The Asian Development Bank joins the ranks of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which have embraced the open access principle and made all economic and development data and research available for public use.
The move, considered a “paradigm shift in the way ADB shares its knowledge” according to a bank official, is expected to spur more innovation, transparency and crowdsourced knowledge and solutions for Asia-Pacific’s rapidly growing and changing development landscape.
“Open access is based on the principle that publicly funded research should be circulated as widely as possible so that the knowledge can be built upon, which may lead to new and innovative ideas for development in Asia and the Pacific,” Matthew Howells, the Manila-based financial institution’s head of publishing, told Devex.