Open access publishing as the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

The Role of United Nation Economic Commission For Africa on Open Access in Africa Ms. Irene Onyancha Chief, Library and Information Management Services ICT, Science and Technology Division (ISTD) United Nations Economic Commission for Africa UNECA

Outline
Context – ECA’s vision and programmes
Focus on ICT, Science and Technology Division (ISTD)
Open Access activities at ECA
Open Access Publishing – ECA Institutional Repository
IR project
Lessons Learnt
Development of E-learning & Open Educational Resources
Open Access to GeoData & information
Facilitating Open Access & ICT development to member states
Access Scientific and Socio-economic Information in Africa (ASKIA) programme
Lessons Learnt

ECA’s mandate & vision
The Economic Commission of Africa:
established 1958
one of the UN Secretariat's five regional commissions
5 Sub-Regional Offices (SROs)
to promote economic and social development, foster intra-regional integration, and promote international cooperation for Africa's development

ECA’s Work Programme
Regional Integration, Trade and Infrastructure
Meeting the MDGs
Promote good governance & popular participation
ICTs, Science and Technology for Development
Statistics and Statistical Development
Focus on :
Responsible for:
United Nations programme on “harnessing
information for development”;
Is an integrated information service:
to promote accessibility and availability of quality
information on African development
To assist member states build national
capacities in the use of ICTs for accelerated
and sustainable development
ICT, S&T Division

ICT, Science & Technology Division (ISTD)..
Work programme in 4 strategic areas of intervention:
Promoting ICTs for development and implementing the African Information Society Initiative (AISI);
Promoting Science and Technology for development;
Strengthening Geographic Information for sustainable development
Knowledge, Library and Information Management services
ISTD provides these services at 2 levels:
to the Commission
to member states
Open Access activities are integrated across the ITSD work programme

Publishing at ECA:
ECA’s knowledge is presented in:
Flagship publications
Conference proceedings, Resolutions & Speeches
Technical publications, policy briefs, mission reports, annual reports working papers
other grey literature
all which outline important research or decisions that have been made on the economic and social developmental aspects in Africa

The status of ECA Publications 2 years Ago Divisional Collections Catalogued collection Electronic copies Staff computers ECA Web sites Library shelves Library basement ECA publications

Open Access Publishing at ECA: The ECA Institutional Repository
Established in 2009:
..is an electronic publishing means of
collecting, managing and preserving the
institutional memory of ECA. It also offers
timely dissemination of this wealth of
knowledge outlining important socio- economic
research and decisions in Africa…..
- Green Road to Open Access -
ECA IR

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR
Defining the project
Implementing the IR project
Populating the IR
Accessing Items in the IR
Lessons Learnt
The golden road to Open Access (OA) is to publish in Gold OA journals (free for the user online).
The green road to OA is to publish in conventional (non-OA) journals and to make the articles OA (free for the user online) by self-archiving them in the author's institutional repository.

Defining the Institutional Repository Project
Build on project 2007
Project documents: Concept note, proposal and Business Plan
Funding
Preliminary activities
Setting up a project team
Contracting a Service Provider for the IR platform development
Purchase of
equipment servers, computers & scanners
storage and archival materials

Project activities & work flow
Cataloging, indexing & reviewing, scanning
ECA publications collection development
Printed publication
Digital collection
Institutional policies promoting OA at ECA
Online platform development
Software selection & development of systems requirement
Customization
Controlled Vocabularies (UNBIS thesaurus & SC, Geo terms, authors, serials)
AGRIS AP metadata (submission & export)
New modules (MQM, CUA and Document Streaming)

Importing MARC21 metadata from the ILS
A crosswalk between MARC21 and AGRIS AP (Qualified DC)
Development import tool
Communities and Collections development
12 communities and 21 collection based on the ECA’s work programme
1 community and 5 collections for ECA sub-regional offices
Uploading digital files
All digital files saved with the accession number of the metadata records
17,000 metadata records & 10,000 files uploaded

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR Available at http://repository.uneca.org

Accessing content in the ECA IR

Searching
Simple Search
Advanced search using the AGRIS AP fields
Subject search
Browsing
Dspace features (title, date & Communities and collections)
Subject keyword browse (UNBIS thesaurus)
Thematic collections of ECA conferences & Flagship publications
Harvesting
OAI-PMH (simple DC)
Expose metadata using AGRIS AP for specialized harvesters

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR impact IR access statistics/month Top 10 countries

Other Open Access activities
Open Educations Resources & E-learning
Open Access to Geo-information

Open Access Education Resources ( OER) & E-learning
Academy of ICT Essentials for Government Leaders in Africa
8 Modules on ICT4D topics including; ICT policies, e-government, network security, ICT trends:
The Linkage between ICT Applications and Development
ICT for Development Policy, Process and Governance
e-Government Applications
Network and Information Security and Privacy
etc.
3 new modules are planned as follows:
ICTs and Regional Integration (Module 9),
ICT for Disaster Risk Reduction (Module 10)
Climate Change and ICTs (Module 11)

Open Access Resources: OER & E-learning African e-learning initiative ( http://www.uneca.org/elearnafrica

Open Access publishing at ECA : GeoData
Online Metadata Clearinghouse Registry Services
ECA offers “country spaces” for hosting of metadata clearinghouse nodes at http://geoinfo.uneca.org:8080/geonetwork
Development of interoperability standards for datasets
through regional and international consultations
to promote open geodata architecture for mutual and remote access to geodata and geo services. http://www.uneca.org/istd/default.htm
Development of data sharing policies
Policy & guidelines development during the biennium 2012-2013 period
Setting up policies at Regional (ARSDI) and National (NSDI) levels

Support to member states
Dual role as regional arm of the UN & part of the regional institutional landscape
Provides a vantage position to harness resources and make unique contribution to assist member States' efforts to address their development challenges

Modalities and services to support its member States:
Policy analysis and advocacy
formulation of national ICT policies, commonly known as NICIs
Over 43 countries had adopted their NICIs by end of 2010,
On going implementation of sectoral strategies in key priority sectors such as e-government, education, health
facilitate implementation of the WSIS Geneva declaration on Open Access
Enhancing Partnerships
based on comparative advantage and pooling of resources
Ex. Govt of Finland: Technology in Government in Africa Awards
Carnegie Foundation & IFLA for ICADLA conference in 2009

Technical Assistance
on-demand regional advisory services
training workshops and seminars
fellowship and internship programmes
Communication and Knowledge sharing
CoP platforms: Teamworks knowledge sharing platform in partnership with UNDP
Sharing Best Practices
Statutory meetings
Committee on Development Information Science and Technology-CODIST
KLIS reinstated as a Committee of CODIST
Open Access workshop pre-event on
OPEN ACCESS Africa 2013?????

ASKIA Programme Promoting Open Access to member states
Access to Scientific/Socio-economic Information in Africa (ASKIA)
defines a framework for bringing together a variety of scientific and socio-economic and associated information to the African scientific community;
Identifies 5 strategic areas of intervention working in synergy
Initial project cost of $370k. ECA library has raised $50k and seeking further funding

Strategic intervention 1
Using a Web Ccontent Management System (Web 2)
Hosting
ASKIA Federated Search Engine, Online Communities of Practice (CoP) for Library and information Managers across the continent; E-Forums; RSS feeds for news and events on science and socio-economic development issues from the continent; Directories of African scientists and researchers etc.; Databases on Open source tools and Information Management standards and; the ASKIA blog to promote exchange of best practices.
ASKIA Online portal
a one stop shop to all knowledge types from/on Africa
contextualized access to information services
Biblios, maps, news, stat. data etc.

Different competing online sources Bioline, BMC,DOAJ, PMC, AJOL, Scirus, Research4Life, Google etc.
The federates search engine is a one stop window facilitating searching across different knowledge bases, including Open Access and commercial databases & Journals source for scientific and socio-economic, content on and from Africa generated abroad in the region
Facilitate discovery and collation and contextual rendering of content including bibliographies, geo-data, news, blogs, statistical data,
Strategic intervention 2 ASKIA Federated Search
facilitate the collation of different knowledge types on/from Africa
enable discovery, access to free and subscribed to information resources
through a single search

Ex. Federated Search Engine

Ex. Contextual rendering of results

New emerging technologies to deliver services:
e.g Social media and mobile technology proliferation in Africa
Better connectivity with the Fibre cable around Africa completed
Strategic intervention 4 Repository on African maps & geodata
formerly ECA Map Reference Section
access to thousands of maps at the ECA Library and other Nationals Libraries
Values added services e.g.
theses and dissertations
Country profiles: news, maps, biblos etc.
Mirrors of ECA IR at UN Depository Libraries
Knowledge hub & information services

Why the Open Access Package by Biomed Central:
Piloting in science & technology related public institutions
Relatively high cost of infrastructure development to set up repositories
Lack of required skills and technical know-how to set-up and maintain the IR
Hosted solution offers immediate availability and visibility of IR
Concentrate on populating the IR
Other models of technical assistance for other institutions
IR development Pilot for 10 libraries
partnership with BioMed Central
partnerships with donors & DP
fellowship and internships programme
Scanning equipments and workstations
Strengthening member states capacities to document local knowledge

Community Corner
Members information
E-forums
Blog- Best practices
RSS feeds
Information Resources on the Internet ASKIA : http://www.uneca.org/askia Tools & standards E-Learning E-Registries CoPs ASKIA Online Platform DATAD/ ASKIA Maps & Geo Data Scientific Databases University A University B E-Journals Service A University Theses WWW Service B Country Specific Maps, Media, Documents E-Directories Library OPACs Research 4Life ASKIA Federated Search Data Harvester Service C Media stories on African development Digital Maps of Africa Service D

Lessons Learnt
Need to share best practices on IR development between member states libraries;
Need to bring coherence in various Open Access activities across the continent;
Development partners need to assess comparative advantage and pool resources to support OA activities;
Poor access to ECA knowledge by member states due to connectivity problems – replication of IR at SROs & UN DL;
Need to incorporate sustainability strategies in project planning and implementation;
Due to limited funding, proper project planning is critical in the implementation of OA activities in the African Libraries

THANK YOU!!!

Special Thanks
BioMed Central
Director, ISTD: Ms. Aida Opoku-Mensah
Mr. Abebe Chakol

Open access publishing as the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

by BioMedCentral on Nov 02, 2011

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Open access publishing as the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa — Presentation Transcript