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Virtual laboratories, based on the extensive use of electronic communications, could be a valuable device for combating the brain drain from the South, according to three researchers at Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy.

But Enrique Canessa, Fulvio Postogna and Sandro Radicella add that developing countries have a long way to go before they can fully exploit the Internet's potential.

An analysis of articles published on the Los Alamos e-preprint archives in condensed-matter physics and high-energy physics (theory), revealed 88 and 50 e-preprints respectively from groups of authors working in different countries. In each archive, however, only one e-preprint has resulted from a collaboration between developing country institutions alone.

“It seems unlikely that virtual laboratories will be widely adopted by developing country scientists in the near future,” say the authors. One reason is a lack of adequate computing literacy in the academic communities of countries new to the Internet. Other important factors are human diversity and age differences.

“Participation in interactive sessions from the South should make it easier to do science, not become another barrier to surpass,” say the authors. They hope to see the administration of ‘virtual laboratories’ simplified “so they can be run by scientists for scientists in their own countries”.

But they note that the limited bandwidth of the few available telecommunication lines in developing countries causes congestion and often makes access too slow to use.

They recommend that Internet access grants or subsidies should be made available to scientists from less-privileged countries. “The ‘virtual lab’ approach could become a worthwhile service that helps to reduce scientific isolation while filling the need to transfer knowledge to the South in an unprecedented way,” they conclude.

Full text: http://helix.nature.com/wcs/c12.html