Open Access Initiatives in Africa — Structure, Incentives and Disincentives

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Abstract

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.

Introduction

Open access (OA) is now happening everywhere in the world, including Africa.2 Although the global pattern and level of awareness and deployment may follow the paths of digital advantage,3 the movement has gained tremendous pace, probably due to increased global access to the internet,4 the activities of OA promoters and the pertinence of the mission of the movement.5 Scholars in Africa and other developing regions no longer mourn the inaccessibility to research outcomes from the developed world. This is because, on a daily basis, both older and newer in-lab and out-of-lab information materials – books, serials, gray materials and others – are uploaded onto the internet, and downloaded by other scholars and researchers. The objective of this paper is to examine the structure OA initiatives in Africa as well as incentives and disincentives to the movement. To achieve this objective, the paper briefly examines Africa's position in the global pyramid of knowledge construction and argues that Africa's untapped knowledge resources could be an opportunity to explore OA as a strategy for making African information resources part of the global knowledgebase. The paper also argues that OA visibility in Africa may be a question of serendipity — people will use any information they can find, the ubiquitous internet having made access to information very easy. Finally, the paper highlights lack of national and institutional awareness as being responsible for the low uptake of the OA movement in many of the countries in the region. To support this research, the paper relied on syntheses from DOAJ,6 DOAR,7 the UNESCO's8 global assessment of OA in various parts of the world plus practitioner's experiences and available literature in the field.

Section snippets

Africa in the pyramid of knowledge construction

Africa consists of more than 53 nations, with thousands of native languages, and a variety of ethnic and cultural diversity. A major beauty of the continent is the unprecedented abundance of human and natural resources — Africa's biodiversity remains one of the richest in the world.9 However, Africa is confronted with poverty, political instability, corruption, diseases, armed conflicts and ethnic and tribal chauvinism, all often blamed on postcolonial woes. In the country-by-country outlook on

Open access, open Africa

Open access should be viewed in Africa as a development imperative, and therefore considered as an opportunity for the countries in the region to strengthen their research capacities. Open access has the capability to open up huge opportunities by freely providing software, technical know-how, scientific knowledge and general education to countries and people that need it most, but can least afford to pay for it.21 Open access has the capability of empowering and stimulating ordinary people to

Information exchange, not information transfer

The evangelists of OA have alluded to the opinions of the Irish literary critic, playwright and essayist George Bernard Shaw who in 1925 advocated for information exchange as a way of building and sharing expertise, skills and efficacy among the people of the world.31 This landmark advocacy conforms to the expectations of a truly globalized world. However, what is happening in the OA era is not information exchange — rather the course of OA is focused on giving scientific information to those

The environment of open access in Africa

The general environment for OA in Africa is a very difficult one. Open access involves human experts, hardware and software technologies, cost and knowhow deployed within institutions and structures, and policy frameworks to guide content identification, selection and distribution, among others. Building a technology based open resources infrastructure is a scientific process, involving knowledge of the social system of science – copyright issues, licensing, and so on – as well as technologies.

Structure of OA initiatives in Africa

Pinfield40 defines OA mandate as a policy adopted by a research institution, research funder or government — that requires researchers (e.g., university faculty or research grant recipients) to make their published, peer-reviewed journal and conference papers available to consumers at no cost. OA initiatives could, therefore, be regarded as projects initiated to achieve OA mandates. This may be expressed by the number of OAR, Open Educational Resources (OER) and OAJ projects that are

Open access in Africa: incentives and disincentives

The major incentive of OA in much of Africa is that OA is internet-driven, and the internet is increasingly easily available and accessible. As a result, everyone that has access to the internet will have access to a large quantity of scientific information. Closely related to this is that internet proficiency is also advancing globally. Individuals are naturally picking up and using ubiquitous and free-flowing technologies which are useful for them. Open access in much of the African region

Conclusions and recommendations

More than ten years after the rise in OA declarations, and despite research evidence of the pertinence of implementing the movement in Africa, the most crucial need of the region about the movement still remains awareness building among scholars, libraries, institutions, organizations and governments at local and regional levels. This fact is clear both in the country by country analysis of UNESCO on OA in Africa and the evidence in DOAR and DOAJ as well as publications on the state of affairs

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