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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
