Research Proposal I - Conceptual Model ICTA2K4D

ICTA2K4D – Information and Communications Technologies (ICT4D plus Access to Knowledge (A2k) for Development (K4D): A conceptual model for Universities in Development

Arif Jinha
MDG Research Seminar

1. Introduction

Universities have long played an integral role in national and international development. In the context of contemporary globalization, the information and communication technologies (ICT’s) have played a critical role in the shift to a knowledge economy. Universities in the North have capitalized on the communications revolution to accelerate and widen the dissemination of and access to knowledge and information. They have also increased their capacities to generate new knowledge through international networks and partnerships. Vast resources were devoted to universities in the G8 in the second half of the 20th century to meet the demands for flexible and highly skilled labour amidst the fierce competition generated by the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) (Banting, 1995). Higher education and research institutions in the developed world attract significant public resources, which they in turn invest in human capital, provide basic research and train researchers. Basic research provides entrepreneurs opportunities for commercialization, for educators to develop curricula, government’s to improve infrastructure and services and research serves to provide evidence for social and health policy-making and practise.

As countries shift in both the economic and social spheres toward greater reliance on what universities provide, namely knowledge, universities in the North are situated in a role of ever-increasing significance. The evidence would suggest however that Southern universities, having faced numerous obstacles in development, and have not been able to benefit significantly from dissemination of research on the internet, nor from participation in international research networks. In fact the evidence suggests that in many instances and in many ways, Southern institutions have declined in terms of their significance and capability in a time where it appears they are needed the most. In today’s global supply chain, low-income countries realize minimal returns on the depressed value of commodities, and are largely shut out from the commercial value of products containing those commodities; value embedded through human capital, intellectual property and other forms of knowledge capital. They also bear an inordinate burden in terms of the world’s health, economic, governance and social problems which in the end are under-researched in proportion to their significance to the world population as a whole. Across the South, Africa has struggled the most despite the high hopes of the independence era when her universities first became her own.

University partnerships between African and Northern universities have a long tradition dating back to independence. These partnerships frequently have capacity-building objectives and development objectives, but partners face an asymmetry in capability when conducting research together (Gaillard, 1994). In terms of accessing the basic research that is available globally for commercialization, infrastructure, human capital development and evidence-based policy, Southern institutions operate with minimal resource to conduct literature-based research. Physical libraries have declined and this decline has sharpened with digitization and fewer periodicals being donated. Since the South in turn contributes considerably less literature, fewer articles with a country or regional focus on the South exist. Southern universities typically lack stable, broadband internet access and technical capacity to maintain a network. Secondly, they face price barriers to basic research in the form of peer-reviewed literature. The open access movement and subsidized research programs have vastly increased the possibility of free access to research in the South. However, barriers to the actual benefit from this wealth remain and a significant amount peer-reviewed knowledge remains behind price barriers. More optimistically, the price barriers are being overcome in a variety of ways and new technologies and falling technology costs put network access within reach of Southern universities. North-South partnerships can facilitate access to both, and partnerships and networks built on the platform of digital access can translate into greater development impacts as well as greater capacity and leadership from Southern partners.

1.1 Great Lakes University of Kisumu and University of Ottawa Partnership

The Tropical Institute for Community Health (TICH) in Kisumu Kenya has trained graduate students in community health since 1998 and in 2006 TICH opened the doors to undergraduate nursing students, establishing the Great Lakes University of Kisumu. TICH has long had a focus on contributing knowledge to local community health and development through its graduate programs and now is addressing the shortage of spaces for university applicants in Kenya through its undergraduate programs (currently Nursing, but several others planned). TICH/GLUK is located in the poorest region in Kenya, one that is heavily affected by poverty and infectious disease and its programs are geared directly to addressing acute problems. University of Ottawa (uOttawa) was brought into contact with TICH through Ottawa health professionals with a poverty and social health focus who had been working in Kenya. Since 2004, an academic exchange has allowed uOttawa nursing and medical students to work in community-based health during the summer, and for Kenyan students to pursue graduate studies at University of Ottawa. A second Memorandum of Understanding is currently being developed in regards to research partnership and institutional capacity-building including faculty exchange and curriculum development for the nursing school. Two key requests were made from TICH in regards to the wider MOU: 1) assistance to establish a wireless network for broadband internet access and b) the sharing of digital library resources and subscriptions.

2. Objectives

The first objective of this thesis is to describe the dynamics of universities’ and development through the role of dissemination and access to knowledge in the context of the communications revolution and globalization. More specifically, the objective is to make a comparison between the differential opportunities the communications technologies have hitherto provided to institutions in the North and South. The basic question being asked is: how do communications technology and on-line access to literature combine to shape universities’ role in the different contexts of Northern and Southern development? Of relevance is the nature of the technical evolution of publishing markets and the open access movement on the availability of research, as well as the barriers that continue to exist for both Northern and Southern contexts as a result of copyright laws. Also relevant is the new and increasingly prominent development priority of building capabilities for institutions in developing countries through ICT infrastructure development. Included in the focus of this objective is the role that North-South university partnerships have played and can play in international development despite the disparate histories of Northern and Southern higher education development. The description will focus primarily but non-exclusively on the Canadian context in the North and the African context to the South. Meeting this objective will provide the theoretical and historical context for the second objective.

The second objective is to move from the general to the specific to determine the feasibility and justification of the request from TICH/GLUK to University of Ottawa for shared access to research and technical assistance for network access in the context of North-South university partnership. The questions being asked is: will network access and literature continue to be a priority in the partnership? and what will the outcome of these requests be?

3. Literature Review

3.1 Universities and Knowledge for Development
During the 1960s investment in education at all levels was a main focus of national and international development throughout the world. Canada greatly expanded post-secondary education between 1964 and 1971 (Banting, 1995). As early as 1945, Harvard president James Conant argued that a strong system of higher education was essential to American democracy, social mobility and egalitarianism (Conant, 1945). Thomas Schulz championed a ‘human capital revolution’ in the approach to development economics through the 1960s (Schultz, 1960). International aid and national efforts pushed allocations for education to over 1/5 of national budgets in some developing countries (Lulat, 1982). However, the scale and speed of these initial efforts outpaced development in general, and the expected returns in development outcomes did not materialize. Human capital theory was sidelined in the 1970s when ‘educational reform’ became the development buzz-word. Reforms tried to shift the focus towards basic needs for rural the rural majority, strategic investment in quality, introduction of technology and nonformal education. However, reforms were not carried through extensively owing to lack of political will (Lulat, 1982).

In Africa, the push for universal primary education has been present since the wave of independence of the 1960s and now occupies the status of one of eight Millennium Development Goals (United Nations, 2008). After the initial push, the development of tertiary education and research was relatively neglected in comparison with the emphasis on primary education (Birdsall 1996, Bloom, Canning and Chan, 2005). Spending on higher education has sometimes been seen by donors and policy-makers to favour elites and exacerbate inequality (Lulat 1982, Birdsall 1996, Kapur and Crawley 2008). However, some have seen tertiary education not as a distant goal to come after primary education, but as the root for effective national development including the effectiveness of primary education (Schulz 1960, Dowuona 1966, Cohen 1968, Lulat, 1982, Stiglitz, 2000, Cao et. al, 2002, Lorenzo 2002, Colle, 2003, Kapur and Crawley, 2008) and at least one author proposes to shift the focus to the quaternary level with graduate training and research. (Birdsall, 1996). During the independence era in 1966, Nigerian author Dowuona discussed a cycle beginning with the weakness of higher education translating into a lack of trained post-primary teachers culminating in a vacuum of skilled personnel to support the few highly educated Nigerians running the country (Dowuona, 1966). Dowuona saw a critical role for universities in self-determination stating that “until the developing countries build up the right foundations and tradition for training to the highest level, they will not be able to be masters of their own destiny.” In 1968, U.K. statesman Sir Andrew Cohen placed education as the highest priority in African development, and universities as the first concern. He saw the greatest obstacles to development to be the ‘shortage of trained and educated manpower’, noting that at the time Zambia employed 2,600 graduates but only 200 were Zambians. He saw a critical role for institutional capacity-building through some 50 arrangements underway between British and mostly African universities – giving the example of the cooperation of medical schools in Nairobi and Glasgow (Cohen, 1968).

Developing countries have not by and large realized the vision for higher education set out by Cohen, Dowuona and others. As an example, Zambia followed the normative pattern of ambitious investment in the sixties and ambitious reform in the seventies. In 1975 Zambia was still overly dependent on copper mining when the price dramatically fell on the London Stock Exchange plunging the country into deep economic crisis from which it has yet to recover. Zambia’s fiscal crises led to austerity measures and a focus on more urgent needs. Zambia’s failure in reform was also linked to the gap between the ideological rhetoric and the actual implications on the elite whose political will was required (Lulat, 1982). More dramatically, at the Juba Health Institute in Southern Sudan, progress in medical and nursing education was halted by a two decade long civil war where the entire academic staff was in exile, and from which it has only recently emerged. The DRC/Zaire was barely able to begin the first decade of development when it became the focus of political machinations of its former colonial master Belgium as well as the United States and USSR at the start of the Cold War, producing Mobutu Sese Seko’s thirty-year kleptocracy.

A handful of influential authors have noted the significance of the infrastructure of knowledge creation and dissemination itself to the process of development. Perhaps the leading voice on knowledge for development is Nobel Prize in Economics winner and former World Bank president Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz has championed the World Bank’s Knowledge for Development program, and states in a 2000 address the following:

“If the developing countries are really to be “in the drivers’ seat” they have to have the capacity to analyze the often difficult economic issues which they face. Local researchers, combining the knowledge of local conditions—including knowledge of local political and social structures—with the learning derived from global experiences, provides the best prospects for deriving policies which are both effective and engender broad-based support. That is why locally-based research institutions are so important.” – (Joseph Stiglitz, 2000)

This brings us full circle Dowuona and Cohen, who were both concerned with capability and self-determination through higher education and research, and the same sentiment is reflected in Stiglitz’s approach to knowledge in general. The failed ambition of the 1960s and 70s offers lessons of caution for large-scale capital investments and large-scale reforms of human systems. Despite the caution, the significance of higher education remains. Along with the Ontario government’s recent announcement of funding for University of Toronto’s ailing infrastructure, Paul Genest of the Council of Ontario Universities stated "The Ontario government clearly understands that universities are the knowledge infrastructure of the province" (Smith, 2008). The question being asked today is how universities in Africa and might take advantage of digital technologies, on-line literature and international networks to re-assert a stronger role in development. Knowledge for development is an extension of human capital theory that gives greater attention to institutions and infrastructure for knowledge, with communications technology occupying a central importance (World Bank, 2008). Technology often predicts social change, for better or worse, and we have new choices to make.

3.2 ICT’s for Development

“History bears witness,” writes a sociologist, “to the cataclysmic effect on society of inventions of new media for the transmission of information among persons. The development of writing, and later the development of printing, are examples.”

N. St. John, Book review, The American Journal of Sociology 73 (1967): 255

ARPANET, a brief history of the internet
ICT’s for development begins with the development of the first computer networks, not by an entrepreneur, but by the U.S. military out of information infrastructure needs during the Cold War. Computers had already become an important military purchase and the next step in making them useful and powerful tools was to have them communicate. The predecessor of the internet, ARPANET, was developed in order to do just that. Its progenitor, Robert Taylor, saw the limitations of all the scientists using computers in isolation and the duplication of computer programming that was the result. Duplication and inability to access the research of others wasted resources and slowed the progress of the development of security and military technology and the power of information to decision-making during a tense period in international relations. Much of the duplication arose from incompatibility, and the need was for a common network (Hafner and Lyon, 1996). ARPANET gave birth to other versions such as telnet. In Ottawa, telnet was pre-world wide web internet technology used Carleton University’s National Capital Freenet. NCF later became the only free provider of dial-up access in Ottawa, reflecting an early concern in digital culture for zero price barriers to access and the influence of universities early on in the digital revolution. Between 1980 and 1991, Tim Berners-Lee invented and developed the World Wide Web, allowing ordinary people to access web pages created by other individuals or organizations, and to communicate with one another through their own personal computers (Hafner and Lyon, 1996).

Today’s Digital World
Though, by now the internet has become ubiquitous in the West, this is not the case globally. The concept of the digital divide examines the divergence in capability that ICT’s have created, granting incredible opportunities but only to those who have access to these technologies. Advances in the technologies further expand and refine the divide, with varying quality of access and opportunities to participate. As the significance of ICT’s to opportunity increases, so does the significance of the divide and the need to address information poverty before inequalities become rigid, particularly with regard to the divide between rich and poor countries (Norris, 2000). While Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan gave priority to ICT’s for development, and in March 2001, the U.N. Economic and Social Council launched the U.N. ICT Task Force devoted to transforming the digital divide into digital opportunity for all humanity (U.N. ICT Task Force, 2008). Attention has been given to ICT for development in university contexts through the The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). NEPAD provides definitions of ICT development and ICT’s for development in this particular context.

• ICT Development in the university context refers to building media and digital facilities to support university internal functions, along with an academic and research programs that prepare students to function effectively in an information society - in both the public and the private sectors;
• ICT for Development refers to the university applying ICT in programs outside its walls in the service of communities and the nation.
(NEPAD in Colle, 2005).
A mountain of literature, reports and discourse on ICT4D now exists, with a variety of recommendations for ICT’s for education (ICT4E) in general, and universities in particular, assessment methods, design and cost considerations, economic analyses, applications to social and health development, equity concerns, gender equity concerns, democratic potentials and limitations, e-governance opportunities and cautions, cultural attitudes towards internet and computer use, analyses of networks and on-line communities, the notion of a global civil society made possible by ICT’s, on-line activism, cyber-exclusion, privacy issues, digital rights management (DRM), innovation in business and technology, electronic finance, e-commerce issues, information management issues, piracy, user rights, communication rights, digital culture, copyright and intellectual property, terrorism and security and many more. The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) are global advocacy organizations for the rights of users, but many debates over these issues also occur at the World Intellectual Property Organization, particularly at WIPO’s Development Agenda, at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organization of Economic Cooperation for Development (OECD) and more. (dear peer-reviewer, I do have references for each of these, and that was my intent, alas I have run out of time.)
What the literature demonstrates is that though for those of us who are privileged with good internet access, the act of using the internet in whatever role we play in society is simple enough to take for granted most of the time. The know-how that exists in terms of establishing this ease of access for individuals currently across the digital divide suggests that the intervention could be fairly straightforward from a technical standpoint. Therefore, the relationships in between internet access, access to literature and research capacity for universities (as explained in Section 3 - theoretical model) are ultimately straightforward and simple. This is promising as it allows stakeholders to envision opportunities that are likely within their reach. However, the implications and the surrounding issues present a great many challenges that caution us against moving forward without giving attention to the complexities that will arise in implementation and will follow from that point. Perhaps the shortcomings of the application of human capital theory in the 1960s suffered from such an ability to see the forest but not the trees.
ICT4D is an endeavour of complexity, rapid growth and enormous potential cautioned by many perils. In the information age, there is no shortage of information. It is akin to the possibility of limitless monetary wealth but with the age-old problem of distribution remaining. Unlike money where wealth is measured on a linear scale and is constrained to a particular meaning, a wealth of information can only translate to knowledge through the construction of meaning. In our global society, we are likely to face peril if we go without any of this wealth and yet there is still a great deal of uncertainty for all of us as we engage with it. Closely tied to the relationship between information and knowledge is communication. Communication is how we reduce that uncertainty together and is a collective endeavour. In the communication of scientific and academic knowledge, the sender and the receiver are intimately important to one another. Both must have access to both the medium of communication (in this case the internet) and the form of communication (the “literature”).
3.3 Access to Knowledge

The World Health Organization conducted a study in 2003 which found that 56% of research and academic institutions in least developed countries (per-capita GNP < $1000) carried zero subscriptions to any academic journal, and 21% carried an average of 2. In the next income-tier (per-capita GNP < $1000-$3000) countries 34% of institutions carried no subscriptions, and 34% carried an average of 2 to 5. Researchers and academics identified ‘priced literature’ as their most pressing information problem (Ochs, Aronson, Wu, 2004). Such issues are the raison d’etre of open access publishers such as Public Library Science (PLoS, and the reason why the World Health Organization created the Health Internetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI). The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N.’s has a similar program called the Access to Global On-line Research in Agriculture (AGORA) and the On-line Access to Research in the Environment (OARE) is organized through the U.N. Environment Programme. All of these take advantage of the internet to disseminate critical research to the above-mentioned institutions in the poorest countries with the permission of the publishers. The price barriers to literature have also been the motivation behind the Open Access movement and are on of the key intellectual property concerns of the Access to Knowledge movement.

In terms of development, access to knowledge is particulary critical to knowledge workers – a nation’s doctors, nurses, librarians, civil servants, lawyers, civil society workers, entrepreuners, etc. The global body of public knowledge is available from anywhere in the world, but frequently behind economic barriers that are difficult to surpass for the majority of knowledge workers or researchers in any developing country. These knowledge workers’ effectiveness is dependent on the ability to combine local and global knowledge (Stiglitz, 1999) In a developed country such as Canada, in order to eliminate the static inefficiency of charges on access to literature to individual researchers and students, the state subsidizes access to the global knowledge commons knowledge workers through funding university and research institution’s library budgets from its tax base so they can purhase thousands of journal subscriptions. Ultimately, however, this arrangement funds the limitation of access, and even in developed countries this can be a barrier. According to the E.U.’s study on the technical evolution of scientific publishing markets, the crisis orginally occurred before the digital revolution when libraries faced increase in prices of journals 300% beyond inflation and the problem has not been corrected by on-line publishing. Even after libraries formed into consortia to increase their bargaining power “researchers themselves have become dissatisfied that their libraries can no longer afford to buy back their research output and that of their co-workers, even though this was provided free of cost to the publishers” and “organizations that fund the research have become concerned that the published results of their funding are largely unread and that scientific progress is retarded through inadequate access to related research conducted globally.” (European Commission, 2006). University of Maryland recently cancelled 32 journals from Elsevier when the company raised the average price of each journal by 27% when the university refused to change their policy of choosing by title instead of package. The pressing issue was high-cost per use on low-use journals (Destler, 2004).
Researchers are coming to the conclusion that open access is a logical response to the evolution of scientific publishing. The E.U. study’s first recommendation was that government funding agencies should mandate that the research they fund be made available without charge on the internet. The recommendation became a campaign and is supported by a 27,000 strong petition from the global research community including many high-profile scientists and several Nobel Prize winners. A U.S. Senate Bill with the same recommendation for U.S. research agencies also has a petition, considerable support and the U.S.’s National Institutes for Health (NIH) has a policy that is responsible for the free access to full-text articles on BioMed Central. The Senate bill has received 125 letters of support from higher education leaders. The Budapest Open Access Initiative, which also provides the potential standards for open-access is supported by a petition of 4789 individuals and 380 organizations. The Berlin Declaration is supported by the German research community and 227 stakeholder organizations worldwide, a declaration of the establishment of the identical open-access norms. The Bethesda Declaration was released by the American biomedical research community in April 11, 2003 in support of the same open access norms as Budapest and Berlin, underscoring their desire to move forward with the ‘widely held goal’ of open access to their research . The Bethesda, Berlin and Budapest Declarations present the internationally-recognized standards for open access principles in all types of publishing, such as Open Access Law Canada and the over 35 law journals worldwide who operate under ‘open-access law journal principles’, the first of which deals with the economic barrier to knowledge presented by traditional publishing (“WE, THE EDITORS OF OUR LAW JOURNAL, BELIEVE that legal scholarship should be available to the widest possible audience, regardless of wealth). Open access advocate Peter Suber lists on his website 14 journals who resigned from their publishers to move to open-access principles and 15 policy statements from learned societies and professional associations on open access.
The NIH in the U.S. and CIHR in Canada are leading the way on the government side as mentioned and also in Canada the International Development Research Agency operates under open-access. Civil society groups have drafted a comprehensive Access to Knowledge Draft Treaty proposal for international human rights law, covering each article of current conventions relevant to these policy recommendations. In 2004, as the World Intellectual Property Organization adopted the proposals to include a development agenda, hundreds of scientist and civil society groups signed the Geneva Declaration on the future of WIPO, which addressed a variety of IP issues including advocacy for open-access on the development agenda. The Wellcome trust is a United Kingdom private foundation for human and animal health research which requires the authors it funds to publish in open-access compliant ways. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, issued a Final Communique on Jan. 30, 2004, supporting open access to publicly funded research data, signed by the 34 Ministers OECD Scientific and Technological Committee, including Canada (references needed for this para).

Canadian universities are already proceeding with D-space technology for open access archiving. Archiving in public institutions is also seen as an advantage from a preservation point of view, in the event of private journal collapse or mismanagement of the archive. Finally, the Government of Canada’s Task Force National Consultation on Access to Scientific Research Data released its final report in 2005 urging ‘immediate and pressing consideration of our Report, and recommend the earliest possible implementation, as a national priority, of the step-by-step approach proposed that will lead to early and effective implementation of a national plan for open access to publicly funded scientific research data.’

Canada Research Chair in Internet Law and E-Commerce Michael Geist is prolific in his advocacy for more sensible balances for users, authors and third-parties as well as increasing availability of digital knowledge. He cites the recent milestone of the E.U. petition and states that Canadian funding agencies (apart from CIHR and IDRC) “are increasingly at risk of falling behind their counterparts around the world by dragging their heels on open access.”

Canada Research Chair in Health Equity Dr. Peter Tugwell, one of Canada’s most prolific authors of research, and Amir Attaran who is Canada Research Chair in Law, Development Policy and Population Health are both advocates of the Public Library of Science and its role in open and equitable access to research.

With static inefficiency in research dissemination globally, developing countries are the most marginalized and underdeveloped in the knowledge economy. According to UNESCO, “the research base of a country has a profound effect on its economic development and its ability to address problems in such areas as public health, infectious diseases, agriculture, environmental management, or industrial progress.” Researchers from the developing world comprise a fraction of participation in research, even though they are best positioned to contribute on the key challenges facing the world, resulting in a growing recognition of gaping holes of ‘missing knowledge’. The 1990 Commission on Health Research for Development estimated that less than 10% of the global health research resources were being applied to the health problems of developing countries, which accounted for over 90% of the world’s health problems – an imbalance captured in the term the ‘10/90 gap’15. A 2004 study found that 31 countries contribute 98% of the world’s mostly highly cited research output with eight of those contributing 85% while another 162 countries contribute less than 2% (King, 2004). In Africa, only South Africa ranks in the top countries at 29.

Clearly access to knowledge has become a topic of interest to researchers who have an opportunity to reflect on their own role in a wider and increasingly global process of knowledge development. UBC author John Willinsky theorizes that what he calls the ‘Access Principle’ is the natural ethic of the research author, since every author’s contribution depends on their role as a research reader and user (Willinsky, 2006). As Google Scholar reminds us, we stand on the shoulder of giants – and thousands of others support those!
(deer peer-reviewer, clearly the citations have not been completed and the lit review was the section left needing the most work, sorry!)

4. Theoretical Model

In order to articulate the general approach and to apply it to the specific objective, the author proposes a theoretical model that explains the relationships between ICT’s for development (ICT4D), access to knowledge (A2K) and knowledge for development (K4D) (Figure 1). The model situates the university as a hub for knowledge-based development. This is taken as the abstract conception of what a university is meant to be, and it is understood that institutions in the real world often fall short of this. Partnerships and networks are both seen as natural activities for a university and as vehicles for institutional capacity-building. It is theorized that research capacity in the 21st century requires 1) the basics of network access (through ICT4D) and 2) access to research (made possible by various a2k policy approaches) and that research capacity is optimised through 3) networks and partnerships. Therefore, this model could be applied to other institutional capacity-building partnerships between North and South. If this leap-frogging of capacity via ICT’s and a2k is generalized to more Southern knowledge institutions, provides potential not only for North-South partnerships and networks, but for greater South-South collaboration. In the end, it is hoped that ‘North’ and ‘South’ no longer delineate such a wide disparity, initially in reducing the gap in access to knowledge and eventually closing the gap in human development. This development can be led by local knowledge workers and researchers who are both informed by, and contribute to, global knowledge.
Figure 1

5. Concepts in the Model

5.1 K4D
The university can and often does play a critical role in development through education, research and knowledge translation towards development outcomes particularly in the contemporary shift towards the knowledge economy. Thus when universities are able to optimally fulfill their roles, they are drivers of knowledge for development. The concept of knowledge for development has become a key program area for the World Bank, has been championed by Joseph Stiglitz and other economists and is a theoretical extension of human capital theory (Schultz ), K4D takes human capital to an institutional level and placing a high importance on communications technology and reducing economic barriers to this technology and to the knowledge available through it. The acronym K4D is the result of the emphasis on the digital.

5.2 ICT4D
ICT’s have been a key driver of globalization and of the knowledge economy since the advent of ARPANET and later revolutionized by the World Wide Web. The concept ICT4D stands for Information and Communication Technologies for Development and refers the application of digital communication technologies to human and societal development. ICT’s have become a development priority, championed in recent years by Kofi Annan and the United Nations ICT Task Force and many other large and small organizations. The main focus has been on the power of access to computer networks and the internet, though cellular phones have also been of interest. Of course the revolutionary impact of mediums of communication go farther back to the telephone, the printing press, the invention of writing etc., have long been studied providing a good theoretical basis for extending to the digital. Whereas the printing press and the telephone were analog revolutions, the contemporary revolution is digital, and again, the acronym ICT4D reflects the digital style.

5.3 A2k
Access to knowledge (a2k) refers to a movement to reduce price barriers to knowledge and information on the internet. A2K looks at innovative alternatives to copyright exclusivity. A2k sees knowledge as a global public good where optimal static efficiency is desirable in the dissemination of knowledge. The publication of journal articles on the internet has accelerated the shift to the knowledge economy and the impact of research on development in the North. The price barriers to research, the neglect of higher education and the drop in donated print journals from North to South has widened the gap in knowledge infrastructure at a time when knowledge becomes increasingly critical to development. The open access, or access to knowledge (a2k) movement has in recent years vastly increased the availability of free content, while developing countries have been given subsidized access to a large amount of priced literature as a result of pressures. A2k is yet another acronym in the style of the digital culture.

5.4 Partnerships and Networks

Research, educational and institutional capacity-building partnerships between Northern and Southern universities have a long history. The long-term results of these partnerships remain uncertain, while universities place increasing emphasis on internationalization through partnerships, particularly in developing countries. At the same time, research networks involving individual researchers or research groups networked across several countries take advantage of ICT’s to capitalize on shared resources across borders, thereby developing new knowledge beyond the resources of any one institution. The ability of Southern-based researcher to participate in these is hampered by asymmetry and poor network access. Partnerships comprise a more focused approach involving inter-university Memorandums of Understanding, faculty exchange and specific project outputs. Partnerships can involve institutional capacity-building, education or research projects. Partnerships with the developing country institutions often have additional social and human development objectives; however partnerships can suffer from asymmetry and a dominance of Northern partners.

6. Significance

In light of the global development discourse on knowledge, communication and digital technology, networks and partnership- one possible approach is for Northern and Southern partners to focus on the basics of research and education capacity in the digital context, attempting to approximate symmetry in these basics between partners. The basics of partnership in this model are theorized to include technical assistance to ensure both partners have sustainable and reliable and stable broadband network access, and improved access and use of literature through shared access to knowledge and making open access and subsidized literature useable and navigable. This should reduce the asymmetry in partnership to a degree that allows the partnership to truly transfer research capacity to the partner institution, rather than simply transferring knowledge. This transfer would have three components; the technical capacity for sustainable network access, the capacity to access literature independently, and the transfer of know-how in research from Northern to Southern partners through the relationship and the process of carrying out the specific research projects of any particular partnership.

The return on the investment from the North includes the research outputs generated by the partnership itself (with greater ability of the Southern partner to lead) combined with the promise of the expansion of research capacity and output from the institution for years to come, long after the initial investment is made. This also can translate into research networks becoming truly global in scope, as Southern institutions gain the ability to join them, and knowledge itself becoming truly global as perspectives, research foci and new knowledge is contributed from Southern institutions. On the education front, access to literature via access improvement and ICT development can translate into faculty development, the ability of students to do independent literature-based research and the construction of local-global knowledge translated into evidence-based and locally relevant curriculum development and curricular materials such as textbooks. If Southern institutions benefit from Open Educational Resources, they are likely to contribute their curricular resources in the same fashion, thus enriching the resources for curriculum globally and especially in the regions where they are produced.

The model when applied to North-South university partnerships is an institutional capacity-building approach at the level of technical assistance and access to knowledge. Partnerships typically focus on the core functions of universities in research and education, and one hypothesis is that in establish access both these functions have greater opportunities, and the research and education work of the partnership further potentiates this capacity and opportunity. In developing research capacity, the university can situate itself as a hub for knowledge-based development locally, regionally and nationally. As it develops, it can then become a global contributor.

This is an approach where the Southern partner quickly shifts from beneficiary and follower-partner to leader and contributor. The hypothesis is that such a shift is not possible without network access, and that with network access alone, the investment in access has smaller returns. This is because the web resources most relevant to universities are high quality knowledge resources, and they are the focus of the access to knowledge (A2K) movement. Network and literature access without partnership may also not be enough, given the literature vacuum that developing country institutions have faced over many years. Certainly the purpose of partnership is to mutual development of knowledge and of partners’ capacities. The model proposes that under the conditions of equitable access to research and of network access, the partnership has vastly increased potential for impact on development for both partners. Finally, transfer of capacity has too long been a development goal where the longer it remains a concern, the more it can be said to have failed. It is hoped that where successful, the basic approach taken in this model can tip the scales on an institution by institution basis.

7. Constructs, Variables, Indicators

The model proposed for investigation includes the following concepts described in relation to the model (Figure 1).

7.1 Constructs as used in the model

• University – Institutions training students at the undergraduate and/or graduate level with faculty who teach and/or carry out research.
• Research – one of the core functions of the university.
• Education – one of the core functions of the university.
• Networks – Formal or informal relationships between individual researchers, departments or research groups that extend beyond the local university (networks are not managed by the institution, but by institutional actors).
• Partnerships – Usually between two universities at the institutional level, partnerships are formal arrangements under MOU agreements with specific resources, roles and objectives designated. They can focus on institutional capacity-building, education or research, and can include all three components to varying degrees of focus.
• Development – Economic, social/health and human development – as measured by various development indicators.
• North or Northern: refers to institutions in the developed world.
• South or Southern: refers to institutions in the developing world.
• Transfer of Knowledge – linear transfer of information, know-how, or other types of knowledge.
• Transfer of Research Capacity – Transfer of the ability to access, generate and disseminate knowledge.

Other concepts such as human capital have a long history of theoretical development and are used in the general and current understanding of these terms.

7.2 Variables
There are three main variables in the model. Three variables apply to both objectives of describing the dynamics of network access (ict4d) and access to literature (a2k) and their relationship to development through knowledge (k4d). To understand how these might be operationalized, let’s consider an analogy.

7.3 “Analog-y” - The analog divide analogy

Imagine we are in a town at the turn of the 20th century and telephones arrive for the first time. Before they arrive, everyone is in the ‘no phone’ condition of the variable of ‘presence of phone’. The town has an usher that knocks on the door of every household whenever there is a town meeting where citizens participate in decisions affecting the town and share opportunities. At the beginning, only those making $10 a day can afford a telephone. At this time 10% of the population joins the ‘phone’ group. This group is able to network with each other and with the outside world. In doing so, they find opportunities to increase their own wealth and that of the town; meanwhile the cost of phones goes down until over 50% of households are in the ‘phone’ group. The town is growing fast, the usher retires, and phone calls and mailings are used to attract people to the town meetings. However, much of the participation is informed by networking, and the ‘no phone’ group feels less expected to be at the town meetings. Gradually, more and more is done by phone. Opportunities increase for those who have phones and few more get phones, but the ‘no phone’ group is excluded from various formal and informal opportunities communicated by phone. The poverty of the ‘no phone’ group increases and they struggle with food and basic repairs to their homes, and some are in this group because they lost income due to illness or other social ills. Some decision-makers feel that greater efforts should be made to include the ‘no phone’ group in town meetings, and others feel the effort should be made to ensure they have phones. Others feel that since this group is facing more urgent problems, these should be addressed first. Of course, most of these discussions all happen by telephone and at the town meeting which is not well attended by the ‘no-phone’ group.

7.4 The digital divide

Our analysis focuses on the digital divide just after the turn of the 21st century. Here, it is more difficult to talk of a ‘network access group’ and a ’no network access’ group, and the same applies to ‘access to literature’, since rather than a binary equation, there are various levels of access and by now it is assumed that it is rare for students and researchers anywhere in the world to have an absolute zero value on either variable. The same logic applies, however, and people with minimal amounts of each variable face the same exclusion from information and opportunity. There may be a mid-range group who have better access than this group, but are still at a disadvantage compared to the group that has optimal values of both variables. The barriers to literature access add a second variable to the one concerning access to the communication technology, so there are possible combinations of the two variables, where each has an effect on the how useful the level of access in the other variable is.

7.5 Variables (note the small caps refer to the variables not the concepts)

7.5.1 a2k – Level of access to literature. This variable is observeable through valid indicators and can change (like an independent variable if this were an experiment.)
7.5.2 ict4d – Level of network access (access to the internet). This variable is observeable through valid indicators and can change (like an independent variable if this were an experiment.)
7.5.3 k4d – Impact of knowledge on development. This variable is observeable through a wide variety of indicators. It is hypothesized that changes in ict4d and a2k will affect k4d, since communication, dissemination and access are thought to be critical to gaining and using knowledge. This analogous to k4d being the dependent variable, but we can only predict the impact on it based on the theoretical grounding. In the case of k4d, the quality of the partnership will be included and any change in expectations for the partnership and the institutions involved will be measured by survey.

Note: A2K, ICT4D and K4D are well known (albeit recent) constructs. When referring to these as variables in the model, small caps will be used. When referring to them as concepts as established by A2K, ICT4D and K4D institutions, movements or programs, the capital letters will be used as is most common.

The variables used in the model are meant to be simplified definitions from concepts that have been vigorously and quickly developed over recent years. It is possible to simplify the first two quite validly, since the outcomes sought through these debates are relatively simple (internet access and access to research for all), and it is the process that is complicated.

K4D – the interpreted variable
The most difficult concept to reduce is the K4D concept, and though it is understood that development requires knowledge, knowledge is difficult to define and to quantify. The argument here is not that knowledge that is available in the form of journal articles is the only relevant knowledge to universities, nor is it the case that journal articles can only be accessed through digital technology. Further, it is clearly not sufficient just to access knowledge in order to gain it. The World Bank’s Knowledge Assessment Methodology offers some possibility of operationalizing the relationship of knowledge to development.

Still, we wish to leave ‘knowledge’ as a concept that is not entirely quantifiable, for the same reasons ‘knowledge’ is distinguishable from ‘information’. According to Leydesdorff (2006)”Knowledge enables us to codify the meaning of information. Knowledge can be considered as a meaning which makes a difference.” Ultimately, knowledge is significant to the knower, and so we must leave the meaning somewhat fluid. What is measured by the indicators proposed, relates to the various conditions in which any seeker of knowledge can find herself in regards to knowledge that is available through a global body of literature. This in turn relates to the conditions of the university, the nation and the region and the disparity between rich and poor countries. The seeker could have access to a set of subscriptions valued at millions of dollars per year as a privilege of institutional membership, have a premium high-speed internet connection and access to a massive physical library with highly trained library staff. They could have access only to a few aged foreign textbooks and periodicals, a poor internet connection and no subscription access. There could have some combination of internet access and access to literature that is somewhere in between optimal and minimal.

The seeker may possess critical knowledge to a problem, such as hands-on diagnostic techniques in the absence of lab testing, but is unable to communicate with others interested in those techniques. The first application of the printing press toward a scientific journal led to journals being used for precisely this purpose (Willinsky,). The problems that concern the seeker may be abstract, such as pure mathematics, or they may be particular to local conditions and urgent human problems such as the spread of disease. Those urgent problems may however require scientific knowledge together with social knowledge of the people involved in order to find effective solutions. The scientific knowledge required in turn would not have been possible were it not for the development of pure maths over centuries. In full circle, scientific solutions can often fail to solve human problems where the people affected are misunderstood. In this way, each form of knowledge forms a link in a chain from local to global to local and the widest range of dissemination and access possible is the optimal condition for the seeker. Literature is not as the only, and need not be the central source of knowledge for the seeker. Though access to literature is not seen as sufficient for knowledge, where knowledge for development in the contemporary context is concerned, it is seen as necessary to knowledge-based institutions and lack of literature is seen as a basic problem disrupting the core functions of universities. Seen in this way, lack of access across regions of the world presents a significant problem not only for those regions, but for the globe in creating distortions and missing links in the chain of knowledge development.

What is hypothesized is that under the conditions of minimal access to networks and minimal access to literature, k4d indicators will show a disruption in the dynamics of knowledge for development as conceptualized in this research project. This conceptualization in turn will be based on the theoretical discourse around K4D and the knowledge economy in general. This disruption will be an interpretation of the data based on theory. K4D is seen as the outcome variable that can be affected strongly, though not exclusively by network access and access to literature.

7.6 Indicators

Several indicators are proposed relevant to both objectives. Some indicators relate to the dynamics of universities in the knowledge economy and to knowledge-based social, health and human development. These indicators can offer a means of comparison on how these dynamics differ from North to South. Other indicators relate to the institutions involved that predict the dynamics of partnership and the feasibility of the proposed model. They offer a means to profile the patterns of ICT and dissemination/access across the North and South, as well as create profiles of the two institutions according to the theoretical framework. In sum, the theoretical framework creates the possibility of describing the development challenges of Southern universities in a new and unique way, describing them in terms specific to what are considered in the model as the ‘basics of research capacity in the 21st century.’ One can use this model to assess any institution’s ‘basics’. If the model is correct, the effect of establishing the basics should translate into development effects, but these effects ultimately depend on the resourcefulness, decisions, hopes and vision of the particular institution. Some indicators are based on statistics, others are descriptive of structural and functional conditions the country, region or institution faces.

----- note – this list of indicators is not fully revised.

ICT4D
Objective 1 – General Objective 2 – Partnership
- pattern of internet connection types at universities North and South type of internet connection by partner institutions (broadband, dial-up, VSAT etc.)

Pattern of bandwith capability and usage bandwith capability, bandwith used
Number of downloads and e-prints by type of publisher and by country for peer-reviewed on-line articles, pattern of dissemination (estimate from existing data) Same but by institutional partner
Stability and reliability of access measured by access interruption from minimal to poorest connectivity Comparison across the two institutions of access stability and reliability
Bandwith optimisation and management typical of Northern universities Bandwith optimisation and management across the two partners
Money spent on ICT infrastructure at universities in the North and South – value for cost Money spent and value for cost on ICT infrastructure comparison of partners
Rating of connection quality by survey of users
Hardware – computers per campus population, quality and age of equipment
HR capacity for IT management
Quality of physical library, number and quality of books and journals

K4D
Objective 1 General Objective 2 partnership
World Bank K4D indicators – KAM - knowledge assessment methodology by country Apply KAM at institutional level
Estimate of number of peer-reviewed articles worldwide
Countries of origin of top 2% cited literature in the world Citation impact of institutional authors
Level of commercialization of basic research, economic value Level of commercialization of basic research, economic value
Brain drain Brain drain
Knowledge translation Knowledge translation – application of institution’s research in local, national or international development
Pattern of spending on journal subscriptions Spending on journal subscriptions by institution
# of articles published by country in p/r journals # of articles published by institution in p/r journals
# of p/r sci-tech articles published by country # of sci-tech articles published by institution in p/r journals

# of research partnerships
Level of participation in international research networks Level of participation in international research networks
# nature and quality of journals published in

A2k (a2k outcomes depend on the policy/legal framework)

Copyright legislation national
DMCA-type legislation by country (present or not)
Library consortia policy (eIFL)
University policies on authorized use Policies of partner universities on authorized use
Memorandums of Understanding - general Specific MOU of this partnership
Fair Use and Fair Dealing - laws
Government funding policies – mandated OA, voluntary OA
Institutional policies on open access Partner’s policies (repository, self-archiving etc.)
General IPR regimes
Human Rights articles vis a vis intellectual property
Supreme Court decisions copyright/fair use and publisher litigation patterns
International policy – OECD, WSIS, CRIS, WTO, WIPO, a2k movement, BOAI, petitions etc. Experience with literature use students and faculty
Subsidy programs and OA journals Use and navigability of such programs at TICH/GLUK
Level of access – global Global level of access by institution ie. Quantity of literature available through all routes.

7.7 Determinants

Some of the indicators relate to others as determinants, whereas other relate more directly to the levels of each variable in this model. The data search, literature review and expert consultations should provide the relative importance of each indicator as a determinant or as direct evidence of the variable. For example, type of connection is possibly a determinant of quality of network access and money spent on subscriptions is possibly a determinant of number of articles accessible. Number of articles accessible (by all methods) would be suggested as a direct indicator of the a2k variable.

8. Research Design

8.1 Objective 1 – General Model

The first objective aims to situate the university (in the general development context and more specifically with regard to communications and access to knowledge). This will be met through an analysis whether the existing evidence demonstrates the importance of the concepts of ICT’s for development and access to knowledge to development and how they relate, ensuring that opposing viewpoints are discussed. It will also to assess the evidence linking these concepts to the universities role in development in North and South. In describing development, we are focusing particularly on the role of knowledge for development (K4D), the third central concept in the model and this will require a literature search on the recent theoretical development of this construct. The dynamics of partnerships and networks in the contemporary knowledge economy will be of central interest. The support for and any challenges to the general theoretical model will be analysed through analysing existing data, concepts, theories and expert opinion. Specific indicators are used to empirically assess the relative development from North to South of the three concepts, and the relative impact or obstruction to development associated with their development or under-development. Finally, the level of ICT4D and a2k development can be related to traditional human development indicators, both economic and social.

8.2 Objective 2 - Application of the model to actual North-South inter-university partnership.
The second objective of determining the feasibility of the partnership request will be met through consultations with project partners at University of Ottawa and at TICH, consultations with experts in various fields (ICT, librarians, experts at copyright law etc.), analysis of project documents related to ICT4D, analysis of university policies regarding copyright and authorized use, surveys, key informant interviews and focus groups with TICH students and faculty, review of the MOU. The research project will not be able to measure the projected effects of the application of the model as these would extend beyond the period of research. At this point in time, there is no guarantee that the request from Kenya can be met in this partnership agreement. The objective rather is to determine whether the model extrapolated from the request can be validated by stakeholders and if so whether it can serve as a means of articulating the core information needs at the institutional level for universities in the South and whether the solutions proposed by the Kenyan partner are feasible. If the approach is applied, further research on the effect on research capacity could be undertaken, and long-term research could assess downstream impacts.

8. Methods

8.1 Existing data search

Literature review using Google Scholar with keywords ICT4D, K4D, A2K, Open access, development, developing countries, universities, knowledge economy, history, African, library, partnership, network, research, education, knowledge translation, global, local, knowledge. This is a search for the conceptual grounding of the model, and key authors who are theoretical leaders will be identified (such as Joseph Stiglitz in terms of K4D) along with empirical studies of related work where an ICT, A2K or partnership approach is taken. In addition, a wonderful bibliography has already been compiled on articles about open access at http://www.digital-scholarship.org/oab/oab.htm

****** As part of reflexive nature of the study where access and the process of literature search is also a subject of the study, the bibliography will include how each reference was accessed ie. Through open access, repository, library subscriptions, physical article from library etc. The article should be accessed preferentially through digital non-subcription methods, and if the article is accessed through subscription but is available in subsidized programs to developing countries, this information should be included. This will show, as a side case study, what level of access is possible given a connection but no subscriptions, compared to with subscriptions in the literature search of this particular topic. This is for interest, and is included since it is very easy to do.

8.2 Web Search of Reports and Statistics Databases for Indicator Data
Search for reports by UN organizations, NGO’s, governments or other research institutions to gather information on indicators.

8.3 Knowledge Assessment Methodology KAM – World Bank
This web-based tool allows the user to make country profiles and country to country comparisons on several knowledge economy and human capital indicators.

8.4 Expert consultation
The following experts may be consulted in regards the validity of the model or of concepts within it, or for help acquiring data.

Dr. Michael Geist – thesis supervisor and Canada Research Chair in Internet Law.
Consulted on copyright, university policy, open access movement, legalities surrounding library sharing.

Dr. Elizabeth Judge – editor of uOttawa’s OA Law and Technology journal. Consulted on similar issues to Dr. Geist, but also in regards to research output from the South in OA journals.

Leslie Weir – Chief Librarian – University of Ottawa. Consulted on library policy, authorized use, purchasing, contracts and bargaining, library consortia, university repository (planned), librarianship capacity-building, and the particular request and MOU with TICH/GLUK.

Dr. Dan Kasenje – Director of the Tropical Institute for community health.
- partnership with uOttawa, partnerships with other institutions, the ICT4D and digital library sharing requests, information needs at TICH/GLUK, vision of institution, what difference the ICT and research access components would make.

Dr. Moustapha Diack – Director of Merlot African Network and expert on open educational resources for development. Consult on the relationship of access to knowledge and development, South-south networks and African higher education in general.

Dr. Richard Pinet – Director of the Centre of E-learning University of Ottawa and involved in e-learning projects in Nairobi, Kenya.
- ICT’s and education for development, distance learning etc.

Dr. Nancy Edwards – Chair in Women’s Health research uOttawa, lead on research partnership with TICH.

Wendy Muckle RN – Director of the inner City Health project and works with TICH in community based health in Kenya, associated with the new nursing school and the project with uOttawa.

Dr. Gisele Carroll RN – former VP Academic of Health Sciences, uOttawa, currently working part time on special projects with Health Sciences. Involved in Kenya partnership since 2003.

Dr. Michael Clarke – head of ICT4D at IDRC, former professor in Medicine University of Ottawa.

Dr. Stephen Choi – editor of Open Medicine
Leslie Chan – Open Medicine, and OA and development researcher U of T. Consult on development benefits of access to research.

Dr. Gilles Breton – Director of International Office and VP Academic International at University of Ottawa. Administrates and shapes the university vision for internationalization, including parternships and MOU’s with a particular focus on increasing partnerships with developing countries. Expert in Universities, globalization and international development.

Anders Wahl – eMath Africa – knowledge of open access, higher education in Africa, research obstacles and ICT4D, open source etc.

Dr. Amir Attaran, Dr. Ron Labonte, Dr. Peter Tugwell– Canada Research Chairs in Law, Development and Population Health, Globalization and Health, and Health Equity respectively. Advocates for the Public Library of Science, for open access dissemination and availability of research relevant to development. Consult on Knowledge translation benefits of open access, and on North-South partnerships (new IDRC funding formula).

Dr. Hamid Jorjani – Director of International Research and University of Ottawa Networks of Excellence in Science and Technology. Consult on international research networks, commercialization aspects of science and technology etc.

Thierry Karsenti Canada Research Chair in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Education.

David O’Brien – IDRC. Manager of IDRC research chairs initiatives, a new funding formula for North-South research partnerships led by Canada Research Chairs. What are the returns on investment where ICT4D and A2K are present, compared to if they are not? What is the cost comparison between what is required to fund ICT4D and research funding for actual projects?

Susan Veldsman, eIFL content Manager, South Africa
- Library consortia’s role in OA and subsidized programs, bargaining, copyright law, library’s interpretation of ‘fair use’ and ‘fair dealing’, ‘first-sale doctrine’ etc.

BOAI and A2K listservs – these listservs contain worldwide networks of experts in the subjects of concern, and it is common to be able to inquire on a particular subject and get a response from someone with expertise.

8.5 Existing Data Analysis
Once the data on the indicators is gathered, the analysis and interpretations will be based on the model and the theoretical grounding. By this time, the model may have been modified on the basis of consultation and data search.

The general approach to data analysis will a) to verify the meaning and relevance of the indicators, possibility dropping some or adding others b) give relative weight to the indicators based on their relevance to the model and c) Simplify the statistics through creating categories for interpreting the data according to the constructs in the model and d) Interpret the simplified data with regard to the two objectives.

For c), instead of the binary categories of ‘phone’ or ‘no phone’ in the analogy, analysis of countries and institutions by the a2k and ict4d variables will have nominal categories that relate to determinants, or an ordinal range. This will depend on the data search and expert consultations, after which the appropriate level of measurement can be decided upon. For instance, if the presence of a broadband connection at the institution is the considered the only significant determinant for optimal network access, those without that connection could be grouped nominally as ‘broadband’ while others could be grouped as ‘dial-up’. If the access question is more complex than ‘type of connection’, a range could be used from minimal to optimal access. Moreover, the data analysis should reveal the picture of the experience of digital access to literature from place to place, and where use is low to absent, the poverty of that experience can be part of the explanation.

The k4d analysis will require more a structural functional approach, and where questions are raised as regards the validity of theoretical framework, this may indicate the need for more research. For example, one particular question goes to the difference between de facto accessible journals through OA and subsidized programs, and the accessibility of this literature in terms of the user being aware of this, and being able to easily navigate these resources to search and find content. This apparent discrepancy between availability and actual use is being addressed by another concurrent study. If change occurs in a structural element, such as the type of connection or authorized use is granted to journal access, we would see changes in the associated quantitative indicators. Many factors can combine to alter these indicators, and dramatic changes can occur quickly.

Once the theoretical grounding is validated and the data reveals a general picture of North-South differences in the key variables, the same variables are applied to the partnership project. There are three possible outcomes in view of the request from the Kenyan partner. One possible outcome is that the ICT4D and A2K based requests are not addressed and the partnership takes a conventional route. A second possible outcome is that the network access request can be addressed, but library sharing is not feasible. In this case, the level of access to literature would not change. What remains as a possibility is that the partnership can take advantage of the ICT capacity to exploit the OA and subsidized journals. The data search will determine what the level of access under these conditions (no subscriptions, but qualifying for subsidized programs) will be. As this is often unknown to researchers in developing countries, it will be an important demonstration of what is accessible given awareness and learning to navigate these channels of delivery. A third possible outcome is that the requests are filled. Although the effects on K4D dynamics would remain uncertain, what can be determined is whether the new levels of ICT and A2K access have an effect on whether the institutions self-perception of its capacity changes.

Essentially, what is to be measured is as follows.

Conditions Network Access (ICT4D)
Access to literature
(a2k) Knowledge for Development
KAM indicators
And additional data (K4D)
1st Objective – description of the North-South patterns High-income countries Middle- income Low-income Same three categories Same three categories
2nd Objective
Baseline:
Current status of partners uOttawa TICH/GLUK uOttawa TICH/
GLUK uOttawa TICH/
GLUK
1st Condition
Research partnership establishes ICT4D, but no library sharing
2nd Research partnership
Develops ICT4D and a2k component with library sharing
3rd condition
Research partnership does not address ICT4D or a2k components

8.6 Cost-benefit analysis

8.6.1 Cost of network access estimates. Existing data will provide estimated costs of network access and maintenance. An effort will be made to determined funding and subsidy opportunities.
8.6.2 Value of literature. It is not anticipated that an approach to access to literature will involve purchasing. Rather, it involves policy and legal changes that already provide free literature, and agreements such as library-sharing that can provide more. Cost is not the issue, in so much as value gained from agreements or policy changes. The value of literature access will be defined in three ways, cost of production, market value and use value. First, an attempt will be made to give an estimate of a range and average in the publishers’ cost of production per article. Secondly, the range and average cost per article and per journal subscription will be obtained, with different averages for pay per purchase articles and subscriptions. The use value is more difficult to put a dollar figure on. For instance, university students in the United Kingdom may be able to attend university without tuition while Canadian students will pay lower tuition relative to American students. Clearly, the use value of the education would be similar across the three countries, whereas the ‘market value’ as determined by fees would vary greatly. In the case of access, a wide variety of literature is goes unused by a single individual. The loss of access to many journals may not affect that person. However, as a principle, unused articles have a value, because it the access to the widest possible body of literature that is useful at an institutional level, and useful to the individual because scholarship operates on a peer-based network. With some peers losing access, a link in the chain is broken. To determine use value, we have to determine if the access is wide enough to capacitate the institution and whether the resource as a body is useful. How useful is it in comparison to other resources? This question will go to the discussion on the theorized impacts on K4D, though it is not likely a dollar figure will be able to describe this. Still, if for instance the network access and some degree of wide literature access becomes available, one can compare the costs to benefits, with the caveat that the material value of the literature relates to what the North as a whole is willing to pay for this resource.

The cost-benefit analysis is meant to constrain the model within the reality of scarce resources.

8.6 Surveys, Focus groups and Key Informant Interviews

8.6.1 To measure the possible K4D impacts under changed ICT and A2K conditions, a survey of Kenyan students and faculty will be conducted at the start of the partnership, and at the end of the data-gathering phase. If changes have yet to occur, the second survey will serve as internal validity to the first. This will be a survey of the student and faculty perspective of internet, digital and library resources, their satisfaction with both, and whether these two components bear on their perception of their own institution’s capacity to educate, research and influence development in the Great Lakes Region. A similar survey of uOttawa students and faculty as regards their perspective of the use of internet, digital and library resources, satisfaction and relationship to institutional capacity and the effect on development will be conducted. This will be conducted once, as we expect little change in ICT and A2K at University of Ottawa. The surveys may be conducted on-line.

8.6.2 To gather data on experience with literature use, quality of connection, availability of physical learning materials, and capacity for research and education at TICH/GLUK focus groups of undergraduate, graduate and faculty members, as well as key informant interview will be undertaken.

8.7 Quality of Partnership
We want to know whether the core research partnership, which pairs Canadian and Kenyan researchers on specific health research work in Kisumu can be enhanced by ICT4D and A2K. One possibility is that the research itself is the most valued activity, and the ICT and A2K concerns are only valued if there are resources left to address them. A second possibility is that the research partnership is obstructed by the lack of ICT and A2K with the Southern partner. A third possibility is that the research partnership is not obstructed either way, that it achieves its goals but the impact on the institution’s own capacities are limited, and fall below the long-term potential of partnership plus ICT4D and A2K.

The way of measuring this is to determine whether ICT and A2K remain a priority for the Southern institution throughout. We can explain why or why not any action on these requests was taken, and why or why not the other aspects of the research partnership proceeded and whether ICT and A2K issues challenged that work. It may be that initially, the ICT and A2K issues are put aside, but as the obstacles affect the research being done, this provides the push to move forward with them. Some of the data gathered in the existing search may have implications for the requests themselves. For instance, if it is discovered that despite low subscriptions, the subsidized and OA journals combined provide adequate access to literature, and if the legal issues surrounding library sharing are too great to overcome, the Kenyan partner may decide to withdraw this request and favour an approach to making the OA and subsidized journals aware to faculty and students and a way of improving the use of these resources, perhaps through training librarians and creating user-friendly resources.

The information regarding the dynamics of the partnership is available to the author through close association with project partners on both ends who act as key informants.

10. Limitations
This research project hypothesizes that one reason for lower than potential research capacity in the South is the lack of network access and literature. Clearly, the situation of under-development that begets these missed opportunities is very complex and will not disappear overnight. However, knowledge is theorized to be an upstream determinant of development, so that enhancing this determinant by linking local and global knowledge should have a powerful effect on the capacity for the South to lead and determine the outcome, dealing in the present with the circumstances of the past and opportunities for the future.

As a final note, the implications of the request to share digital library access are very interesting in light of the potential if that request is viable. The request raises few technical problems. It does, however, raise significant legal and policy questions in regards to copyright and in regards to the aims and limitations of the open access (OA) movement and the subsidized access programs. This could prove to be too problematic, and may duplicate the cumulative effect of existing initiatives particularly with the growth of OA. Or it may prove other approaches to developing country access to be second-best, and set a precedent for similar library partnerships and the best option.

9. Timetable

1. Spring 2008 (April to May)Update on progress of the uOttawa-TICH/GLUK MOU and partnership project. Meet with uOttawa and Kenya partners in Ottawa to present research proposal. Critical decision whether to continue with objective 2 in regards to this particular partnership. Option of focusing on the general approach instead.
2. Summer 2008 (May to September) Existing data search and Expert consultations to validate constructs and indicators, gather indicator data and refine concepts. Construct first survey and obtain ethics approval by end of September.
3. Fall 2008 (September to December). Implement first survey. Travel to Kenya to do key informant interviews and assess network access and literature access, and collect TICH-specific data. Construct second survey. Data analysis of general model. Expert consultations when necessary.
4. Winter 2009 (December to April). Implement second survey. Data analysis of model applied to the partnership. Expert consultations when necessary.
5. Spring 2009. Write up thesis.
Throughout – meet with project partners from uOttawa and TICH in Ottawa.

Dear peer-reviewer, please excuse the fact that citations are not done properly yet!
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13. Epstein, D., and R. Boden. 2006. Democratising the research imagination: Globalising knowledge about HIV/AIDS. Globalisation, Societies and Education 4, (2): 249-60.
14. Feigenbaum, J., M. J. Freedman, T. Sander, and A. Shostack. Privacy engineering for digital rights management systems.
15. Haas, E. B. 1975. Is there a hole in the whole? knowledge, technology, interdependence, and the construction of international regimes. International Organization 29, (3): 827-76.
16. Haas, P. M. 1997. Knowledge, power, and international policy coordinationUniversity of South Carolina Press.
17. Lorenzo, G. 2002. World bank's global development learning network: Sharing knowledge electronically between nations to" fight poverty". USDLA Journal 16, (5).
18. Lulat, Y. G. M. 1982. Political constraints on educational reform for development: Lessons from an african experience. Comparative Education Review 26, (2): 235-53.
19. Merton, R. K. 1972. Insiders and outsiders: A chapter in the sociology of knowledge. The American Journal of Sociology 78, (1): 9-47.
20. Meyer, S. 2002. HIV/AIDS and education in africa. Background Paper for
21. Moore, J. P. 2007. The invisible cure: Africa, the west, and the fight against AIDS. Journal of Clinical Investigation 117, (11): 3146.
22. Norris, P. 2000. The world-wide digital divide. The John F. Kennedy School of Government. Harvard University.
23. Ochs M, Aronson B, Wu J. 2004. HINARI and AGORA : Revolutionizing Access in the Developing World. Journal for the Serials Community: 17(2).
24. Pieterse, J. N. 2003. GLOBALIZATION AS HYBRIDIZATION. Globalization: Critical Concepts in Sociology.
25. Norris, Pippa. 2001. Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the
Internet Worldwide. Cambridge University Press.
26. Schultz, Theodore W. (1960), ‘Capital formation by education’, The Journal of Political Economy, (68) 6: 571-583.
27. Smith, E (2008). U of T receives $25.6 million in provincial infrastructure funding. Retrieved February 28, 2008, from News@UofT Web site: http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/080131-3600.asp
28. Stiglitz, J. 2000. 2 scan globally, reinvent locally knowledge infrastructure and the localisation of knowledge. Banking on Knowledge: The Genesis of the Global Development Network.
29. Suber, P. 2003. SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION removing barriers to research: An introduction to open access for librarians. College & Research Libraries News 64, (2).
30. UN Web Services Section, Department of Public Information, United Nations. 2008 . UN Millenium Development Goals. Retrieved February 26, 2008, from United Nations Web site: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

31. Willinksy, John. 2006. The Access Principle. MIT, Cambridge Press.

Addendum: More to review on ICT4D within this list, some on research partnerships
Alemneh, D. G., and S. K. Hastings. Ensuring universal access for the global information flow: Responding to the demands of scholarship in the digital age. WORLD 12, (125.2): 812,931,592.
Andonova, L. B., and M. A. Levy. 2003. Franchising global governance: Making sense of the johannesburg type II partnerships. Yearbook of International Co-Operation on Environment and Development 2004, : 19–31.
Asheim, B. T., and A. Isaksen. 2002. Regional innovation systems: The integration of local ‘Sticky’and global ‘Ubiquitous’ knowledge. The Journal of Technology Transfer 27, (1): 77-86.
Ashman, D. 2001. Strengthening north-south partnerships for sustainable development. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 30, (1): 74.
Baggaley, J., and M. N. L. Hoon. 2005. PANdora’s box: Distance learning technologies in asia. Learning, Media and Technology 30, (1): 5-14.
Bannerman, S. Intellectual property issues in ICT4D.
Banting, Keith. 1995. Social Policy Reform in Canada. In Moralez-Gomez. Social Policy in a Global Society. International Development Research Centre/Earthscan On-Line Books. Retrieved December 12th fromhttp://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-27520-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
Cao, C., QZ Feng, Y. Gao, F. Gu, JX Si, YF Sui, W. Tian, HT Wang, LL Wang, and QT Zeng. 2002. Progress in the development of national knowledge infrastructure. Journal of Computer Science and Technology 17, (5): 523-34.
Chan, L., and B. Kirsop. Open archiving opportunities for developing countries: Towards equitable distribution of global knowledge.
Chan, L., B. Kirsop, and S. Arunachalam. 2006. Open access archiving: The fast track to building research capacity in developing countries. Science and Development Network (SciDevNet), atHttp://tspace.Library.Utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/4415/1/Open_Access_Archiving.Pdf, Accessed 1, .
Chanier, Thierry. 2007. Commentary: Open access to research and the individual responsibility of researchers.Language Learning & Technology: A Refereed Journal for Second and Foreign Language Educators 11, (2) (June): 142-8.
Chataway, J., J. Smith, and D. Wield. 2005. Partnerships for building science and technology capacity in africa: Canadian and UK experience. Africa-Canada-UK Exploration: Building Science and Technology Capacity with African Partners 30, .
COHEN, A. 1968. DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA-THE PROBLEMS OF TODAY. African Affairs 67, (266): 44-54.
Colle, R. D. 2005. Building ICT4D capacity in and by african universities.'. International Journal of Education and Development using ICT 1, (1).
Colle, R. D., and R. Roman. 2003. ICT4D: A frontier for higher education in developing nations. African and Asian Studies 2, (4): 381-420.
Cukor, P., L. W. McKnight, and E. R. M. Center. Knowledge networks, the internet, and development.
Davison, R., D. Vogel, R. Harris, and N. Jones. 2000. Technology leapfrogging in developing countries-an inevitable luxury? EJISDC 1, (5): 1-10.
Educational, U. N. Partnerships in development practice: Evidence from multi-stakeholder ICT4D partnership practice in africa.
Farrell, G. ICT in education in rwanda.
———. ICT in education in uganda.
Hafner, Katie and Lyon, Matthew. 1996. Where Wizards Stay Up Late. Touchstone
Kirsop, B., and L. Chan. 2005. Transforming access to research literature for developing countries.
Lorenzo, G. 2002. World bank's global development learning network: Sharing knowledge electronically between nations to" fight poverty". USDLA Journal 16, (5).
Lulat, Y., and R. Clarke. 1982. Political constraints on educational reform for development: Lessons from an african experience. Comparative Education Review 26, (2): 235-53.
Mac-Ikemenjima, D. 2005. e-education in nigeria: Challenges and prospects. Paper Presentation at the 8th UN ICT Task Force Meeting April: 13-5.
Marshall, S., and W. Taylor. Collaboration in using ICT for education & development.
Maselli, D., JA Lys, and J. Schmid. 2004. Improving impacts of research partnerships. Swiss Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries, KFPE.GEOGRAPHICA BERNENSIA, Berne 86, .
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———. 2004. Possible impacts of NGO-divide on ICT4D agenda. Retrieved Nov 29, : 2005.
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Schwartz, G. Community as an icon.
Seifert, M., M. Egert, F. Heerbaart, K. Kolossa, M. Limanski, and M. Mumin. Fostering ICT use in teacher education in africa.
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Stiglitz, J. 2000. 2 scan globally, reinvent locally knowledge infrastructure and the localisation of knowledge.Banking on Knowledge: The Genesis of the Global Development Network.
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On open access from www.digital-scholarship.org/oab - Open Access Bibliography
1 GENERAL WORKS
1.1 Overviews
1.2 Analysis and Critiques
1.3 Debates and Dialogs
1.3.1 Nature Web Debate on Future E-Access to the Primary Literature
1.3.2 Nature Web Focus on Access to the Literature: The Debate Continues
1.3.3 Other
1.4 Research Studies
1.5 Other
2 OPEN ACCESS STATEMENTS
2.1 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
2.2 Bethesda Statement on Open Access
2.3 Budapest Open Access Initiative
2.4 NEAR
2.5 OECD Final Communique
2.6 Tempe Principles
2.7 Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science
2.8 Wellcome Trust Position Statement and Research Reports
2.9 World Summit on the Information Society Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action
2.10 Other
3 Copyright Arrangements for Self-Archiving and Use
3.1 General Works
3.2 Copyright Ownership and Rights
3.3 Creative Commons
3.4 Permissions Crisis
3.5 Research Studies
4 OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS
4.1 General Works
4.2 Economic Issues
4.2.1 General Works
4.2.2 BMJ Rapid Responses about "Author Pays" May Be the New Science Publishing Model
4.3 Open Access Journal Change Agents
4.3.1 SPARC
4.4 Open Access Journal Publishers and Distributors
4.4.1 BioMed Central
4.4.2 Public Library of Science
4.4.3 PubMed Central
4.4.3.1 General Works
4.4.3.2 Science Magazine dEbate on "Building a GenBank of the Published Literature"
4.4.3.3 Science Magazine dEbate on "Is a Government Archive the Best Option?"
4.4.3.4 Science Magazine dEbate on "Just a Minute, Please"
4.4.3.5 Other
4.5 Specific Open Access Journals
4.5.1 Journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals
4.5.2 Pioneering Free E-Journals Not in the DOAJ
4.5.3 Other
4.6 Research Studies
5 E-PRINTS
5.1 General Works
5.2 History
5.3 Research Studies
6 DISCIPLINARY ARCHIVES
6.1 General Works
6.2 Specific Archives and Projects
6.2.1 arXiv
6.2.2 NASA Astrophysics Data System
6.2.3 RePEc
6.2.4 Other
7 INSTITUTIONAL ARCHIVES AND REPOSITORIES
7.1 General Works
7.2 E-Print Archives
7.2.1 General Works
7.2.2 Specific Archives and Projects
7.2.2.1 ePrints-UK
7.2.2.2 SHERPA
7.2.2.3 Other
7.3 Repositories with Diverse Materials
7.3.1 General Works
7.3.2 Specific Repositories and Projects
7.3.2.1 DAEDALUS
7.3.2.2 DSpace
7.3.2.3 eScholarship
7.3.2.4 Fedora
7.3.2.5 OSU Knowledge Bank
7.3.2.6 Other
7.4 Electronic Theses and Dissertations
8 OPEN ARCHIVES INITIATIVE AND OAI-PMH
8.1 General Works
8.2 Specific Data or Service Providers and Projects
8.2.1 AmericanSouth.org
8.2.2 Arc
8.2.3 Kepler
8.2.4 OAIster
8.2.5 OpCit
8.2.6 Open Archives Forum
8.2.7 Open Archives Initiative Metadata Harvesting Project
8.2.8 Other
8.3 Research Studies
9 CONVENTIONAL PUBLISHER PERSPECTIVES
10 GOVERNMENT INQUIRES AND LEGISLATION
10.1 European Commission Study
10.2 Sabo Bill
10.3 U.K. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry
10.4 U.S. House Appropriations Committee Recommendations
10.5 Other
11 OPEN ACCESS ARRANGEMENTS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
11.1 General Works
11.2 Free or Reduced Cost Access
11.2.1 AGORA
11.2.2 HINARI
11.2.3 Other
11.3 SciELO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
And there is more to search on research partnerships and KT/K4D