Opening access to agricultural information in Ghana Kenya…

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Opening access to agricultural information in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia :

“Agricultural innovation systems in Africa need to have access to both local and global agricultural sciences and technical information if they are to have an impact on agriculture and food security initiatives on the continent. While access to global agricultural information resources and innovations is relatively easy, local agricultural content is generally not visible and easily accessible. Providing access these important resources, through institutional repositories of metadata records and associated full-text documents, is one pathway of ensuring that the content generated locally is easily accessible within the country, region and around the globe. This paper highlights three initiatives implemented by national research institutes in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia aimed at opening access to agricultural information and knowledge resources. It also presents the major challenges faced in the implementation of the initiatives and the key lessons learned that could be useful when implementing similar initiatives.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/18921/

Open Access Initiatives in Africa — Structure, Incentives and Disincentives

Building open access in Africa is imperative not only for African scholars and researchers doing scientific research but also for the expansion of the global science and technology knowledgebase. This paper examines the structure of homegrown initiatives, and observes very low level of awareness prevailing in the higher educational institutions and research institutes, organizations and governments.

Increasing penetration of internet as well as growing proficiency in its use account for any evidence of OA movement in the region. The absence of interest and willingness of governments and policy makers to take a role in building the movement in the region makes any observed progress a fragmented one.

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2012.11.024

Fair use vs copyright non compliance among the…

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Fair use vs copyright non-compliance among the academic community in universities of developing nations :

“The purpose of the paper is to assess whether the copyrighted resources in the universities are being used following fair use principle or not and if there is any copyright management policy in the universities to manage the access to those resources .Quantitative data regarding the use of resources in the library collected through online (using survey monkey web platform) and offline were computed through statistical software (MINITAB version 13).Copyright Resources are not used complying fair use principles in the universities of West Bengal and there is no copyright management policy in any university of West Bengal. Considering similar economic conditions, the findings are equally applicable in other developing nations. Study was conducted among the universities of West Bengal. However result of the study is applicable to universities in all developing nations. This study can inform the entire academic community regarding fair use and can make university or appropriate authority feel the need to design and develop balanced and well-defined copyright management policy for the universities. There is close relation in between fair use and economic condition of that country. The unique context of fair use of copyrighted resources in the universities of West Bengal can add to the body of literature related with intellectual property rights in the universities and form the basis, for further comprehensive study.”

URL : http://www.ijodls.in/9.html

Open Access and Scholarly Publishing Opportunities and Challenges…

Open Access and Scholarly Publishing: Opportunities and Challenges to Nigerian Researchers :

“The study examined the extent of researchers’ appreciation of open access scholarly publishing. It discussed the opportunities and the benefits of open access to scholars worldwide. Challenges of OA were discussed and solutions suggested. Four research questions were raised. The population of this study was 140 lecturers from the University of Benin, Nigeria. The study revealed that the respondents had cited open access journals articles and that the major benefit derived from using open access journals is that it provides free online access to the literature necessary for research.”

URL : http://www.white-clouds.com/iclc/cliej/cl33IO.pdf

Open access institutional repositories for scholarly communication: A developing country perspective

Scholarly communication is the creation, transformation, dissemination and preservation of knowledge related to teaching, research and scholarly endeavours. Nowadays, Open Access Repositories (OARs) and Open Access (OA) has become the emerging ways to share research output, academic result and disseminating information to the academic community for better usability and visibility.

The purpose of this present study is to discuss the role of OAIR (Open Access Institutional Repository) in scholarly communication and focused how does developing country like Bangladesh may be benefited through this system.

The major focus of the present study is to familiar with different initiatives of building OAIR and Open Access (OA) in Bangladesh. In pursuing the above objectives, the present research posed the following research questions (RQs) that will guide the study as well. How OAIR can be used as an effective tool for scholarly communication?

What is the present status of the OAIR and OA initiatives in Bangladesh and what are the prospects of OAIR in Bangladesh? An analysis of the appropriate literature was carried out, focusing on papers explicitly referring to changing roles of OAIR. The study performed online searches and substantial amount of literature has been reviewed. Literature collected through internet, personal visits, and secondary sources of information has been analyzed.

Findings reveal that OAIR is very important for the scholarly communication and Bangladesh is not far behind to get the fullest advantages of the OAIR. It is suggested some directions for building OAIR and OA initiatives in Bangladesh.

It is believed that faculty and research scholars will be able to publish their research output in the proposed IR to visible their scholarly research output globally. This study no doubt will foster more research on OAIR for the improvement of Open Access scenarios in Bangladesh.

URL : https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anup_Das7/publication/249774716_Open_Access_and_Institutional_Repositories_-_A_Developing_Country_Perspective_A_case_study_of_India/links/00b7d52bbf9f967a64000000.pdf

The Impact of Open Access Contributions Developed and…

The Impact of Open Access Contributions: Developed and Developing World Perspectives :

“The study explores the research impact of ‘Open Access research articles’ across the globe with a view to test the hypothesis that “OA research contributions emanating from developing countries receive equal citations (subsequently resultant research impact) as those from the developed world”. The study covers 5639 research articles from 50 Open Access DOAJ based Medical Sciences journals covering the period from 2005 to 2006. The research impact of OA research publications measured by the citation counts varies from journal to journal and from country to country. Statistically significant difference is noted between the research impact of the developed and the developing world for OA research articles. The research articles from the developed countries receive higher number of citations (subsequently resultant research impact) compared to those of the developing world. The study may help and pave way for framing policies and strategies to increase the impact of research in the developing world.”

URL : http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?107_elpub2011