International development agencies and organizations are loudly acknowledging the tremendous contributions open access to data might have for development- both on economic and social fronts. The policy statementreleased by the Canadian International Development Research Center (IDRC) is a testament to this. Moreover, the views from the recently concludedconference on open data, argued Stephen Dale, underscored the same reality.

Open access might transform the lives of millions in developing countries in many ways. It has an incredible potential for knowledge dissemination, innovation acceleration and improving the lives of many, wrote Naser Faruqui of IDRC. Furthermore, he argued that development agencies, realizing far reaching effects of open access, are promoting open development models, which based on an open access to information and data, ‘to unleash economic value, address democratic shortfalls, improve learning, and advance science.’

The IDRC is not the only organization that recognizes the benefits open access provides in the areas of innovation and sustainable development. According to Stephen Dale the participants of the recently concluded open access conference, including Canadian government and the World Bank representatives, extensively explored the impact open access has on education, elections, agriculture, health services, and the environment. Moreover, they esteemed the concrete results open access demonstrated and above all its immense potential in enhancing efficiency and opportunity for all.

Economic benefits that both developing and developed countries might harvest from open access are huge. The IDRC President Jean Lebel indicated that open data could generate more than $3 trillion additional economic values a year. This is a huge economic benefit that individual countries’ policy makers and open access advocates should not ignore.

Furthermore, for institutions in the developing nations open access provides diverse opportunities. Some of these benefits are cost saving, visibility and knowledge democratization. For many institutions in the developing world cost related challenges are in the heart of all the problems. This is principally true for resource stretched universities and research institutions which normally rely on a limited number of journals due to the high cost of subscription. Open access, effectively liberates those institutions from absurdly high subscription fees. The resources saved as a result of access to freely available scientific outputs can be used to develop or expand core educational and research infrastructures.