Expanding the outreach of PLoS content in the developing world

Liz Allen writes today:

One snowy weekend in January 2008, I was lucky enough to attend the Science Blogging Conference (co-organized by Bora Zivkovic our Online Discussion Expert) in NC where I networked with the great and the good of the scientific communication world. PLoS distributed free T-shirts at the event and, not surprisingly, I was warmly greeted wherever I went.

In one session, I listened to a young health care worker based in a remote location expressing her frustration about how difficult it was for her to access any content because of her unreliable internet connection and I thought about how, even for those with a computer (which is not a given for many), web content can be a hard to reach luxury. During the ensuing discussion, some well-informed folks (Bill Hooker From Open Reading Frame, Kevin Zelnio of The Other 95% and others) asked me if PLoS "could do more to get its content into the developing world"?

Read the rest to see what PLoS is doing about it....

Oh, and it is heart-warming for me to see that our conferences are having an impact, not just being fun. Just to note that the session Liz mentioned was led by Vedran Vucic and the young health care worker she mentions is Rose Reis.