Introduction

Open access awareness is slowly spreading in this democratic country though only recently. Awareness of and use of Free/Open Source Software is being considered; for instance the  digital library project of the Department of Information Technology and Telecom in collaboration with the University of Virginia. Preservation and promotion of tradition and cultural values is mandated by the Bhutan Information and Policy Strategy, which asserted that “Bhutan will use ICT to preserve and promote its cultural heritage and boost the creation of local content to develop an invaluable record of Bhutanese culture for Bhutanese students and researchers. It aims to bring all stakeholders together to develop one digital library encompassing bibliographies, folktales, digital reprints of religious and ritual texts, journals, and audio and video collections. It will create online cataloguing records, transcripts, and analysis of audio-video collections of all Bhutanese cultural contents and other artifacts.”

As of March 2021, there are currently no OA journals indexed in DOAJ. There are currently no OA policies registered in ROARMAP. But there are 2 OA Journals which are indexed in ROAD.

Enabling Environment

The Ministry of Education has been making efforts through the Tertiary Education Policy, which envisages a brighter research base and higher educational facilities for the Bhutan nation. Bhutan is increasingly registering young and eager IT professionals across sectors including ICT deployment.

Potential Barriers

Lack of essential resources, public awareness and institutional infrastructure are the barriers for the emerging open access concept. Language skills, especially English language for technical communication, are lacking. Need to create content in the national language Dzongkha is essential.

Publications

• Trimarsanto, H., E. D. Benavente, R. Noviyanti, R. A. S. Utami, L. Trianty, Z. Pava, S. Getachew, J. Y. Kim, Y. K. Goo, S. Wangchuck, Y. Liu, Q. Gao, S. Dowd, Q. Cheng, T. G. Clark, R. N. Price, and S. Auburn. 2017. “VivaxGEN: An Open Access Platform for Comparative Analysis of Short Tandem Repeat Genotyping Data in Plasmodium Vivax Populations.” PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 11(3). doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0005465.