[IRTalk] Transition to Open Access in Africa - developments, challenges and sustainability

[Ina Smith]

Transition to Open Access in Africa - developments, challenges and sustainability
Authors: Daisy Selloane Selematsela
http://www.scidatacon.org/2016/sessions/27/paper/270/
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Conference paper
Abstract
Countries in the African region are becoming increasingly engaged in open science and open data as part of the global discussions through international collaborations and other mechanisms. Research in the South is increasingly international and research grants are also encouraging cross collaborations. Today's challenges such as climate change, poverty, agriculture and health are global in nature and researchers are encouraged to address this issues across regional and disciplinary boundaries. However, research infrastructures are not developed to reflect the open and connectedness of the evolving needs of the research community.
As the trend for open access grows, library communities are in the forefront advocating for the understanding and awareness of open access within their respective institutions, consortium and other platforms. There is growth in the open access mandates or policies and institutional repositories networks that encourages the visibility of these repositories as critical research infrastructures supporting publications generated from publicly funded research and the metadata and datasets supporting the publication. For example, in January 2015, the National Research Foundation of South Africa adopted a Statement on Open Access to Research Publications, which encourages its grant holders to actively seek collaboration with the international scientific community to facilitate the Open Access of publications generated from publicly funded research across the world. This attests to the regional support of the rise of open access to allow valuable knowledge to be utilised by all and the making available of datasets.
The Less Economically Developed Countries (LED's) stand to benefit greatly from the open access initiatives, the regional initiatives on the opportunities and challenges associated with open data will be highlighted. Libraries as perceived custodians of institutional repositories are forming collaborations and affiliations with international bodies that are aligning themselves with organisations that advocates for the adoption of open data and sharing of sustainable models for the development of repositories and data citation principles. The perceived challenges and the developments to address the research community to change its mindset and embrace the new developments in open science and open data will be discussed.


Ina Smith
SciELO Planning Manager
Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)

[cid:image001.gif at 01D21339.D733B740]<http://orcid.org/>  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9710-3668
LIASA Exco Convener ICT Development (2014-2016)
LIASA HELIG Chair (2014-2016)

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