“Starting 01 January 2022, if you are a corresponding author affiliated with a participating Egyptian institution, you may be eligible to publish open access in our journals with fees covered under a Transformative Agreement plus fully OA agreement.
This agreement will cover all the public, private and national universities, as well as the research centers related to the ministry of higher education and scientific research and all other governmental ministries in Egypt. …”
“Bringing together leading international experts and key regional stakeholders, the Forum for Open Research in MENA (F.O.R.M.) is endorsed by UNESCO, and supports the advancement of Open Research across the Middle East and North Africa by facilitating the exchange of actionable insights and the development of practical policies.
The movement towards Open Science is vitally important to ensure the long-term sustainability and inclusivity of our education systems and scholarly communities. However, Open Science is also a complex and multi-faceted concept, and it can be difficult to know how and where to start. The problem is further compounded by the negative publicity surrounding predatory publishing practices and the mistrust of Open Access which this has engendered, together with issues surrounding funding allocation and the disparity in subject-field approaches.
Providing a forum for librarians, researchers, government policy makers, universities and international experts to discuss and debate key themes and issues, F.O.R.M. will help to address these issues and support the advancement of Open Research across the region.”
“The Forum for Open Research in MENA (F.O.R.M.) is being organised by the Knowledge E Foundation and Gulf Conferences to support and promote Open Science across the Middle East and North Africa. Endorsed and supported by UNESCO, our Advisory Partner, this event is designed to foster awareness and understanding of Open Science and its benefits, and facilitate the exchange of ideas and actionable insights. Bringing together leading international experts and key regional stakeholders, along with open-source and open-resource solutions and technology providers, our goal is to provide a forum for MENA librarians, researchers, government policy makers and higher-education institutions to exchange ideas and start new cross-regional collaborations developing Open Research policies and infrastructure.
The movement towards Open Science is vitally important to ensuring the long-term sustainability and inclusivity of our education systems and scholarly communities. However, Open Science is also a complex and multi-faceted concept, and it can be difficult to know how and where to start. The problem is compounded by the negative publicity surrounding predatory publishing practices and the mistrust of Open Access which this has engendered in the MENA region (and across the world), together with issues surrounding funding allocation and the disparity in subject-field approaches.
F.O.R.M. seeks to address these issues by encouraging discussion and debate amongst leading regional and global stakeholders, facilitating the development of structural frameworks and practical policies. We hope to encourage participants to consider all the issues surrounding equitable Open Scholarship and Open Science practices, by bringing together industry leaders and global experts, and providing a mixture of outstanding talks, strategy sessions, networking opportunities and workshops….”
“Springer Nature and the Egyptian Government have agreed a “landmark” deal to drive forward open research and ensure Egyptian research achieves greater global visibility.
The educational publisher has teamed up with the Science, Technology & Innovation Funding Authority in Egypt and the Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) to sign a Transformative Agreement (TA) boosting momentum across global economies for Open Access (OA) publishing and the wider move to open science and research. Transformative Agreements enable participating institutions to combine journal subscription access along with OA publication costs. …”
Springer Nature, The Science, Technology and Innovation Funding Authority (STDF) and the Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) have today agreed a landmark Transformative Agreement (TA), increasing the momentum across global economies of all sizes for open access (OA) publishing and the wider move to open science and research. This agreement, the first TA for Egypt and the first deal of its type for the region[1] , is expected to see over 3000 OA articles a year published by Egyptian researchers with Springer Nature, increasing the reach and impact[2] of Egyptian research across all disciplines. The deal provides researchers with read access to research in over 2,400 Springer Nature journals and the option to publish in Springer Nature’s hybrid and fully OA journal portfolio. Accelerating the transition to OA in Egypt in this way will ensure the country’s high quality research is reusable, shareable and discoverable to the world’s scholars immediately upon publication.
“Recently, I discovered, probably later than many others, that the World Digital Library (WDL) is hosting 57 Arabic-script manuscripts, many of whose originals are kept at the Egyptian National Library (EGL). This post is kind of a review of their online presentation….
What is dearly missing from these entries, however, is the manuscript reference number. Why is it not given in the description in addition to the images? As described above, you can work around this lack in some cases. But if you happen to be interested in the history of a work that is only available within a larger manuscript, the WDL digital images might not be helpful at all, simply because you cannot reference them….”
“The story of open access (OA) publishing in India has been a chequered one. While we have had some progress with institutional initiatives, the landscape remains fractured without a national OA mandate. And now some reports suggest that the Indian government is considering striking a ‘one nation, one subscription’ deal with scholarly publishers for access to paywalled research for all of India’s citizens. Only last year, India had decided against joining Plan S. K. VijayRaghavan has been at the helm of these decisions, as the principal scientific advisor to the Government of India….
While it is heartening to see the momentum towards settling on a suitable OA approach, the ‘one nation, one subscription’ scheme is a curious proposition for India. A consortium of Indian science academies had recommended it last year. The scheme entails the Government of India to negotiate for and purchase a single, unified subscription from a consortium of publishers of scientific books and journals, after which the books and papers will be available to all government-funded institutions as well as all tax-payers….
Around the world, this scheme has been implemented in Uruguay and Egypt, while some European countries have adopted versions of it. Experts around the world have suggested that the model could be a feasible interim solution for developing countries. Note that both Egypt and Uruguay obtained financial assistance from the World Bank to secure their deals….”
“With teaching centres temporarily closed, the global education expert took this step to continue to support English learners with free online resources to help them improve their language skills.
Members aged 18 and above can register online and access thousands of newspapers, magazines, the best of British Theatre, independent films and box office movies, music concerts, E-Books and Audio Books and even comics All are now exceptionally available for free to Egyptians during the time of the coronavirus crisis….”
“The museum never quite clarified its relation to the scans. But earlier this week, Wenman released the files he received from the museum online for anyone to download. The 3D digital version is a perfect replica of the original 3,000-year-old bust, with one exception. The Neues Museum etched a cop..yright license into the bottom of the bust itself, claiming the authority to restrict how people might use the file. The museum was trying to pretend that it owned a copyright in the scan of a 3,000-year-old sculpture created 3,000 miles away….
While the copyright status of 3D scans of public domain works is currently more complex in the EU, Article 14 of the recently passed Copyright Directive is explicitly designed to clarify that digital versions of public domain works cannot be protected by copyright. …
The most important part is that adding these restrictions runs counter to the entire mission of museums. Museums do not hold our shared cultural heritage so that they can become gatekeepers. They hold our shared cultural heritage as stewards in order to make sure we have access to our collective history. Etching scary legal words in the bottom of a work in your collection in the hopes of scaring people away from engaging with it is the opposite of that.”
“Plan S raises challenging questions for the Global South. Even if Plan S fails to achieve its objectives the growing determination in Europe to trigger a “global flip” to open access suggests developing countries will have to develop an alternative strategy. In this post Richard Poynder asks: what might that strategy be?…”
“My OER keynote was entitled “Hiding in the Open”. But now I am thinking how, there is also a story to be told about being “Invisible in the Open”. And for an Egyptian scholar living in Egypt, I am the most visible I can possibly be, with all my Virtually Connecting and blogging and writing and publishing everywhere… but clearly it’s not enough – and I am not just amplifying my own voice, but that of others around me, and then it makes an influence, an impact, but in the end… is almost invisible. Except to those in the same corner. But not the mainstream. And that sucks….”
“This workshop, organized in conjunction with the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) and EIFL, will convene library and NREN stakeholders to explore how repositories can operate embedded in NREN e-infrastructure and provide a foundation for an innovative, open, distributed and networked resource for scholarly communication and open science in Africa.
The 2-day meeting will also discuss results of the LIBSENSE survey of how higher education sector librarians view the enabling and constraining factors of their practice as information resource managers especially regarding the development, implementation and maintenance of open access repositories.
The outcomes from this workshop will be developed further in two follow-on events; in the WACREN region colocated as a side event with the 2019 conference in Accra, Ghana which takes place from 14-15 March 2019, and in the ASREN region where regional stakeholders will meet from April 27-29, 2019 at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. …”
“Five partners from Europe and nine from South Mediterranean Countries are working together to widening participation and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) as a bottom-up approach to support the modernisation of the Higher Education sector in Morocco, Palestine, Egypt and Jordan….”
“In January, Egypt is going to launch the Egyptian Knowledge Bank. Anybody with an Egyptian IP-address will be able to get free access to academic journals, ebooks and other publications that normally only would be available to a small circle of individuals that are affiliated with well-funded universities.”
“Five partners from Europe and nine from South Mediterranean Countries are working together to widening participation and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) as a bottom-up approach to support the modernisation of the Higher Education sector in Morocco, Palestine, Egypt and Jordan.
OpenMed is an international cooperation project cofunded by the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education programme of the European Union during the period 15 October 2015 – 14 October 2018.
It explores the adoption of strategies and channels that embrace the principles of openness and reusability within the context of South-Mediterranean universities.
The project will also offer the possibility to other universities from Morocco, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan or any other Southern Mediterranean country to join the action as community partners. Stay tuned to know more about the upcoming exciting Open Education adventures between the two shores of the Mediterranean basin! “