Together with other countries of the region, El Salvador participates in open access regional subject repositories, today with a growing number of records with open access full-texts, examples: health (BVS), agriculture (SIDALC), education (Relpe and CEDUCAR), public management and policies (CLAD-SIARE), social sciences (CLACSO and FLACSO), work (LABORDOC), information science (E-Lis), among others.

As of June 2015, ROAD registers 3 OA digital repositories, with theses and other publications, mainly from universities. The directory also indexes 1 recently launched (2013) OA journal.  The Consortium of El Salvador University Libraries (Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de El Salvador-CBUES) has developed a collaborative Digital Repository of Science and Culture from El Salvador (Repositorio Digital de Ciencia y Cultura de El Salvador-REDICCES) with the participation of 12 digital repositories. It allows open access to the doctoral theses of participating universities as well as heritage collections. REDICCES is a member of La Referencia, the Latin American network of national systems of digital repositories, with 9 countries as initial members: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.

The association of private universities from El Salvador (Asociación de Universidades Privadas de El Salvador -AUPRIDES), in its AUPRIDES Virtual Library provides open access to full-text publications from its member institutions.

No mandates from El Salvador are registered in ROARMAP.

The Advanced Network of Research, Science and Education from El Salvador (Red Avanzada de Investigación, Ciencia y Educación Salvadoreña / RAICES) is a member of RedCLARA that supports COLABORA, Red Federada Repositorios and other regional initiatives that promote the creation and cooperation among institutional repositories.

El Salvador, represented by the Technological University, is now a member of Latindex. A recent study (Open Access Indicators and Scholarly Communications in Latin America) shows that, as of 2014, 0.37% (20) OA journals indexed in Latindex are published in El Salvador. 

Enlace Académico Centroamericano (Central America Academic Link) is an initiative from FLACSO´s Executive Secretariat in Costa Rica, with support from the Ford Foundation, and participation from Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panamá. This initiative provides social sciences open access publications, news, resources, events and selected links.

In 2013, the Consortium of El Salvador University Libraries (Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de El Salvador-CBUES) has organized the first Open Access Week event in El Salvador.  During the week of October 21-25^th 2013, a series of activities aimed at promoting open access were organized within member institutions of CBUES and other organizations, See a summary of the activities

Enabling Environment:

In El Salvador, the Open Access strategy is supported by:

• The central government, through its CIO office (ITIGES  Innovación Tecnológica e Informática del Gobierno de El Salvador)
• The Ministry of Education, through the Vice minister for Science and Technology
• Governmental executive bodies under the LAIP
• CBUES (Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de El Salvador www.cbues.org.sv), a consortium of the National Library  and 9 university libraries
• RAICES (www.raices.org.sv)

Major Projects/Initiatives:

El Salvador is implementing several OA initiatives:

• Public Information Access Act implementation
• Open Governmental Data (DGA – Datos Gubernamentales Abiertos)
• CBUES, a private not for profit organization, which is following the green path (according to Budapest declaration) to OA
• Repositorio Digital de la Ciencia y Cultura de El Salvador REDICCES (http://www.redicces.org.sv)
• CBUES have prepared forms to release authoring rights to be signed by authors of graduate and post-graduate thesis

National and Institutional Level Policies/Mandates:

A recent national law (Ley de Acceso a la Información Pública LAIP – Public Information Access Act) has just been approved by the Congress and this is a special framework for the government.

Past and Future OA Related Activities:

Several activities related to the Open Access strategy have been so far implemented:

• Public Information Access Act implementation and affiliated actions.
• Open Governmental Data (DGA – Datos Gubernamentales Abiertos)
• CBUES, a private not-for-profit organization, which is following the green route (according to Budapest declaration) to OA.
• Repositorio Digital de la Ciencia y Cultura de El Salvador REDICCES (http://www.redicces.org.sv)
• CBUES has prepared forms to release authoring rights to be signed by authors of graduate and post-graduate thesis.

Open Knowledge El Salvador (OKFN) came into the global community in May 2014. In line with the OKFestival (in Berlin) and the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Governance Forum (in San Salvador), Open Knowledge El Salvador, Creative Commons El Salvador and Association of Librarians of El Salvador celebrated the first Open Knowledge Meeting in El Salvador). The event focused on Open Knowledge, Open Data, Creative Commons Licenses, Open Education and the Declaration for Open Knowledge in El Salvador. At the 7th Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), OKFN local ambassador Iris Palma, joined the panel focusing on Open Data and Open Access together with Caroline Burle from W3C (Brazil) and Pilar Saenz from Fundacion Karisma (Colombia).

27 May, 2014: INSERT launched El Salvador's first Open Data Portal www.datoselsalvador.org.

In 2015, El Salvador became a new affiliate of the Creative Commons (CC)family. The CC team of El Salvador signed their MoU and is now officially in. In El Salvador the affiliate institution is AccesArte, a NGO that seeks to promote the role of culture in the process of human development. The team is supported also by other NGOs related to culture, technology and education and by several individuals from cultural and technological background, lawyers, librarians and many others that share their interest in the access to knowledge and free culture ideas. The new public leaders are Claudia Cristiani -she works preserving cultural heritage and is the Director at AccesArte- and Evelyn Del Pinal, long time free culture advocate and one of the people responsible for Wiki Loves Monuments in El Salvador.

5-8 March 2013: 30 experts and Policy specialists from 25 countries including Belize; Virgin Islands; St Vincent and Grenadines; St Kitts and Nevis and St Martin; Argentina; Brazil; Chile; Costa Rica; Dominican Republic; El Salvador; Guatemala; Uruguay and Mexico gathered in Kingston to develop strategies and a road map to implement open access policies in the Latin American and Caribbean Region. This was the first regional consultation on open access to scientific information and research organized by the UNESCO Kingston Cluster office in collaboration with Ministry of Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, Ministry of Information, Government of Jamaica, University of West Indies and UNESCO National Commission for Jamaica. Workshop participants had the opportunity to contribute towards highlighting priority areas for intervention to achieve “Openness” in the region and individual countries. Participants reviewed the UNESCO OA policy templates and worked out specific policies for their own country/institution.

Potential barriers:

Despite all the positive efforts undertaken, there are still important factors interfering with the complete implementation of the Open Access Policy in El Salvador, such as.

• The lack of financial and technical resources.
• Slow political support for the full implementation of LAIP.
• Education process still requires additional support.
•  Lack of adequate incentive for scientific publications.

Publications:

2014: "Open Access Indicators and Scholarly Communications in Latin America" is the result of a joint research and development project supported by UNESCO and undertaken by UNESCO in partnership with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP); the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO); the Network of Scientific Journals of Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal (RedALyC); Africa Journals Online (AJOL); the Latin America Social Sciences School- Brazil (FLACSO- Brazil); and the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO).