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4. INFORMATION DISSEMINATION:
The growing access to computers and electronic communications worldwide makes it nowadays possible to offer and acquire automated, updated information almost in every field or activity. Specifically, the practice of scientists to consult electronic data banks as an aid for their research, and to produce and consult scientific bibliography in machine readable form, is extending considerably not only in industrialized countries, but in many developing countries as well. In particular, in all African countries - although to varying degrees within the countries and also from one country to another - many academics already use computer facilities for their daily work and scientific interchange.
The rapidly developing of information and communications technologies provide thus a useful and powerful tool for the construction a comprehensive information system that includes in principle the whole of the regular, periodic or serial scientific produced in the region, such a system can be used in principle also to catalogue and classify these publications according to previously defined quality criteria, and it can serve also as a basis to provide both editors and scientists with an efficient channel for the rapid production, dissemination and retrieval of research material [Cetto, 1997, p. 243].
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