Details follow, in a post first sent by Marjorie Whalen to an Open Access and Development discussion list, reposted on the Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics with permission. The original purpose of this post was to explain why it makes sense to launch a repository with a mix of full text open access and contents for which only bibliographic records are available, at least so far....
[Whalen:] The stated goals of the IDRC Digital Library are to make IDRC-funded research results freely accessible in order to contribute to the public debate on development issues, to strengthen the overall scientific and research capacity of IDRC’s partners, and to give a stronger voice to southern researchers, facilitating southern contributions to global debates, and finally to support the broader global movement to remove economic, social, and geographic barriers to the sharing of knowledge....
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.