Science Dissemination Unit

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ICTP Science Dissemination Unit

The use of the Internet as a channel for the dissemination of science is paramount. Immediate access to information is now a cornerstone of scientific and technological progress. Without such access, a nation's scientific community is likely to fall even further behind and risk losing its best scientists due to the brain-drain phenomenon that has been a major negative force in science and technology throughout the South for many decades.

The SDU is a concrete example of helping to bridge the digital and knowledge divide in developing countries and across the north-south divide, in terms of applying low-cost open source information and communication (ICT) technologies.

The SDU addresses these main issues of great concern in the scientific community:

The dissemination of scientific data and information. This is necessary for the advancement of research and education in order to provide contents that contribute to the benefit and well-being of society and to promote international scientific and technological activities.
The scientific, technical, social and ethical issues related to the development, implementation and management of ICT specially in developing countries.
Integration of all new and old on-line services to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and exchange of scientific information via the use of today's ICT.
The networking and e-publishing for development, including Copyright issues, e-Libraries and the digital contents.

The SDU also addresses skill shortfalls of staff in universities, research centres, scientific academies and ministries of science and technology throughout the developing world by providing free access to scientific literature and advanced training in ICT, both on-site and in Trieste.

The Science Dissemination Unit of the ICTP is located on the ground floor of the Galileo Guest House.

The postal address is:

ICTP - Science Dissemination Unit
Galileo Building
via Beirut, 7
I-34151 Trieste (Italy)

For any further information, please contact:

Phone: (+39) 040 2240 406
Fax: (+39) 040 2240 633
E-mail: sdu@ictp.it

The Science Dissemination Unit of ICTP is currently active in the following projects:

ICTP Diploma Course On-Line: Science on the Internet

From September 2007, all lectures given within the ICTP Diploma Programme are being automatically recorded using the new EyA technology developed by the ICTP Science Dissemination Unit.

Access to this digital material is made available to the public at the website: www.ictp.tv

This project aims to enhance ICTP's mandate of transferring knowledge to scientists from developing countries. It is our hope that these public recordings will be useful for students as well as lecturers beginning their teaching careers in science.

eJDS - electronic-Journals Delivery Service

The eJDS Programme is geared to facilitate the access to current scientific literature free of cost in the fields of Physics and Mathematics. The goal is to distribute individual scientific articles via e-mail to scientists in institutions in developing countries who do not have access to sufficient bandwidth to download material from the Internet in a timely manner and/or cannot afford the connection. Providing scientists with current literature supports their ongoing research.

The eJDS project is powered by www4mail, an open source application developed at ICTP in 1998 to deliver Web contents via e-mail.

PingER Initiative

Following one of the Recommendations of Trieste to help bridge the Digital Divide (issued publically at the eJDS 2002 Open Round Table), resources are devoted to monitor in real time the connectivity of research and educational institutions in developing countries.

The PingER project at SLAC, is collaborating with the ICTP eJDS project to develop this monitoring aimed at better understanding and quantifying the digital divide. PingER measurements of connectivity in Africa are carried out from ICTP in Trieste

Observatory on Technologies and Open Source for Science (OS4S)

ICTP has a world-wide reputation for its significant contributions to the internationalization of science since 1964, and today its mandate has become even more relevant. It aims to foster the growth of advanced studies and research in the developing countries. ICTP has the resources to provide the needed capacity building to create a critical mass of skilled people on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by training on Informatics, Networking, Web enabling Technologies and the adaptation of low-cost open source technologies to local needs.

Much of the future for the gateway to science and development relies on the access that scientific institutions and universities have to the Internet.

Training

SDU attempts to answer to academic and scientific institutions in developing countries requesting for help i) to publish and disseminate their scientific works in the Internet; ii) to retrieve scientific material from the Internet (for research, e-Learning and teaching); iii) to create scientific e-contents with open source technologies; iv) to plan and manage the creation of reliable networks and the training of technical personnel (for individual research and academic institutions, faculties, departments); v) to address managerial issues of ICT for science development in academic and research institutions at national level; vi) to organize seminars and meetings to promote any valuable action devoted to reduce the digital and knowledge divide in the scientific environment.

Innovation towards ICT to support scientific enterprise encounters the big problem of insufficient training of the workforce. The poor connection to international lines in some cases cannot be considered as an obstacle for this modernization, since intra-networks can be adopted with relatively easy deployment and the use of reasonable low-cost devices as an exercise. In particular, open source Linux O.S. is being adopted as a valid alternative becoming more competitive in the sphere of scientific competition world-wide. With these needs in mind, SDU organizes on-site training on ICT for scientists.