[Irtalk] Fwd: [EIFL-OA] Fourth CODESRIA Conference on Electronic Publishing: The Open Access Movement and the Future of Africa’s Knowledge Economy

[Hilton Gibson]

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From: "Iryna Kuchma" <iryna.kuchma at eifl.net>
Date: 4 Nov 2015 22:27
Subject: [EIFL-OA] Fourth CODESRIA Conference on Electronic Publishing: The
Open Access Movement and the Future of Africa’s Knowledge Economy
To: <hilton.gibson at gmail.com>
Cc: "EIFL - Open Access program announcement and discussion list" <
eifloa at lists.eifl.net>

[Forwarded message from Williams Nwagwu, Nigeria via HIFA2015 - Healthcare
Information For All]

Fourth CODESRIA Conference on Electronic Publishing
Theme: The Open Access Movement and the Future of Africa’s Knowledge Economy
Dakar, Senegal March 28-30 2016

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa
(CODESRIA) hereby announces the fourth in its electronic publishing
conference series. This year’s theme focuses on the open access publishing
model with particular attention to its possible impact on the future
knowledge economy in Africa. CODESRIA promotes social science research and
knowledge production and the publication and dissemination of research
outcomes, and organises forums for discussing research findings and sharing
of ideas to influence the improvement of the living conditions of African
populations.
The Open Access Movement is a timely initiative to transform global
relations and means of knowledge production, dissemination and use based on
the power of information technologies to enforce free and timeous flow of
scholarly content. Using digital media to circulate scholarly information
creates direct linkages between scholars/authors and the public,
facilitating a free flow of ideas and information vital to the process of
scientific inquiry, and the ability of individuals and communities and
institutions to address economic, environmental and social development
issues, both regionally and globally.

Alongside this consciousness, however, the alarming serial crisis, namely
historically royalty -free, freely peer-reviewed and publicly-funded
scholarly publications were no more accessible to the public on the ground
of soaring cost. The biggest and richest universities in the world were
closing their branch libraries and had cut their subscriptions because the
prices of journals were rising above inflation rates. The publisher which
entered the academic publishing realm primarily to relieve scholars of the
tedion of packaging and circulating research findings and whose role in
this regard has been monumental, had gone rentier, mounting incredible pay
walls on scholarly journals and possessing research reports they receive
from researchers gratis. In an effort to cut costs and consolidate
services, many research universities have closed small special branch
libraries. The situation is worse in Africa, where the libraries have
become stocks of back number information resources.

The Open Access Movement is now more than a decade old, posting several
milestones in the face of surreptitious conflicts and oppositions.  A major
milestone of the movement is that people around the world now have
increased access to scholarly publications. In addition to this, there is
observed increasing empowerment, and radical socialization and
democratization of knowledge from below as opposed to the prevailing
statist nationalization and concentration of knowledge production in the
developed North. Individuals, enterprises, and institutions currently
participate in the production of knowledge thus promoting social equality
in human knowledge production and management enterprises to all.

Africa has benefitted from, and has also contributed to the movement. Based
on the listing of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the oldest
closed access journal to migrate to the open access platform is Egypt’s
Psyche (A Journal of Entomology) which debuted in 1874. However, Africa has
generally contributed only 6% to the 10152 journals listed in DOAJ as at
2014, and only 20 of Africa’s 56 countries have journals that are listed in
the database. Generally though, there exists open access consciousness in
the region, but it is marked mainly by access to and use of free scholarly
information available on the web. Many open access publishing activities
are amateurish, fragmented and unorganised. There is no Africa regional
accent to the meaning, definition and content of open access scholarship.
Many institutions and organisations have no open access statements, and
there are no clear directions about their positions on the contending
issues in the movement. Also, the African social science community appears
complacent about the significant role of the movement to the dissemination
of its research outputs. Above all however, there is the reluctance of
African governments and institutions to contribute in the definition and
content of the global open access project.

The open access situation in Africa cannot be isolated from the underside
of the movement resonating the global structure of biopolitical production
? of ideas, information, images, knowledges, codes, affects, social
relations, forms of life and dispositifs. For example the promise that the
cyberspace will reproduce the core and periphery in matters of ‘immaterial
and reproducible property’ appears not to have taken the ‘capitalist
biopower’ into consideration. The basic contestations about asymmetrical
power and representation, and the geopolitics of hegemonic and subaltern
knowledge production and its epistemologies, validation and dissemination
on a global scale persist. Within the consciousness of the significance of
the coloniality of knowledge/power on knowledge economy in the developing
world, there is the increasing claim that the nature of deployment of open
access in Africa orchestrates perversion in the global ‘academic ecology’
of knowledge production. While language and technology,
amateurish/apprenticeship publishing, business skills and activities of
subverts, and spoof initiatives might truly puncture the strides of local
open access publishers in Africa and elsewhere, much of open access
publishing initiatives in Africa are classed as predatory.

The CODESRIA Open Access Conference will be a gathering of a broad spectrum
of scholars and researchers from around the world who share a common
concern about critical issues relating to open access in Africa in
contemporary global society. This conference promises to push the
boundaries of open access scholarship. It will explore core concepts and
ideas, and help identify new technological and conceptual configurations.
It will provide a rare opportunity for academics, librarians, publishers
and policy-makers to come together for dialogues, discuss new research
directions, methods and theories, and reflect upon the evolutionary issues
about open access and their implications on research dissemination in
Africa.
With this scope in mind, the major topics of interest include, but are not
limited to:
·         Open access in the context of Africa
·         Value-added and marketing of African scientific information in
the open access era
·         Afro-sensitive open access economic models
·         Africa  in the emerging global politics of open access
·         Roles of institutions and governments in the open access movement
in Africa
·         Copyright and licensing regimes
·         Opening indigenous knowledges
·         Quality control in open access publishing in Africa
·         Open access and Africa’s knowledge economy
·         The politics of open access
The conference will feature Workshops on repositories, open journal
systems, open access policies, open access advocacy approaches and open
data issues. There will also be a Doctoral Colloquium and a Social Media
Expo.
Call for Papers
We invite researchers worldwide to submit original full research papers,
social media demonstrations, research-in-progress or posters within the
area of open access, with a special emphasis on the future of knowledge
economy in Africa. Papers in the completed research category should have a
maximum of twenty pages, including references. Papers in the Early
Work/Preliminary Results subcategory should be a maximum of fifteen pages,
including references. Submissions will be refereed in a double-blind
process.

More information on each subcategory follows:
Completed Research
Submissions may include, but are not limited to:
Empirical investigations
Theories and models
Early Work/Preliminary Results/thesis and dissertation in progress
Submissions may include, but are not limited to:
Emerging analysis in quantitative or qualitative papers
Conceptual descriptions
Registration and funding
CODESRIA will provide funding support to paper presenters who show evidence
that they are unable to cater for their participation. All non-paper
presenting participants will pay a registration fee of USD150 to cover
admission to the panels, and conference packages and workshops only; and
will cater for their feeding and air fare.
Timeline
15 July 2015: Open for submissions
26 October 2015: Workshop and Doctoral Colloquium decisions announced
15 November 2015: Social Media Expo sign-up period ends
15 November 2015: Registration opens
28 December 2015: Workshop and Doctoral Colloquium application deadline
30 December 2015: deadline for the submission of Papers
14 February 2016: deadline for the submission of final versions of papers,
posters, and workshop proposals
29 February, 2016: Registration ends
28 March 2016: Open Access Conference 2016 begins
Submission Information
Please note the following:
Authors retain copyright to their work.
All submissions must be in English or French.
All submissions must be original work, not published elsewhere, or be under
review for publication in a journal or other publication venue, or
presentation in another conference before the review process is complete.
Authors should provide keywords with their submission.
Submitters agree that if their work is accepted, it will not be published
elsewhere prior to presentation at the conference.
Submitters agree that if their work is accepted, only one author will be
invited to participate in the conference.
We reserve the right to withhold publication in the Proceedings if at least
one author does not register.
Accepted work will be published as part of the official proceedings of the
conference, or other.
For Guidelines on the formatting of your presentation please visit :
http://codesria.org/spip.php?article2401.
Questions about any issues regarding the conference should be directed to:
Williams Nwagwu at open.acces at codesria.sn.

All submissions to be directed to:
CODESRIA
Open Access Conference
Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop x Canal IV
BP : 3304, CP : 18524, Dakar, Sénégal
Email: open.access at codesria.sn
Site web: http://www.codesria.org



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