Archives des mots-clés : Africa

Access to Information and Implications for Healthy Ageing in Africa: Challenges and Strategies for Public Libraries

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“The elderly people are of intrinsic value to societies. Their health is Africa’s wealth. Unfortunately, Africa has serious health burden raging from diseases, poverty ignorance that hardly support healthy ageing. Development indicators from World Health Organization and the World Bank provide glaring evidence that Africa countries are far behind other regions of the world in health conditions of the citizens. This paper discusses the benefits that accrue from having a healthy old age population. Such includes poverty reduction, stress free ageing, assisting in taking care of young ones. It examines the role of information in enhancing healthy ageing in Africa. The paper identified public libraries as very important institutions to take up the challenges of provision of adequate and timely health information for the elderly citizen in Africa. While it acknowledges the challenges public libraries in many African countries face, it also provided strategies the libraries could adopt to perform this onerous task. Several recommendations were made; namely, adequate funding of public libraries, employment of librarians with translations skills, ICT application in public libraries, among others. The paper concludes that African countries should reposition their public libraries to facilitate the provision of relevant information that would support healthy ageing.”

URL : http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1157/

Open access in South Africa : a case study and reflections

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“In this paper, we locate open access in the South African higher education research context where it is, distinctively, not shaped by the policy frameworks that are profoundly changing research dissemination behaviour in other parts of the world. We define open access and account for its rise by two quite different routes. We then present a case study of journal publishing at one South African university to identify existing journal publishing practices in terms of open access. This case provides the springboard for considering the implications – both positive and negative – of global open access trends for South African – and other – research and researchers. We argue that academics’ engagement with open access and scholarly communication debates is in their interests as global networked researchers whose virtual identities and online scholarship are now a critical aspect of their professional engagement.”

URL : Open access in South Africa : a case study and reflections

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/sajs.2014/20140111

Research governance and scientific knowledge production in The Gambia

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“Public research institutions and scientists are principal actors in the production and transfer of scientific knowledge, technologies and innovations for application in industry as well for social and economic development. Based on the relevance of science and technology actors, the aim of this study was to identify and explain factors in research governance that influence scientific knowledge production and to contribute to empirical discussions on the impact levels of different governance models and structures. These discussions appear limited and mixed in the literature, although still are ongoing. No previous study has examined the possible contribution of the scientific committee model of research governance to scientific performance at the individual level of the scientist. In this context, this study contributes to these discussions, firstly, by suggesting that scientific committee structures with significant research steering autonomy could contribute not only directly to scientific output but also indirectly through moderating effects on research practices. Secondly, it is argued that autonomous scientific committee structures tend to play a better steering role than do management-centric models and structures of research governance.”

URL : Research governance and scientific knowledge production in The Gambia

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/sajs.2014/20130185

The Practicality of Resource Sharing in Academic Law Libraries in South-western Nigeria

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“This study explores the practicability of resource sharing amongst Nigerian academic law libraries by looking at academic law libraries in south-west Nigeria. Judgmental sampling technique was used in selecting four law librarians while simple random technique was used in selecting four law faculties in south west, Nigeria. Phone and electronic mails were used for gathering data from these law librarians through the use of interview research method. Data was analyzed by arranging responses into facets; thus like facets were grouped together and evidences representing issues in this study were selected and used as evidences of findings. Findings from this study showed that there is no practice of resource sharing in law libraries in south-west Nigeria. Though further findings showed that some Federal University Libraries which have equal digital strength were at the initialization stage of forming a consortium for sharing of e-resources; however law libraries were not included in the consortium; though it is assumed that they might be included later. Lack of innovation, lack of zeal, and lack of interest from the Council of Nigerian Legal Education(CNLE) on resource sharing were found as factors behind non-practicability of resource sharing in the law libraries studied. Findings also showed that the interest of Nigerian Council of Legal Education(CNLE) on collaboration by law libraries would boost immediate results. Admittance, a long old culture in which students visit other libraries and use their resources was the only form of sharing found among law libraries; and there was no written or oral agreement to it. it was also found that there was no form of written or oral policy on resource sharing in the law libraries explored. It was concluded that further studies under resource sharing be done using interview (face to face) method in order to get in-depth data on reasons behind non-practicability of resource sharing . It was also concluded that further study on this topic be made in-order to find other reasons not shown in this research findings .”

URL : http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1120/

Seeking Impact and Visibility: Scholarly Communication in Southern Africa

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“African scholarly research is relatively invisible for three primary reasons:

  1. While research production on the continent is growing in absolute terms, it is falling in comparative terms (especially as other Southern countries such as China ramp up research production), reducing its relative visibility.
  2. Traditional metrics of visibility (especially the ISI/WoS Impact Factor) which measure only formal scholar-to-scholar outputs (journal articles and books) fail to make legible a vast amount of African scholarly production, thus underestimating the amount of research activity on the continent.
  3. Many African universities do not take a strategic approach to scholarly communication, nor utilise appropriate information and communications technologies (ICTs) and Web 2.0 technologies to broaden the reach of their scholars’ work or curate it for future generations, thus inadvertently minimising the impact and visibility of African research.”

“To optimise scholarly communication at Southern African universities, there are four stakeholders that can play a dynamic role in improving universities’ dissemination activity: national governments, university administrations, university academics and research funding agencies. Each of these groups contributes to research and communication practices at the institution, thereby impacting the potential visibility of Southern African scholars’ research outputs. In this chapter, we provide recommendations
tailored to each of these stakeholders with a focus on enhancing research production, open dissemination and regional collaborative opportunities.”

URL : Seeking Impact and Visibility

Alternative URL : http://www.africanminds.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/9781920677510-content2.pdf

Providing Access to Electronic Theses and Dissertations A…

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Providing Access to Electronic Theses and Dissertations: A Case Study from Togo :

“Open access has become a significant part of scientific communication. With regards to dissemination of scientific production, the green road, i.e. self-archiving of scientific work in an open access repository, is often considered as the choice for developing countries because of lower investment and operational costs. This paper will provide a review of relevant literature on the topic, followed by a short overview of open repositories in sub-Saharan African countries, a region facing serious political, economic and social challenges. The main section will present a project for the digitizing of PhD theses of two universities in Togo, and we will then discuss questions and problems related to the specific conditions of the project, in order to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics and rich diversity of the open access movement. Is there an option for sustainable development of open access in these countries? The future will show whether open access contributes to reducing the digital divide between sub-Saharan Africa and other countries or whether it will instead consolidate this divide.”

URL : http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november13/schopfel/11schopfel.html

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/