Politiche di accesso aperto in America Latina: iniziative regionali e riconoscimento internazionale tra eccellenza e giustizia sociale

Information policies govern the management, access, use, and protection of information within organizational or national contexts, ensuring its effective, secure, and ethical use. These policies include the regulation of access to academic and research resources, where Open Access (OA) has become a key issue in promoting equity in knowledge circulation and supporting social development. The notion that individuals are independent from collective responsibility toward their countries is misleading: the majority of the global population lives in the Global South and operates within specific local contexts. Therefore, it is essential to foster collaboration, quality, and the production of knowledge that benefits both local communities and the global society. Since the late 1990s, more than 30 digital journal collections – mostly public – have emerged in Latin America. Universities and research centers have invested in these tools, promoting a new way of disseminating scientific results through digital means. Information policies have supported full-text OA, with institutions themselves funding distribution to increase visibility and the impact of re- search. Even before the main declarations of the global OA movement, the region had already been working on creating national collections of full-text OA journals. Today, according to Latindex, one in five Ibero-American scientific journals is available online in full-text Open Access.