Presentation during the 14th Association of African Universities (AAU) Conference and African Open Science Platform (AOSP)/Research Data Alliance (RDA) Workshop in Accra, Ghana, 7-8 June 2017.

1. 1
The Role of Science Academies in Promoting
Open Science
Masresha Fetene
Executive Director, Ethiopian Academy of Sciences
June 7, 2017, Accra

2. Primarily Science Academies promote a
culture of science
• Academies play leadership roles in fostering, supporting,
and promoting scientific culture
• Scientific culture is a set of norms and practices and an ethos
of openness, honesty and continuous reflection
• Nurturing and reinforcing a scientific culture - a critical task for
promoting better research: links us to Open Science.
•

3. In what way can science academies enhance
open science? –
• Open science
making scientific research, data, methodology and findings
accessible to all: scientists, educators, business sector, and
society at large
Three strategies for science academies:
1 Awareness creation and education on Open Science
2 Networking and supporting ETD sharing
3 Enhancing Open Access through active leadership

4. 1 Awareness creation and education
on Open Science
In our Academy seminars on open science there is
considerable skepticism on sharing:
Research idea, Methodology, Data, but not Publication

5. Publish report
Develop idea
Design study
Acquire
materials
Collect data
Store data
Analyze Data
Interpret
findings
Write report
SCIENCE!

6. Awareness creation and education……
Breaking skepticism- continuous engagement with the
science community
Awareness creation on the bigger picture
Motivating individuals with successful examples (human
genome project, the polymaths challenge)
Dialogue, educating scientists about appropriate open science
software tools (infrastructure).

7. Frequent challenges indicated at meetings
• Poor State of ICT - limited computer literacy;
• High cost of internet access limiting access; low bandwidth
• Misconception resulting from lack of awareness
• Incentives for idea and data sharing

8. Open Access
• Nowadays, it is widely recognized that making research results
more accessible contributes to better and more efficient
science, and to innovation in the public and private sectors
• Discussions at Academy meetings with university leaders and
academics indicate agreement on Open Access

9. Consensus on Open Access
• Published information is public good and so
should be accessible.
• OA is good for scholarship, good for business,
good for development and good for the people
• Scholarship should be used, re-used and be re-
usable.
• National platform for OA through IRs and OA
Journals with government support is very critical.

10. Science Academies…
• Science Academies, as government advisory bodies,
have a significant role to play in promoting OA
• The Ethiopian Academy of Sciences has been working to
promote OA on two fronts:
Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Open Access
Open Access journals

11. 2 Networking and supporting ETD sharing
• Theses and dissertations are among the works in African
university libraries that are least disseminated locally and
internationally.
• With the advent of Information and Communication
Technology (ICT), there is now a huge opportunity to preserve
and disseminate theses and dissertations in electronic form.
• One major area of engagement of African Academies is
enhancing T&D sharing and dissemination

12. DATAD embracing all universities
• The DATAD is an initiative of the AAU and sponsored by
Carnegie
• The goals of DATAD are to allow African universities to
collect, manage, and disseminate T&Ds electronically and
provide visibility within and outside the continent
• But few universities – in Ethiopia one out of the 36
universities are in the network
• EAS actively engaged in creating a platform for ETD of
Ethiopian universities

13. EAS working on general agreement on
ETDs at Ethiopian universities
• University Presidents and VPs in general agree there
should be mandatory submission of ETDs, some have
developed policies.
• Ministry of Education to provide funds for digitization of
old T&Ds and digitization skills
• Working co-operation across Ethiopian universities on
ETDs management yet to be developed.
• There is promising progress

14. 3 Enhancing Open Access through active
leadership
Strategy
• Evaluate. standardize and accredit journals
• Create a support system for journals
• Assist in getting the journals in major OA platforms and
repositories
• Create a SciELO -Eastern Africa Platform

15. EAS work in promoting open access of
Ethiopian journals
Before you start to work on Open access of journals,
you need to have good journals:
• Egypt – 351
• South Africa – 56
• Nigeria – 26
• Tunisia – 10
• Kenya – 6
• Morocco - 6
• Ethiopia – 5
• Uganda – 4
• Tanzania – 3
• Algeria – 2
• Ghana - 2
• Libya – 2
• Burundi – 1
• Cote d’Ivoire – 1
• Madagascar – 1
• Sierra Leone – 1
• Zambia – 1

16. Ethiopian Journals

17. 17
Scholarly journals in Ethiopia
 67 peer-reviewed Ethiopia-based journals
 7 journal names under preparation for launch
 7 predatory online journals that displayed unverifiable addresses
related to Assosa, Bahir Dar and Haramaya universities

18. Academy project
National Journal Evaluation and Accreditation:
A Strategy for Standardizing the Rating of
Scholarly Performance in Ethiopia

19. Flow chart of the accreditation process

20. The EAS will assist in getting:
Accredited journals in major indexing and online platforms and
repositories
EAS has started initial discussion with sister science academies to
facilitate the creation of a SciELO -Eastern Africa
To conclude: Science Academies will promote open science by
benchmarking and emulating ASSAf

21. Thank you for your attention