The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the virtual Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), from 2 to 17 November 2020. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> This is where the SDG9 and 4 meet.
Yes, the pandemic, COVID‑19 situation is happening worldwide. But the education hasn't stopped.
So how do we achieve sustainability and quality in this situation? We need to address the distance that is separating people. Infrastructures should also be informed in these new digital contexts.
This is a situation that affects not only academic students in universities, but also civil society.
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This also came with illegal utilization of protected work. It harnessed the potential of the internet to provide access to knowledge for regions and groups that historically did not have public policy requires to be developed in a way that does not demotivate creators and researchers while allowing works to impact as many people as possible. A multi stakeholder approach is needed promoting dialogue between database owners, publishers, university, and civil society with government intermediation. From the perspective of the youth and students and young academics, the COVID‑19 has shown, has made it for accurate, more intention, more acute, sorry, why this discussion is important. For students the use of online sources was not possible during this time. They struggle because of high prices or the intellectual property rights of companies. Open access is not only a topic that's important to academic students to society.
Cognitive justice, I want to coin the definition by the open and collaborative signs in developing the network called OCDS net.
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Situated openness is a concept that assumes knowledge is situated within a particular historical, political, and sociocultural relations.
Autonomy and socially, this is a quote from Sylvia Federici.
Wrapping up, the sustainable development nine aims to build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable innovation. Civic signs fosters innovation and the participation of civic society as actors in the knowledge production and the sustainable development of their communities. With this I want to clarify they are coming from the eco‑system of academy and also civic sides.
Yes, the pandemic has reignited discussions on public policies of open access of public funded research and the lack of financial support to access databases is a serious problem for graduates, undergraduates and civic signs initiatives.
So that's pretty much the context of our session. Please allow me to read the questions in this role play. There are five questions. I just would read them to you. Question number one is how to ensure an open and affordable use of academic databases for scientific innovation without infringing monopolistic and corporate copyright.
The second question, how effective are the policies implemented by private and civic society organizations to make free access to academic work such as creative comments.
The third question, can forceful policies by governments or public‑private partnerships solve the dilemma between copy left and copy right?
Number four, to what extent do interests of young users that use academic databases, for example, students, influence the policy‑making process.
The last question, number five, in the light of the lessons learned from COVID‑19 pandemic can the cases of global emergency be a ground for opening databases?
So these are our four or five questions and each actor in this role play will introduce their interests, answering the policy questions and I want to invite our first speaker that represents the private sector.
Let me introduce you to Mr. Kopia Thierry. I hope I pronounced that well.
>> It's fine. Yes.
>> He is the founder of the E‑commerce company and digital solutions development agency. Also is the founder of Digi clap, marshmallow project ‑‑ that's a nice name ‑‑ which is a project incubator.
And a little bit more about Digiclink which has trained more than 2,000 young people in digital entrepreneurship. The Marshmallow Project which is a digital project incubator continues to work for a better inclusion of the digital technology for development of this community in working.
Also he has been proactive and has brought ‑‑ has started to mobilize people from the youth IGF in his country. Thank you, everyone. Let's welcome Nathaniel Kopia Thierry to share with us his points and his interest.
>> Okay. Thank you very much. You can hear me?
>> Yes.
>> It's okay?
>> Yes.
>> The first one is what policies the private sector implements to answer open access to academic database. And do I think that they are successful.
So it started to be carried out by the European commission that announced just under 40% of company engaged in the process of sharing data with other companies. The possibility of developing new products or services is the first motivation mentioned by 74% of respondents.
The possibility of forming partnerships with new players have motivation and we are 40% mentioning that additional income thanks to the monetization of data.
So it is interested in making more money. In order to be able to set up a data sharing policy, it would be necessary to have a beneficial arrangement. In the event this does not work it is always possible to encourage the private sector to open up this data to exploitation in return for exemption on certain taxes. Also there are ‑‑ that allow the private sector. There are other traditional policies, but these are the most common. That is the first point for the first question.
The second question is about can forceful policies for public‑private partnerships ‑‑ between copy left or copy right and can it put a burden on private companies? I will answer and say that sharing data between public and private actors has been done especially to the digital transformation which has already created the partnership link between the public sector and private sector.
It will be understood that data sharing ‑‑ and more than governance to copy left and copy right. Technology can influence the decision between actors both by incentive mechanisms.
Example, we have exemption established by the government on certain taxes run by the private sector. There are also formulas of cooperation following exchange of data to motivate the private sector to make its data fully accessible.
So the last question, can the private sector open the database in case of pandemic? Okay. In the pandemic, everyone is concerned. Even if can be a springboard for some private companies to make more money it would be wiser to facilitate the exit of this crisis.
Public and private consultation framework put in place to promote. In the response ‑‑ in response to the unprecedented and rapidly changing circumstances related to the novel coronavirus outbreak, academic textbooks, E‑books and school apps have temporarily opened access to the copy right and other materials.
We don't know whether it will offer ‑‑ will end, but we know that the free access will not be permanent. So as an example, we can see open resources and COVID created ‑‑ for taking up that information about the novel COVID‑19.
As an example for open source in support of coursework and online teaching, we have Cameroon university textbooks where we can find more than 700 textbooks. We are engaged in the school experience and back to the COVID‑19. In this platform we can find more than 14,000 E‑books. So we have the university even open access. We have open source access to give freely for exploitation.
Other companies will give full access during this pandemic. So that's an example of the companies, private sector companies with full access to the database. So I think that it's the end of the ‑‑ that we can speak about it.
>> Thank you very much. If you want, you still have two minutes. If you want to add something else.
>> Okay. I will wait for questions.
>> Working on policy oriented research on internet law and society. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology of law from University of Sao Paulo and has research experience at LMAU, University of Munich, Yale Law School and UC Berkeley School of Law. Welcome, Mariana Valente.
>> Thank you so much for this very organized session and for all the attention given to us up to now. I would like to address some of the points that were addressed to me, but I would address them as a whole talking about why civil society should advocate for the opening of academic databases always but especially in the cases of pandemics.
I would also like to speak on the copy right side of it. Because there is a discussion going on about copy left and open licenses when we are talking about academic databases which I think is really important for us to database from a civil society perspective.
I'm speaking with my coordinator in Brazil. I think it is important to first address free and open licenses, and it is important to stress that there are tools which were created for legally sharing material which is under copyright. There is a thing going on here, I hope it doesn't bother you too much in listening to me.
The creation of these open licenses is related to a longer historical development of free software licenses which are le related to specific values around knowledge and creation. When we are speaking of open licenses, creative licenses are the most well-known when we are speaking of knowledge and culture. Their creation was based on the experience of the free software movement but then thinking specifically of the environments and markets which are related to culture and knowledge. They are based on copyright. They differ from traditional licenses which a copyright holder can rent to someone in the sense that they are public.
Their development was related to the development of digital technologies in the sense that digital technologies created the technical infrastructure for sharing, but even if we have a technical infrastructure for sharing, that doesn't mean that we have a legal infrastructure for sharing. The open and free licenses are there to provide that part of the sharing eco‑system.
So to publish work under creative licenses, rights must be cleared so it is extremely important that organizations and whoever is a stakeholder working in the learn about licensing and have the basic legal tools that enable them to use those licenses and place something in the comments through these legal tools. It is important they have their own eco‑system. When we are talking about creative licenses they apply for all these different eco‑systems. Sometimes music and film. Sometimes speaking of education or academic research materials, sometimes databases themselves. Sometimes we are speaking of collections of heritage institutions and we know that when we are speaking of academic knowledge we are speaking of specific stakeholders that work in a certain way. Have specific roles.
It is an area of academic knowledge in which because of the incentives and how research is funded, why dissemination is in the best interest not only of the author but also of the public. I want to go more into detail in that.
Why is that? That's because the author in this case of academic knowledge is also the public. Because researchers and scientists deeply need to use academic research in their production. So open licensing is not only legal but it is in their interest. Whoever is producing research needs to necessarily have access to prior research. There is a question if authors are ready to open up. I would say definitely in the open access movement that looks into how knowledge is shared in academia, that's pretty much consensus.
Because authors themselves, researchers don't profit from research in monetary terms. Their work is in general paid by the universities or research institutes where they work. They profit much from visibility. That's part of the research in the academic ethos.
Also the separation between authorship and being a user is not so strict when we are speaking of academic knowledge. It is an infrastructure placed on top of copyright. You use copyright to disseminate and give access through legal tools. It is also in the interest of authors. Another thing I wanted to highlight is while licensing is there and it is available and creative licenses have become the pattern for sharing in different eco‑systems. The community has long learned two important lessons. You have the licenses and they can be used for disseminating.
When it comes to copyright, you can't go too far without first ensuring limitations and exceptions to copyright. That means uses that are free regardless of open licenses. Also second man dates. What does that mean? That means you have to create incentives and structures within the eco‑system so that licenses can be used. It is very important that universities and research institutions have established their own policies regarding how members of those institutions are people who are funded by them publish their work under open licenses. That's important because there is a whole eco‑system of incentives for publishing. You need to look an incentives to make it so authors publish open license. If all the incentives are for authors to publish under copyright for example if all the high rated journals that are going to give them high rankings in their careers are under copyright and not open licenses, it's very possible that they are going to prefer publishing under copyright and not how the incentive license works even if it would be in their interest to publish and have visibility and have their work widely shared because they might need rankings that come from journals they publish in.
So those mandates are really important for creating incentives and changing the eco‑system. So these are two areas, limitations and exceptions, that are free uses and mandates and institutions such as universities and also independent research centers in civil society that cares about access to knowledge should be looking at.
In this conversation as has been highlighted here we are often speaking of authors and researchers and thinking of universities or think tanks. When we are speaking of access to science and knowledge those are not the only stakeholders. We are frequently speaking of people who are outside the realm of academy. So civic science, independent researchers. For that open license is even more important and if we are speaking of the global south because of conditions of access to those databases. Open licensing is really important. Besides thinking of mandates we have to think of a sustainable infrastructure. We know knowledge is a public good and the pandemic has shown us that more than ever, but it doesn't come by itself that knowledge will. So we need to create the legal, institutional and infrastructural conditions for that to be the case. That's it for now. I'm looking forward to the discussion.
>> Thank you very much, Mariana. Thank you for this contribution. Now we are moving to a third speaker. No, excuse me. We have now a Q&A session of five minutes. We have a Q&A session of five minutes regarding these first talks. Private sector and civil society.
Can somebody please address the questions? I don't know where I find them in the chat.
>> There is a comment in the chat that maybe both our speakers can talk a little bit more. It's not exactly a question.
>> It's not exactly a question, yes. It's like a comment.
>> But it is interesting points to be commented.
>> Okay.
>> Should I read it?
>> Thank you.
>> It says in case of South Korea, there are big companies have almost carry out the academic database. They sell them extremely expensive to the library such as university library. Because of that, lots of libraries insisted that's unfair. However their power is too strong to change. So the civic society argues that at least specific research, if expensed by public money such as taxation, should be open source. This is an intervention by Mi Ru Lee, I guess from South Korea.
Do Nathaniel or Mariana want to comment on this?
>> I would definitely. If Thierry also wants to speak.
Yeah. I think this is exactly the situation that I was referring to. Different countries have different experiences with their local production of academic knowledge. I'm based in Brazil. We have a very specific situation that that we have that is open source. I will write that in the chat.
Most of the national academic production is open licensed because it is indexed in Scielo which is an experiment for a few decades. We still have the issue of access for very high prices from libraries, universities, when we are speaking of production from abroad. I think you are bringing up very important experience and the specifics of the situation, of course, I don't know. It addresses the issue I was speaking of about mandates, something being argued by civil society worldwide. That when we have research that's funded by taxpayers at the end of the day. It is important that the research in the public also to be used and to be built upon. We are speaking of knowledge that can be viewed upon and it is the case to highlight that when speaking of publicly funded research. I don't know if Thierry wants to add and address that, too.
>> Okay. In this case, I think that the civil society must go with the government in order to find a compromise in order to access data of this company. I believe government can find a way to take the data of this company to be accessible. They can have it less expensive. That's my point of view. There are many ways to find a compromise. Many ways, as I told in my speech.
>> Thank you very much. We are done with the five minutes of Q&A. We can go later to also ask, I guess during the breakout discussion people will be able to talk. No, sorry. I have a question. I actually have a question to Nathaniel. Could you please tell us about ‑‑ more about these subsidized and coexploitations as a formula from the private sector?
>> Can you come again? I didn't understand.
>> Could you share more about the subsidies and the coexploitation from the private sector?
>> I will take an example. Private sectors are always looking for a new services or new technologies to increase. They already have a database and more data with them that is to give this data to all persons want to make like academics area. Give them the data freely. To find a new technology or a new process way. And after the results of this data, the person comes back to the private sector company to exploit them to develop the new technology. So that's the ‑‑ if there is interest to the company, they can give the data to these persons and exploit data together.
>> Understood, thank you very much.
>> I wanted to add something. In Africa they have to make topics, so they can go to see a private sector company to have other data. When it is over they can use it to increase activity.
>> Okay. So that's like data mining.
>> Thank you so much for answering that question. Let's move to our third speaker. Our third speaker is Mr. Elnur Karimov from Istanbul University.
He's the winner of the honorary presidential scholarship in 2012 and also prizes in 2016 and 2018 for academic excellence. And now is the winner of a renowned Japanese scholarship for research and is doing research in nontraditional trademarks. Welcome.
>> Thank you very much for the kind introduction and thank you very much to the organizing team and all the speakers for your valuable comments. I will try to keep my part short. In my part, I will address two questions actually. The first is to what extent youth are the users of the academic database online and are involved in the policy making process. What I mean is actually the university students young researchers and academician.
And I will talk about the economic databases open to free and affordable access. As you may agree the youth are an underestimated but a growing force with information communication technologies. If we look to the general figures the youth are actively using the internet. However on the other side they are not participating in the policy‑making process.
If we compare with the international and regional levels thanks to the international internet governance forum the youth are advocating for their rights through various platforms. However, on the other side they are really remaining passive at the national level. The national youth councils in countries or student unions at the universities are just consultative organizations and they do not influence the universities or their governance.
I would like to report called young people as agents and advocates of development published in 2016 which states that the single most common group of activities is young people educating their peers and community members. The peer‑to‑peer education has been quite widely accepted among the young people with the internet and communication technologies. I'm part of an organization called the society youth special interest group where we are designing some trainings to educate the use and advocate them through different platforms.
If you look at the figures of the OECD2013, it is a report called education at a glance. Today 40% of young adults are expected to create a university‑level education over their lifetimes. Only 1.6% of young people today are expected to complete advanced research programs. This has just increased to the year 2000.
On the other hand, the increasing number of young people in academia, the need for academic databases is also another trend. If you look at a case study in turkey, I can add that later. The academic databases are the second priority among the youth when they are doing ‑‑ when students are fulfilling their term projects or the research, dissertations or the thesis. The university level of education can be deteriorated. If we take into account the academic databases that offer E‑books are really unaffordable for youth, even those who receive scholarships from their government. To access these databases, especially during the COVID‑19 pandemic has been a great trouble. I would like to differentiate the trouble. The first is when the youth have access to the academic databases through their universities, however they cannot access through home.
In turkey they had free access to students to some of the academic databases. However you cannot access from home. You can only use the library at the premises of the university which means that in terms of lockdown like the pandemic, the situation is even harder because you cannot only use the printed materials at the library but are deprived of academic databases because you cannot visit the library that the universities have been totally closed.
The second part of the problem of course is even if you have some access to academic databases, the content of these databases can be not reached and if you want to reach more content you need to pay more. The third part is the literacy level of youth isn't enough to use academic databases. They do not know how to access, how to ‑‑
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Thank you very much. This was my presentation. We will discuss more probably during the next minutes.
>> Thank you very much, Elnur. You gave us three extra minutes for Q&A. Let's see questions in the chat.
>> I think before we should go to the doctor to speak.
>> Yes. Thank you for addressing this. Our next speaker, Dr. Moya represents the government stakeholder. She is from the Philippines, a director of innovation and technology support office, intellectual property office of the Philippines. She has a major in technology management, a Ph.D.. lots of experience. She managed the innovation technology support office, a franchise of intellectual property office of the Philippines.
And the technology business incubator TBI of the university. Welcome.
>> Thank you, everyone. Thank you to Kamalanetra.
It is honor to be here as part of the IGF. I'm assigned to three questions. I represent the government.
So the first question is how the government should build a balance between the open and affordable use of academic databases and individual rights and offers. The first is policies and the copy right and copy left. Number three should the case of pandemic be grounds for opening academic databases for free and affordable access?
So today technological advances have impacted the ways data are shared and processed. With modern technology propelling the information age using a computer or a smartphone with a connection acquiring information is accessible now through online academic databases. This has affected the way technology is shared.
The importance on the internet has never been more crucial than when COVID struck.
We shifted from face to face to remote and online learning. Students, academics and others are forced to work in the online environment. Aside from the lack of technological resources, as most nations do, many are concerned about the accessibility of academic databases that are needed for quality education. These databases have information for solving problems like climate change, poverty and many more. The question arises however as to what extent to copyright protect academic databases and how can government help make this academic databases affordable to researchers and students alike. The basic principle of copyright is the oldest and most influential international agreement in the field of copyright. The Berne convention and other copyrights can be found in article 2 of the WIPO copyright of 1996. In article six of the agreement in 1994 which said copyright should extend to expression and not the ideas, methods of operation or mathematical concepts. It could be stated also that the copyright holder decides who can use it, who can change it and share. According to 2011 copyright laws were aimed to protect the creativity of the author offering commercial value for their wares. This is to protect by creativity and profit. This is the dualism of the copyright law which is actually to advance creativity and at the same time commercial value. So in Europe, for example, including Japan and South Korea academic databases are protected under the so‑called generous database right aimed at the protection of investment.
Through article 7 of the database directive as implemented in the legislation of the member states the maker of a database showing a substantial investment in either the obtaining or verification or presentation of its content is exclusive right to prevent extraction or utilization of the whole or a substantial part that is evaluated qualitatively or quantitatively the contents of the database.
Like copyright protection this database right arises automatically without any formal requirements at the time of the completion.
In other parts of the world protection of database to doctrines. The sweat of the brow, a principle that copyrights are to reward efforts of an author and the copyright doesn't require that an expression be original or in novel form. The other doctrine is the modicum of creativity. A principle which held the minimum level of creativity is required for it to be protected by copyright. This doctrine further shows they are not copyrightable but compilation of facts are because the expression by way of the arrangement possesses the least minimum level of creativity.
So academic databases can follow this principle.
Moreover proponents of strong database protection under copyright law argue that it costs a great deal of money to compile, maintain and service databases. Because of this private enterprises would foot the bill for the upkeep of the databases.
Further they argue that increases really encourage investment in database development and licenses for the public and stronger law ‑‑
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So this is the reason academic databases may not be available to researchers and students.
On the other hand, there is a growing school of thought that holds intellectual creation should be used to distribute as they see fit. And take legal steps to ensure others have the right to do so.
This is known as copy left. It is not the opposite of copyright. It is describing a more liberal copyright. People want their work to be available to the public without restrictions even though the copyright law applies to their work. It grants everyone a license to use and share a work without requiring permission or payment. Only attribution or sometimes the derivative works are to be shared under the same terms as the original.
We have discussed originality and protection. This would be literary works or academic databases. Further, copy left or open access is online ‑‑
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Might undermine scientific peer review. It was claimed the increase in the posting of manuscripts in open access repositories would lead to a wide scale subscription putting traditional publishers both commercial and society and in the long result area in scholarly publishing
However, a study conducted in 2012 shows that open access journals indexed in the web of signs are approaching the same scientific impact as subscription journals and that open access journals founded in the last ten years are receiving about as many citations as subscription journals launched during the same period.
Although they are restricting access to database limit, data sharing and ability of researchers to build previous research and further the knowledge the same protection provides incentives for research to be carried out where the investment of database is protected.
Take note, we are in the new normal where everything is changing. So restricting access to database they'll be effective. Of course I will leave that question to you. What is important is the government and other stakeholders, civil society, publishers, creators, policy makers and even research networks should work hand in hand to develop a more organized, efficient and systemic database sharing system or policy whereby scientific data is shared more effectively including at the international level. National research networks can help make this possible. They are composed of think tanks and experts that can provide linkages, inspire and help improve policy processes.
There's been considerable studies proving that this national research networks can help in addressing this change. The government can encourage publishers and other repository of information to hear the call and step up to provide free or affordable access or academic resources. Even at least for the COVID‑19 outbreak. The government can provide support in terms of grants, funding, tax exemptions or financial schemes that can help our authors who are also affected by this pandemic. The government can ensure every citizen is accorded with rights
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Between the right of the copyright holders and the users. The government can also help researchers and scholars provide information to academic databases that are now free and accessible to students, teachers and librarians and access affordable databases through our students and researchers
So that would be all. Thank you.
>> Thank you, Dr. Moya. I'm asking to everyone in the public, is there any questions to the intervention of Dr. Moya representing government or to Elnur representing the student/youth sector? If there is, please post it. I see at the moment comments, not specific questions.
There is one question from Juan for Mariana. Hi, Mariana, what do you think could be a solution for independent investigators in order to get more access? Sometimes that paper that you need especially in humanities is restricted. It happens. He's asking Mariana, what do you think of a solution?
>> I was trying to also engage in the conversation in the chat. I was trying to say it's difficult to find a solution that doesn't touch upon the whole eco‑system. Because the way it is, individual researchers who are not connected to a university or a university that is already paying for the fees of the licenses for academic databases, they basically don't have any means to have access. So we should think both technologically and legally. I agree with what Vivian was saying before on the roles that governments could play in that. I was also addressing again the mandates and how it has to be thought of in terms of institutional and national policies in my opinion.
>> Okay. Thank you so much. Now we have to go to breakout discussions. There are two rooms.
Please go to your breakout rooms. You can also have coffee during your breakout discussions. There is one group for private sector and civic society and another for youth and government. Please, co‑hosts, could you facilitate these? We need to split into these groups. You have ten minutes.
>> Just to jump in, hi, everyone. This is Pedro. The rooms will be for the speakers to talk among themselves and reach common points about the economic database and open access and other topics.
But while they are having their discussion we are also opening to participation here in the live session so people can talk about their experience in their own countries. For example, someone talked about the situation in South Korea. It would be nice for us to hear about how things work relating to academic database in other countries or other regions or even local initiatives.
Please, if you want to talk just write in the chat or raise your hand. There is a tool for that. We can open the microphone so you can speak. If you prefer you can also write in the chat and I will read it for you.
>> Just to break the ice to start the conversation we have an initiative of research that was made in public universities which are usually the most important ones in Brazil. They have to do it on open access. It is a way to contribute to society. They also have to give back to the society in the format of this open source, open access journals and even open access to thesis, et cetera, et cetera.
Aileen raised her hand.
Can you unmute her?
>> Thank you very much, Pedro. I have a question. I'm looking at the last comments in the chat. One of the suggestions is making these publications public for free. So if we can imagine a scenario that's all the publications would be free. So what would happen if that public database of publications, it's under the domain of the government and the government is saying, okay, I don't want this specific publication to be shared because it doesn't share the same values or the things they don't want to share.
What do you think would happen in that situation? We could have all the publications can be free and accessible or it will be too extreme? I hope it's understandable, my question.
>> I'm sorry. I think my internet connection failed for a bit. Could you just repeat the question? I got the first part of what you said. Just didn't get the last section.
>> Okay. That wasn't prepared. I'm trying to gather my thoughts again. I was thinking about an imaginary scenario that all the publications are under a public fund for free. What could happen with a database or publication under the domain of government and the government says, okay, I don't want this specific publication to be accessed to the people. In that case we should think of a public database totally or do you think maybe another approach? That's my query.
>> This is a great question. I think that the best way to develop this public database is not through direct control by the political aspect of the government. I mean, there is an active branch. But the education parts may be universities mainly that have a little more ‑‑ a bit more independence than the political interests that are natural in the common part of government action. Even if the public databases are under direct or indirect control of the government such as a government that can give orders to universities, even in that case, at least in Brazil we have some constitutional rights or even civil rights that guarantee this aspect of not censoring manifestations, mainly academic manifestations. So one could use them, could go to the courts to guarantee their publications, opinions such as freedom of speech and freedom of information in some countries.
I think, of course, it is not something that we can be totally sure that will happen. But it is a constant struggle to keep up the freedom of speech and information as it is in all other aspects of copyright. I think they are coming back in just a few minutes. We can get their common points and finish this session.
>> There are two groups in private rooms. Private sector with civic society and youth and government. Let's keep them about five minutes more, I would say. Then when they send me the comments, I will try to communicate with you the output.
>> Some interesting points were raised in the chat. I will read them so they are registered in our video.
>> Yes, please, go ahead.
>> Gergana sent us the guidelines to the rules on open access to scientific publications and open access to research in 2020. It shows the European position on this question talking such as the example I gave about availability or research that was partially or fully funded by public resources.
And the articles that were published in RFCs around the public domain feel available. There is the important of open source for more visibility to authors and content.
>> It was mentioned one of the solutions to add open source academic database on the networks that try to connect university networks to academic resources. Veronica mentioned that some universities provide VPN access even from home to get assessed to academic database. And some institutions do not have infrastructure to set up VPN or use a proxy which results in some problems to their students and also to libraries that cannot provide remote access to resources.
>> Hello, Pedro, and everyone.
>> Hello. Do you think we will have time to present?
>> Yes, please, go. Start. If you want to start.
>> Okay. So we have discussed in the private sector.
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Agreement. The first point is that databases can offer access to researchers and society ‑‑
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>> The second point was that instead of the university administration student unions can be an intermediary between the students and database publishers in the negotiations for open or affordable access. So we agreed that the university administration can push bureaucracy in negotiations and maybe the student unions can better represent their interests of students in the negotiations and they can be a third party to get an access.
Third point, last point being noted was that as soon as ‑‑ this is related to the exchange of data and we agree if the universities can create their own databases like online academic databases, the database publishers can exchange the resources with them and they can actually enrich the academic databases of each other. In this collaboration actually the people who will benefit will be the students because they will have the rich academic databases from their universities and from the database publishers.
That's it from our side. Let's hear maybe from the other side.
>> Hi.
>> Thank you so much for sharing. Now, Mariana, that was Elnur sharing the information of the student breakout. And now Mariana will present the discussion of society and civil government. Please.
>> Okay. Vivian, can you hear me? She froze ‑‑ no, she's there. Would you like to start? Maybe I can complete.
>> I think the connection is ‑‑
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>> Okay. We had agreed on that, but I don't think she can hear us well. So government and civil society, right? We were in agreement most of the time, but it was not as easy to find what the solutions would be. How the academic eco‑system works in different places. What we agreed on is that publicly funded research should be open and free. It should be made available to whomever wants access to it in different countries. Vivian was sharing that that research will not be peer reviewed so we were for some time discussing that we would also have to think of solutions for having peer reviewed research published and what could be in place for that. We were discussing some organizations had the capacity to do that because it's in their mandates, in their missions. It can be also the government can fund initiatives and journals that are peer reviewed and also published open license. But we didn't reach more conclusions than that. I don't know if Vivian can add.
>> I agree with ‑‑ I think the solution was to really come up with this paper should be peer reviewed, even if it is an open license ‑‑ open access license. The difference, the subscription‑based licenses are preferred because they are claiming that it is more credible because they are peer reviewed. But if there is open access also peer reviewed that would mean open access licenses are also credible for ‑‑
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‑‑ policy we can do ‑‑ we cannot do that alone, of course. The civil societies or as a government. We should work hand in hand together with other organizations or other ‑‑ supporting these policies.
>> Thank you so much. We have just a few minutes to summarize the main output. So SDG4 and 9 we are having a problem with access and also infrastructure.
Regarding that, there have been points in the two groups. The first was a discussion of the youth together with the corporate. There were three main things ‑‑ database publishers can offer open access to smaller research group of the society and can also benefit. Number two, student unions can be an intermediary between the students and database publishers in the organizations for open and affordable access.
Rather than contact with the university administration, number three, as soon as the universities create their own databases, we are talking about new infrastructure, creating their own databases with the collections of available books, the database publisher can exchange the resources or provide open access to each other from which the students will benefit.
So that's the main output from this discussion. The discussion between Mariana and Dr. Moya which was civil society and government is that the conclusion that they agree was that publicly funded research must be free. That was the main conclusion.
So, yes, we are in a time of Corona. The status quo is leaving many underprivileged people behind like students and people from civil society, especially in rural areas. Humanity in these times of pandemic like COVID must be united, you know? And we are in the same boat and people are vulnerable. But these kind of situations show solidarity for people to find solutions.
There has been in common points in resolution agreements that these four points that I mentioned and we will share this in a document together, the organizers of the session about this output.
So I think I want to thank you to all the speakers for your presentations and the invitation to this session. Please do not forget who you are serving and do not stop sharing and do not stop serving your communities.
I want to welcome you all to continue investing your energy and your love into this. Thank you very much.
If anyone wants to add something, you please get the microphone. You are welcome.
>> Thank you very much, everyone. Stay safe.
>> Thank you. Have a nice day or a nice night depending on where you are.
>> Thank you, everyone. Just remember that all of us will be requested to give feedback after the session. Please give us feedback. We really appreciate that. Thank you so much.