Library Guides: Open Access Initiatives from/about Latin America: Initiatives from Latin America

Initiatives and Projects

Latin America has been at the forefront of the open access movement since the late 1990s, with initiatives ranging from national platforms like AURA to Ibero-American systems such as SciELO and Redalyc. Here you find a list and description of pioneering initiatives and projects.

SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online)
Launched in 1998, SciELO is one of the pioneering open-access initiatives from Latin America. It provides open access to scholarly journals of the SciELO Network of national collections from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Spain, West Indies, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Uruguay, and also South Africa. It also contains Thematic Areas such as SciELO Public Health and Biodiversity. It is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Redalyc
One of the most important open-access initiatives emerged from Latin America, Redalyc provides full-text open access to peer-reviewed scholarly journals from Ibero-America. It focuses on journals that don’t charge authors or readers.
CLACSO Digital Repository
The Digital Repository of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) is a key resource for social sciences and humanities research concerning Latin America and the Caribbean. The CLACSO Digital Repository serves as a platform to disseminate the research output of CLACSO’s extensive network of more than 800 research and postgraduate centers, providing open and unrestricted access to books, journals, and more. CLACSO has been for years a strong promoter of open-access initiatives.
LA Referencia
The Latin American Network for Open Science, LA Referencia, provides open access to scholarly knowledge produced in Latin America and Spain. It is focused on scientific articles and doctoral and master’s theses from more than a hundred universities and research institutions from 10 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and Spain. It is available in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
AmeliCA
AmeliCA is a communication infrastructure for scholarly publishing and open science. The Portal provides access to journals and books. Available in English and Spanish.
AmeliCA Centroamérica
Digital Collection of 57 scholarly journals from Central America. Available in Spanish only.
Uruguayan Association of Scholarly Journals (AURA)
AURA is the Uruguayan Association of Scholarly Journals, an organization focused on improving the quality and visibility of Uruguayan scholarly journals by enhancing their online access. Access is available to journals in many scientific fields: Social Sciences, Humanities, Public Health, and more. Available in Spanish only.
Latindex (Sistema Regional de Información en Línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal)
Latindex is a regional online information system for scholarly journals published in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal. Note: Latindex is primarily a directory and catalogue of scholarly journals. It provides information about journals, rather than the full text.