. 
In this regard, UNESCO, in close consultation with the
concerned user and rights holder communities, is carry-
ing out an extensive study aimed at comparing the rele-
vant provisions in existing national legislation with actual
needs. Later on, a consensus-building process will be pro-
posed regarding how best to address in practice any
identified gaps, paying full respect to relevant provisions
in WIPO and WTO treaties and without undermining
copyright protection.
I would like to refer to yet another aspect, which is im-
portant that knowledge societies remain memory-based
societies. It is the aspect of the preservation of digital ma-
terial, including, of course, the preservation of electronic
theses and dissertations. 
Resources of human knowledge or expression, wheth-
er cultural, educational, scientific and administrative, or
embracing technical, legal, medical and other kinds of in-
formation, are increasingly created digitally, or converted
into digital form from existing analogue resources. 
Where resources are ”born digital”, there is no other
format but the digital original. Digital materials include
texts, databases, still and moving images, audio, graphics,
software, and web pages, among a wide and growing
range of formats. They are frequently ephemeral, and re-
quire purposeful production, maintenance and manage-
ment to be retained. Many of these resources have last-
ing value and significance, and therefore constitute a her-
itage that should be protected and preserved for current
and future generations. This heritage may exist in any lan-
guage, in any part of the world, and in any area of human
knowledge or expression. 
The purpose of preserving the digital heritage is to en-
sure that it remains permanently accessible. Accordingly,
access to digital heritage materials, especially those in the
public domain, should be equitable and free of unreason-
able restrictions. At the same time, the security of sensi-
tive and personal information should be protected from
any form of intrusion.
It must also be recognized that the digital heritage is
part of the wider continuum of digital information. To
preserve digital heritage, measures will need to be taken
throughout the information’s life cycle. Preservation of
digital heritage begins with the design of reliable SYS-
TEMs which will produce authentic and stable digital ob-
jects.
The need to safeguard this relatively new support for
information and knowledge calls for international con-
sensus on its collection, preservation and dissemination.
Therefore, UNESCO is preparing an international
"Charter for the Preservation of Digital Heritage”6.
While the Charter is a declaration of principles focus-
ing on advocacy and public policy issues, the technical
and practical issues are being covered by "Guidelines for
the Preservation of Digital Heritage", prepared for
UNESCO by the National Library of Australia. The
Guidelines are intended as a companion sourcebook to
the draft Charter.
The Charter, once adopted by UNESCO Member
States, possibly in October this year, is intended to help
prepare national policies, inspiring responsible action for
preservation of and access to digital heritage.
6 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=1539&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1053237492
  8 "Scientific information for equitable knowledge societies"
Opening Session
Ladies and Gentlemen. Let me, in conclusion, come
back to ETDs and to actions that UNESCO is undertak-
ing in order to help assist international initiatives in this
area.
UNESCO assistance to ETD initiatives is part of its ac-
tion to promote access to information in the public do-
main and the use of the Internet as a tool for disseminat-
ing scientific knowledge. We are particularly interested in
facilitating the transfer of expertise in establishing sustain-
able ETD programmes from developed countries to de-
veloping countries.
UNESCO has been associated with the ETD initiatives
since 1999 when the Organization hosted a first expert
meeting to look at the possibilities to foster and support
the internationalisation of already existing projects, nota-
bly Virginia Tech’s NDLTD project, in the Steering Com-
mittee of which UNESCO is a member. 
The UNESCO Guide to Electronic Theses and Disser-
tations7, elaborated by a consortium of ETD experts,
was published in 2002. Including guidelines, workflow
models and best practices, it is a resource for graduate
students, who are writing theses or dissertations, for
graduate faculty, who want to mentor ETD authors, for
graduate deans, who want to initiate ETD programmes,
and for IT administrators at universities. It is now online
available in English, Spanish and French. 
Presently, UNESCO sponsors the establishment of a
model training programme for project managers respon-
sible for ETD programmes and supports to organization
of training courses, for example those that are being or-
ganized here during ETD 2003.  
UNESCO will also sponsor pilot projects, for instance
in Africa, were we intend to support an initiative that will
help to drive ETD development in Africa at national lev-
els, initially in Ethiopia, Tanzania and South Africa.
The project, building upon existing expertise in digital
preservation and digital collection management, will de-
velop guidelines for producing and preserving ETDs in
participating institutions, test and promote technical and
organizational feasibility of the chosen ETD strategy, and
implement pilot projects.  It aims at making African the-
ses and dissertations accessible online to scholars and us-
ers worldwide, at building capacity at the institutional, na-
tional and regional levels on digital libraries, at promoting
regional cooperation, and at training scholars in the tech-
nique of electronic publishing and electronic access to
documents.
Support to other pilot projects, notably in Eastern Eu-
rope and in Latin America is also being foreseen. 
With these initiatives, Ladies and Gentlemen,
UNESCO helps the ETD movement to make its next
steps so that it becomes truly worldwide and can con-
tribute to the creation of equitable knowledge societies. 
Thank you for your attention.
7 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=1580&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1053237595


Scientific information for equitabel knowledge societies

Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, ETD2003, 20.05.2003 - 24.05.2003, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, pp 5-

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Opening Session  "Scientific information for equitable knowledge societies" 5 "Scientific information for equitable knowledge societies"Paper presented by Axel Plathe Senior Programme Specialist Information Society DivisionUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)Scientific information for equita-ble knowledge societiesLadies and Gentleman. Dear colleagues and friendsIt is a great pleasure for me to be with you this after-noon for the opening of the sixth international confer-ence on electronic theses and dissertations.It is both an honor and an obligation for UNESCO -the United Nations Educational, Scientific and CulturalOrganization - to be associated with your movement,which is exemplary for making scholarly informationmore easily and more widely accessible. Indeed, to ensure "free flow of ideas and images" - aninformational principle - and to "maintain, increase anddiffuse knowledge" - a prerequisite of scientific work - areessential elements of my Organization’s mandate. Let me, therefore, discuss the role that scientific infor-mation may have for constructing equitable knowledgesocieties.You may wonder why I use the term "knowledge socie-ties" rather than "information society". I would like to de-vote some minutes to try to explain why UNESCOmakes this distinction in a time when the internationalcommunity prepares a World Summit on the InformationSociety, an event that will be held in December this yearin Geneva and in November 2005 in Tunis.The rapid evolution of ICTs continues to provide newmeans for achieving progress in all sectors of work andlife. However, while ICTs have greatly facilitated themovement and handling of data, the process of generat-ing and validating information and knowledge remains es-sentially one of human creativity. Access to the informa-tion highways themselves is still a real problem in manycountries, and questions of access to scientific and devel-opment data and information in the digital world, includingquestions of intellectual property rights, are attractinggrowing debate.Science and education are at the very centre of de-bates on the challenges and opportunities of today's so-cieties. We face a paradox, however. On the one hand,the accelerating spread of the Internet and new oppor-tunities for free or low cost publishing are generating realbenefits. On the other hand, the new economic andtechnological environment is raising concerns about theerosion of access to certain information and knowledgewhose free sharing facilitated scientific research and edu-cation in past decades.Before proceeding to outline some aspects ofUNESCO’s approach to addressing these concerns, Iwould like to stress two fundamentals which govern ouraction.Let me first look at the concepts of "information socie-ty" and "knowledge societies". The concept of "Information Society" relates to thepervasive influence of computer based networks andthereby the globalization of information, communicationand control technologies. It assumes that collecting, cop-ying, storing, transmitting, incorporating, manipulating,simulating, and managing information about every aspectof collective and individual life penetrate and shape allthese aspects.The concept of “knowledge societies” emphasizes in acomplementary way the problems and strategies of mak-ing sense of information. The knowledge work of re-searchers, experts, analysts and users depends much onand contributes to information - but what makes thiswork important is its use of theories, models, scenarios,evaluation criteria, decision strategies, experimental de-signs, and implicit experience in order to establish orien-tation and certainty.Whereas the concept of "Information Society" is main-ly characterized by "technological innovation", the con-cept of "Knowledge societies" includes a dimension of so-cial, cultural, economical, political and institutional trans-formation and a more pluralistic and developmentalperspective.1In UNESCO’s view, the concept of ”knowledge socie-ties” is preferable to that of the ”information society” be-cause it better captures the complexity and dynamism ofthe changes taking place. The knowledge in question isimportant not only for economic growth but also for em-powering and developing all parts of society. Thus, therole of ICTs extends to human development more gen-erally - and therefore to such matters as intellectual co-operation, lifelong learning and basic human values andrights.The second fundamental is that of "techno-apartheid"and the so-called digital divide. Most developing coun-tries have thus far been unable to take full advantage ofthe advances offered by ICTs in terms of access to scien-1 Wolfgang Krohn. - in : International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2002  6 "Scientific information for equitable knowledge societies"Opening Sessiontific and technological information and learning opportu-nities, at least relative to the situation in the industrializedcountries.If knowledge societies capable of generating newknowledge in a cumulative, cooperative and inclusiveprocess are to be created, they need to be based on afoundation of shared principles, particularly that of equi-table access to education and knowledge. National poli-cies, supported by international frameworks, can be atool to facilitate access for all to essential information. Akey component of such frameworks and policies is thework of the United Nations SYSTEM, under the leader-ship of the World Intellectual Property Organization(WIPO), to develop balanced and consistent internation-al standards for copyright and neighboring rights as ex-emplified in the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT)2 and theWIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT)3adopted in 1996. UNESCO’s policy is to encourage andassist Member States to promote access to informationand knowledge for the progress of science and the diffu-sion of education, keeping in mind the necessity of rigor-ous conformity with international conventions on intel-lectual property.It is in this spirit that UNESCO has been working toelaborate an international instrument entitled ”Recom-mendation concerning the Promotion and Use of Multi-lingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace”4 to beadopted by the 188 Member States of UNESCO.Two of the four main sections of the proposed DraftRecommendation - ”development of public domain con-tent” and ”reaffirming the equitable balance between theinterests of rights-holders and the public interest” - beardirectly on scholarly information.Public domain information is publicly accessible infor-mation, the use of which does not infringe any legal right,or any obligation of confidentiality. It thus refers to therealm of all works or objects of related rights, which canbe exploited by everybody without any authorization.While many people associate the public domain mainlywith classical and traditional literature, an equally impor-tant store of public domain information for development,and undoubtedly most important for science, is publicdata and official information produced and voluntarilymade available by governments or international organiza-tions.Another paradox arises here. Public domain informa-tion, which is free of copyright, is often not sufficientlywell-known to potential contributors and users, and insome countries there are growing restrictions on theavailability and use of public information and data. Suchrestrictions arise, for example, when information and da-ta which are in the public domain become, through aprocess of repackaging, privatized or commercialized.In fact, the electronic public domain forms an interna-tional virtual public library that is vast and growing. Thiselectronic public domain, furthermore, is both an invalu-able support for productive, commercial and creativesector activities in developing and industrialized countriesand a world heritage. All would gain if governments andother public service organizations identified and digitizedtheir rich and diverse information stocks and made themavailable through the Internet.Thus, the UNESCO Draft Recommendation encour-ages Member States to ”recognize and enact the right ofuniversal online access to public and government heldrecords” and to ”identify and promote repositories of in-formation and knowledge in the public domain and makethem available to all”.UNESCO is encouraging this process in internationalforums such as the present one, and also in its advice toMember States, notably through the preparation of ”Pol-icy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion ofPublic Domain Information”, which are already availablein draft form5. Let me now turn to the question of open access andvoluntary authorizations. The public domain principle canbe conceptually extended by the assimilation of ”openaccess” information made freely available by its rightsholders without cost. One well-known example of openaccess is the open source software license by whichcomputer programmes are distributed free of charge bytheir authors for exploitation and cooperative develop-ment. Another is the vast amount of documentation pro-duced and made available free of charge by the UnitedNations and its specialized agencies. Yet another is themovement of educational institutions around the worldto provide their educational resources on the Internetfree of charge for non-commercial usage, typified by theOpenCourseWare project of the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology (MIT).The UNESCO Draft Recommendation urges MemberStates and international organizations to encourage openaccess solutions, and UNESCO itself is strongly commit-ted to promoting information-sharing in education, thesciences and culture, and to disseminating informationand software for development under open access condi-tions.The question of access to commercially published in-formation, which is of great importance to science, is adifferent one. It is to be noted that many publishers areinterested in providing their works electronically underpreferential conditions for science and education, partic-ularly to users in developing countries, provided theircopyright is strictly respected. Numerous internationalprogrammes are now showing that affordable access tocommercial publications in developing countries is possi-2 http://www.wipo.org/eng/diplconf/distrib/94dc.htm3 http://www.wipo.org/eng/diplconf/distrib/95dc.htm4 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=4969&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=10532370995 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=8376&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1053237223Opening Session  "Scientific information for equitable knowledge societies" 7 ble: notably the Health InterNetwork Access to ResearchInitiative (HINARI) of WHO; the PERI initiative of the In-ternational Network for the Availability of Scientific Pub-lications (INASP), created by ICSU and UNESCO in1991; the electronic-Journals Delivery System (eJDS) ofthe Abdus Salam International Centre for TheoreticalPhysics in Trieste, Italy; and the more recent ambitious in-itiative of the revived Alexandria Library, from its begin-ning a UNESCO project, to make virtually all of theworld’s books available through the Internet. UNESCO is looking carefully at ways to promote thistype of initiative; for example, through model frame-works of voluntary permissions by which publishers andother rights-holders could assign specific rights to usersin developing countries, either definitively or on a limitedtime basis. Another quite distinct matter concerns provisions for afair balance of interests in the use of copyrighted worksin the digital environment. This refers to the limitationsand exceptions to copyright and related rights protectionwhich are authorized in national legislation - as requiredin the two WIPO treaties mentioned earlier - providedthat they are applied only in certain special cases whichdo not conflict with normal exploitation of the work anddo not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests ofrights-holders. Such provisions for equitable use in thepublic interest, which vary from country to country, aresometimes called ”fair use”, ”fair dealing” or ”limitationsand exceptions authorized by the law” in specific legalSYSTEMs. They typically provide for exceptional free re-production of copyrighted information for such uses aseducation, research, library services, journalism and ac-cess for disabled persons.These equitable use provisions, which in the pre-digitalworld made possible the public library, are potentially ofeven greater importance in the digital world. However, they also present greater risks to the legiti-mate interests of rights-holders given the ease withwhich digital information can be redistributed once re-leased. UNESCO recognizes the importance of equitableuse provisions in national policies in education, the sci-ences and culture, particularly for the developing coun-tries. We also recognize the importance of a fair balancebetween the interests of rights-holders and those of us-ers when cultural works and performances are exploitedin the digital environment in the fields of teaching, scien-tific research, libraries, dissemination of information andthe needs of the visually impaired. In this regard, UNESCO, in close consultation with theconcerned user and rights holder communities, is carry-ing out an extensive study aimed at comparing the rele-vant provisions in existing national legislation with actualneeds. Later on, a consensus-building process will be pro-posed regarding how best to address in practice anyidentified gaps, paying full respect to relevant provisionsin WIPO and WTO treaties and without underminingcopyright protection.I would like to refer to yet another aspect, which is im-portant that knowledge societies remain memory-basedsocieties. It is the aspect of the preservation of digital ma-terial, including, of course, the preservation of electronictheses and dissertations. Resources of human knowledge or expression, wheth-er cultural, educational, scientific and administrative, orembracing technical, legal, medical and other kinds of in-formation, are increasingly created digitally, or convertedinto digital form from existing analogue resources. Where resources are ”born digital”, there is no otherformat but the digital original. Digital materials includetexts, databases, still and moving images, audio, graphics,software, and web pages, among a wide and growingrange of formats. They are frequently ephemeral, and re-quire purposeful production, maintenance and manage-ment to be retained. Many of these resources have last-ing value and significance, and therefore constitute a her-itage that should be protected and preserved for currentand future generations. This heritage may exist in any lan-guage, in any part of the world, and in any area of humanknowledge or expression. The purpose of preserving the digital heritage is to en-sure that it remains permanently accessible. Accordingly,access to digital heritage materials, especially those in thepublic domain, should be equitable and free of unreason-able restrictions. At the same time, the security of sensi-tive and personal information should be protected fromany form of intrusion.It must also be recognized that the digital heritage ispart of the wider continuum of digital information. Topreserve digital heritage, measures will need to be takenthroughout the information’s life cycle. Preservation ofdigital heritage begins with the design of reliable SYS-TEMs which will produce authentic and stable digital ob-jects.The need to safeguard this relatively new support forinformation and knowledge calls for international con-sensus on its collection, preservation and dissemination.Therefore, UNESCO is preparing an international"Charter for the Preservation of Digital Heritage”6.While the Charter is a declaration of principles focus-ing on advocacy and public policy issues, the technicaland practical issues are being covered by "Guidelines forthe Preservation of Digital Heritage", prepared forUNESCO by the National Library of Australia. TheGuidelines are intended as a companion sourcebook tothe draft Charter.The Charter, once adopted by UNESCO MemberStates, possibly in October this year, is intended to helpprepare national policies, inspiring responsible action forpreservation of and access to digital heritage.6 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=1539&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1053237492  8 "Scientific information for equitable knowledge societies"Opening SessionLadies and Gentlemen. Let me, in conclusion, comeback to ETDs and to actions that UNESCO is undertak-ing in order to help assist international initiatives in thisarea.UNESCO assistance to ETD initiatives is part of its ac-tion to promote access to information in the public do-main and the use of the Internet as a tool for disseminat-ing scientific knowledge. We are particularly interested infacilitating the transfer of expertise in establishing sustain-able ETD programmes from developed countries to de-veloping countries.UNESCO has been associated with the ETD initiativessince 1999 when the Organization hosted a first expertmeeting to look at the possibilities to foster and supportthe internationalisation of already existing projects, nota-bly Virginia Tech’s NDLTD project, in the Steering Com-mittee of which UNESCO is a member. The UNESCO Guide to Electronic Theses and Disser-tations7, elaborated by a consortium of ETD experts,was published in 2002. Including guidelines, workflowmodels and best practices, it is a resource for graduatestudents, who are writing theses or dissertations, forgraduate faculty, who want to mentor ETD authors, forgraduate deans, who want to initiate ETD programmes,and for IT administrators at universities. It is now onlineavailable in English, Spanish and French. Presently, UNESCO sponsors the establishment of amodel training programme for project managers respon-sible for ETD programmes and supports to organizationof training courses, for example those that are being or-ganized here during ETD 2003.  UNESCO will also sponsor pilot projects, for instancein Africa, were we intend to support an initiative that willhelp to drive ETD development in Africa at national lev-els, initially in Ethiopia, Tanzania and South Africa.The project, building upon existing expertise in digitalpreservation and digital collection management, will de-velop guidelines for producing and preserving ETDs inparticipating institutions, test and promote technical andorganizational feasibility of the chosen ETD strategy, andimplement pilot projects.  It aims at making African the-ses and dissertations accessible online to scholars and us-ers worldwide, at building capacity at the institutional, na-tional and regional levels on digital libraries, at promotingregional cooperation, and at training scholars in the tech-nique of electronic publishing and electronic access todocuments.Support to other pilot projects, notably in Eastern Eu-rope and in Latin America is also being foreseen. With these initiatives, Ladies and Gentlemen,UNESCO helps the ETD movement to make its nextsteps so that it becomes truly worldwide and can con-tribute to the creation of equitable knowledge societies. Thank you for your attention.7 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=1580&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1053237595

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Scientific information for equitabel knowledge societies

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