EIFL Open Access
From Devwiki
Iryna Kuchma
eIFL-Open Access (OA) Program seeks to enhance access to, and greater use of research findings, increase the efficiency of research and developments, accelerate use and innovation, stimulate economy. eIFL-OA Program builds networks of OA repositories, OA journals, OA education materials; provides training and advice on OA policies and practices; empowers library professionals, scientists and scholars, educators and students to become open access advocates. eIFL.net has launched a portal for institutional repositories from developing and transition countries: http://eifl.cq2.org. The presentation highlights OA developments in developing and transition countries, presents country case studies from the Middle-East and Africa (Botswana, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, Syria, South Africa, Zimbabwe) and provides recommendations.
After three years, the eIFL-OA Program has emerged as the leading organization promoting and advocating for Open Access in developing and transition countries. Through the eIFL-OA Program, 2,220 libraries in 50 transitional and developing countries build capacity on Open Access projects to enable 800 million people to benefit from the content, which is made freely available through Open Access as well as ensuring, that the local content produced within their countries is widely distributed, used, shared and remixed. eIFL OA Program goals: increased understanding of Open Access within eIFL region, including key players within the scholarly communications network (librarians, university administrators, authors, publishers, funders and policymakers); adoption of Open Access policies by research funding agencies within the eIFL region; development of a network of institutional repositories within the eIFL region, providing training and advice on Open Access journals and Open Access education materials. Stories from Botswana, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, Syria, South Africa and Zimbabwe on Open Access awareness raising, advocacy and implementation will be presented. Our target audience is scholars and researchers, doctors and lawyers, students and teachers. And in Open Access projects we set alliances with human rights groups, environmental organizations, patient groups demanding access to governmental information, Internet activists (Wikimedia communities, Creative Commons, etc.) modelling the approach of the Alliance for Tax Payers Access (a diverse and growing alliance of organizations representing taxpayers, patients, physicians, researchers, and institutions that support open public access to taxpayer-funded research). According to the catalogue of the World Universities and R&D Centres (http://www.webometrics.info/), there are 3,012 higher education institutions and R&D Centres with an independent URL domain in the eIFL.net countries. eIFL-OA program will work with these institutions to make their intellectual input more visible and more accessible to all. Open content licences (Creative Commons) allow sharing and remixing the content. Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikiversity, Wikiquote, and other Wikimedia projects need strong scientific platforms built on the widest possible access to research information. Permanent access to the widest possible range of publications and research is also a pre-requisite for successful Wikimedia projects.
