Reading publications on aquaculture and fisheries technologies may not be a problem even during the pandemic. If people have access to the Internet, they can still find their next read on the subject matter as one digital library made thousands of publications on the topic for readers all over the world.
The Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center Aquaculture Department (Seafdec/AQD), an international research center located in Tigbauan town in Iloilo province, has given the public unrestricted access to over 1,800 publications, including full-text digitized books, extension manuals, conference proceedings, annual reports, and other materials authored by the organization’s scientists and researchers, Seafdec/AQD said in a news release.
Stephen Alayon, head of the Library and Databanking Services Section that painstakingly digitized and indexed the publications, said this is part of the institution’s initiative to make quality scientific information readily available.
“We believe that information generated from publicly-funded researches should go back to the public, and the public’s right to this information must be upheld,” Alayon said in an interview.
The publications are available online through the Seafdec/AQD Institutional Repository (SAIR), which can be accessed at https://repository.seafdec.org.ph.
Before this initiative, users must send a request to access a title in the library’s collection, but with SAIR’s open-access model, they can immediately download a PDF copy of the digitized publication they wish to read. Actually, a user may already be unknowingly accessing the PDF files through search engine results.
Open access is an international movement to make publications and other data free of financial, legal, or technical barriers to public access.
Since SAIR’s establishment in 2011 until May 2021, hosted documents have already been downloaded 4.2 million times by users from all over the world.
Knowledge haven during the pandemic
The need for openly accessible digital publications was highlighted by the shift to online learning and alternative working arrangements brought about by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
“Searches performed on the site in 2020 jumped over 147 percent to 224,524 compared to 91,057 in 2019, while unique visitors jumped 903 percent to 773,777 from just 77,147,” said Dr. Edgar Amar, Seafdec/AQD Training and Information Division head.
He added that students and members of the academe make up a large part of SAIR’s user base, along with researchers, fish farmers and employees from both government and private sectors.
“We made even more of our aquaculture manuals readily available during this pandemic to help fisheries schools, and to empower our fish farmers with the science-based procedures detailed by our scientists and researchers in these books,” remarked Dan Baliao, chief of Seafdec/AQD.
Baliao said that because face-to-face training sessions and farm visits were very limited, making the publications available over the Internet was “the least that Seafdec/AQD could do.”
Seafdec/AQD and its member countries pour substantial effort, time, and funds to produce these manuals and books that are painstakingly written by our scientists and researchers.
“It only makes sense that we maximize their use by making sure they reach as many extension workers and farmers possIble,” said Rex Delsar Dianala, officer-in-charge of Seafdec/AQD’s Development Communication section.
“What we really want to happen is for as many people as possible to benefit from our research here at Seafdec/AQD. If the whole world has unimpeded access to our research-based books and manuals, we will have done most of our part,” Dianala further underscored.