It was a recent phenomenon that Ethiopia has adopted a national open access policy for higher education institutions.
The new national open access policy which was adopted by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Ethiopia (MoSHE) is expected to transform research and education in the country, according to Dr. Solomon Mekonnen Tekle, Librarian at Addis Ababa University Library, and Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) Open Access Coordinator in Ethiopia.
Celebrating the adoption of the new policy, he stated that the new policy mandates open access to all published articles, theses, dissertations and data resulting from publicly-funded research conducted by staff and students at universities that are run by the Ministry – that is over 47 universities located across Ethiopia.
In addition to mandating open access to publications and data, the new policy, that came into effect right away, would encourage open science practices by including ‘openness’ as one of the criteria for assessment and evaluation of research proposals.
It was stated that all public funding researchers must submit their Data Management Plans to research offices and to university libraries for approval, to confirm that data will be handled according to international FAIR data principles. (FAIR data are data that meet standards of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability.)
“We will have to adapt quickly. Our universities and libraries will have to adapt quickly to comply with the new policy. Each university will have to develop an open access policy to suit its own institutional context, and which is also aligned with the national policy. We have a long way to go – at present, only three of the 47 universities that fall under the Ministry (Hawassa, Jimma and Arba Minch universities) have adopted open access policies,” Dr. Solomon remarked.
The policy requires universities to ensure that all publications based on publicly-funded research are deposited in the National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia (NADRE) as well as in an institutional repository, if the university has one. NADRE is supported by MoSHE, and also harvests and aggregates deposits from institutional repositories.
Stating that currently about 13 universities that are under the Ministry have institutional repositories and only four are openly available due to policy and technical issues, he noted that much more is desired to be done.
With regard to Ministry’s support to universities, Dr. Solomon said that MoSHE to speed up and support compliance with the new policy has launched a project in partnership with Addis Ababa University.
He said: “I am managing the project, and I am very happy to have the support of the Consortium of Ethiopian Academic and Research Libraries (CEARL) through its chairperson, Dr. Melkamu Beyene, who has been named chairperson of the project board. We can also draw on the expertise and experience of Iryna Kuchma, Manager of the EIFL Open Access Program, who serves as an international advisor for the project.”
As the project has just started, it is believed to ensure that all public universities that do not have institutional repositories establish them as soon as possible.
Likewise, the project will also strengthen the Ethiopian Journals Online (EJOL) open access journals platform that currently includes 24 journals and is hosted by Addis Ababa University. It will also support researchers in making their research available through the EthERNet platform for research data, and through National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia (NADRE).
There is a strong capacity building component to the project to train repository managers and administrators to manage their new institutional repositories and open access journals.
“When we first began making research outputs openly available in Ethiopia there was fierce resistance from the academic community who were worried that their work would be plagiarized. But now, researchers and students have understood the positive impacts of the policy and are showing greater interest and they are asking for their researches to be published in open access so that others, like potential employers, for example, can find and read it. They see the benefits.”
According to him, the main impact of the new policy would be increasing the visibility of Ethiopian research, within the national and international research communities.
As the new open access policy let researchers to see, verify and comment on each other’s work and on the integrity of the methodology and results, the quality of researches will improve, he opined.
Further than this, practitioners in organizations will have access to researches and will be able to base their work on it. Thus, our research will have real impact. Sharing of research and data through open access will minimize duplication, thereby saving costs, time and effort, he remarked.
According to him, the journey to achieving the new policy was long and arduous. It has begun by reaching out to MoSHE over three years ago, and they formed a Working Group to draft a national open access policy based on a model that had been developed by CEARL and Addis Ababa University, with support from EIFL.
Success resulted from a collective effort by many colleagues and partners. “I am proud to have been part of the process and I am now looking forward to working with our partners to achieve full implementation of the policy through the Ministry’s project,” he remarked.
The Ethiopian Herald October 9, 2019
BY BETELHEM BEDLU
