Étiquette : Africa

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Seeking Impact and Visibility: Scholarly Communication in Southern Africa

« 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

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Providing Access to Electronic Theses and Dissertations A…

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

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Opening access to agricultural information in Ghana Kenya…

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/

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EN

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

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Non classé

Awareness and Use of Open Access Scholarly Publications…

Awareness and Use of Open Access Scholarly Publications by LIS Lecturers in Southern Nigeria :

« The study examined the awareness and use of open access scholarly publications by Library and Information Science (LIS) lecturers in southern Nigeria. Based on this, three (3) objectives were set out for the study. The descriptive survey design was employed and the questionnaire entitled “Awareness and Use of Open Access to Scholarly Publications Questionnaire” (AUOASPQ) was administered on the entire population of 141 LIS lecturers from which 114 responses were successfully collected. The data collected were analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, mean and regression analysis. The study revealed a high level of usage of open access publications by both senior and junior LIS lecturers and that the awareness of open access concepts accounts for the tendency of LIS lecturers in southern Nigeria to use open access publications. The study recommends that efforts should be geared towards inculcating the awareness and use of open access especially through enabling infrastructure and enacting policies such as mandatory deposit of scholarly works in open access archives. »

URL : http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.library.20120104.02.html

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Non classé

Scientific Publishing in West Africa A Comparison of…

Scientific Publishing in West Africa: A Comparison of Benin with Senegal and Ghana :

« We compared scientific indicators related to Benin, Senegal and Ghana. We collected data from Web of Science and used indicators like the yearly productivity, the language of publication, the type of publication, the citable documents, the publication fields, and the main international partners as well as the percentage of papers in collaboration. Results showed that Benin productivity is the lowest one; Ghana and Senegal competed over the period; depending on the type of documents under consideration, the positions of the three countries vary. Citable documents had an increasing trend for all the countries. There is less cooperation between African countries and Benin, Senegal and Ghana; colonial ties count much in their international partnership. Cooperation among the three countries is negligible. »

URL : http://2012.sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol2/Megnigbeto_Scientific_589.pdf

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Non classé

Digital Librarians and the Challenges of Open Access…

Digital Librarians and the Challenges of Open Access to Knowledge: The Michael Okpara University of Agriculture (MOUAU) Library Experience :

« The development of Internet technology has provided academic and research institutions with a very high level of visibility on the web. As a result, teaching, learning and research is widely improved in the global society today. The intellectual call for knowledge and information dissemination by countless organizations and educational meetings has given birth to a terminology called open access. This initiative is aimed at bringing the knowledge society to a state of free access to all kinds of information and learning material using the Internet and ICT tools. The library plays an important role in sustaining the open access initiative (Das, 2008). Librarians who ensure the organization and dissemination of full-text content of knowledge materials to online communities are the digital librarians. »

URL : http://unllib.unl.edu/LPP/uzuebgu-mcalbert.htm