"Having the materials from El Colegio de México in a platform like CLACSO is very important."

Within the framework of the International Forum “Socio-environmental conflicts and human mobility. Challenges from policies and activism in Mexico City”, Silvia Elena Giorguli Saucedo, President of El Colegio de México, spoke with CLACSO.tv.

Giorguli Saucedo referred to the launch of the CLACSO-COLMEX Open Access Library and stated: “If you consider that the College's first publishing production was in 1938, suddenly finding that there is a demand for downloading and accessing titles that we are no longer going to print, because they are classics from the '60s or '70s, having them in a repository like CLACSO, which allows managing information from the region, is very important.”

Furthermore, he pointed out that “there has always been this idea that those of us who do science are somewhat isolated from society. It's seen as an ivory tower (...). And I think that part of what we are observing with fake news, with this dissemination of unsubstantiated knowledge, challenges us to consider how we have communicated what we do as a scientific community, but also to the outside world, more broadly. So, I think we need to conduct a thorough review of how we communicate and make available what we are doing, not only to universities, but more broadly to the general public. And I believe that the commitment to open science is a very important component that will have to be complemented by other strategies, such as finding more effective ways to disseminate, to reach, and to be heard on a very wide scale.”

“This is another element: in a region as unequal as Latin America, when you have this context of imbalance, for example, in access to books, in many of our countries it is impressive, having the materials through these means, I hope it makes a difference both in education, and in reaching a more general audience,” he added.

Interviewed by Gustavo Lema.

CLACSO-COLMEX Open Access Library