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PROPOSED ISPRS PARTICIPATION IN AN 
INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATION RECYCLING PROGRAMME 
Ann Stewart 
Editor, ITC Journal 
International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences'(ITC) 
PO Box 6 
7500 AA Enschede, The Netherlands 
ISPRS Commission VI 
ABSTRACT 
One of the most pressing and persistent problems for scientists in the 
developing countries is the shortage of appropriate literature. This 
is also true of remote sensing literature, for which book purchases or 
subscription costs may exceed the per capita GNP. Restrictions on 
foreign exchange further limit the funds available to libraries for 
acquisition of books and periodicals. Several schemes have been de 
vised to supplement library holdings by donations of books and period 
icals through professional organizations such as the Association of 
Geoscientists for International Development (AGID) and the Third World 
Academy of Science. The author proposes that ISPRS's participation in 
one of these or a similar undertaking is urgently needed if Third 
World scientists are to participate fully in the scientific advances 
and applications of remote sensing. 
Most of you have, at one time or another, served as referees for one 
of the remote sensing journals. Some of the papers were probably 
submitted by authors from developing countries. Most of their papers 
were rejected, not because the work wasn't well done, but because it 
had already been done 10 years before, and a great many papers had 
been published in the meantime describing better ways to do it or 
explaining why it wasn't valid, etc. It may have been simple enough 
for you, as a referee, to reject the papers, but for the authors, and 
the journal editors who had to write the rejection letters, it was a 
very painful process. 
When I first came to ITC nine and one-half years ago, I learned that 
many of our readers--specifically the alumni who receive the journal 
free of charge as part of what ITC considers its commitment to their 
continuing education--have access to very few other publications. 
Because of very stringent exchange controls and limited hard currency, 
they are simply unable to pay for subscriptions--even for their li 
braries—to expensive professional journals. The cost of a one-year 
subscription to the British "International Journal of Remote Sensing", 
for example, exceeds the per capital GNP of a number of countries. I 
very quickly instituted the "journal abstracts" section in the ITC 
Journal in which we reprint the abstracts of the leading journals in