Category Archives: oa.tanzania

Citation Impact of Institutional Repositories in Selected Higher Learning Institutions in Tanzania | East African Journal of Science, Technology and Innovation

Posted on by
Reply

Abstract:  Institutional Repositories (IRs) development in Tanzania has made publications readily available, accessible, and retrievable. IRs have increased the visibility of researchers and institutions and have contributed to the University ranking. Several Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs) in Tanzania have developed their IRs hosting institutional publications. This study assessed the citation impact of IR contents of selected Tanzanian HLIs. The study evaluated the citation impact of IR contents using publications indexed in the Scopus database. Four HLIs were purposively selected. The search within reference advanced feature for the Scopus database was conducted. The publications indexed in Scopus citing the selected IR contents from 2018 to 2022 were identified and extracted. Data analysis was carried out using Microsoft Excel and SPSS. The study findings indicated that the Tanzanian IR contents had a low citation impact. The study recommends that Tanzanian HLIs devise strategies for increasing IR content visibility. The strategies may include registering the IRs in online platforms and ensuring the Handle System is implemented to improve the accessibility of the IR content. Furthermore, the HLIs should create awareness of research visibility, enabling researchers to publish and increase their visibility.

 

Open Science and Policy Interface: The Tanzania Perspective | East African Journal of Science, Technology and Innovation

Posted on by
Reply

Abstract:  The 21st century has seen a paradigm shift in scholarly communication, with digital technology changing the entire process of the scholarly communication lifecycle. As the cost of online reference materials for research continues to rise and restrictive conditions persist, global academic and research communities are pursuing countermeasures to make knowledge equitable and accessible. This is made possible through the Open Science (OS) movement that aims to make knowledge accessible to researchers and citizens irrespective of their technical or financial capability. This paper explores open science to ascertain the status of open science practices in Tanzania. The paper highlights the policy interfaces and frameworks that favor open science practices in research endeavors. Also, it provides a baseline for understanding the situation to inform scientific research and education communities about the status of open science and possible areas of intervention. Open science is still in its infancy, although certain steps have been taken in adopting it for example the adoption of open access practices, including the creation of institutional repositories and the adoption of policies that direct its implementation. Additionally, the implementation of open data practices has been quite slow. Also, researchers and organizations in Tanzania are gradually adopting open data practices. Currently, some academic institutions, particularly public universities, have adopted and used open journal publishing systems, particularly the online journal system (OJS). The published journal articles through journal systems are freely accessible online like other open-access content, however, the journals are not yet registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) despite the fact that some are already indexed in different abstracting services such as Africa Journal Online (AJOL) and they have Digital Object Identifiers (DOI). The policy interface of open science needs to be harmonized and COSTECH is strategically positioned to take the lead.

 

Scholarly Journal Publishing Forums in Tanzania Universities: : An Insight | University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal

Posted on by
Reply

Abstract:  The paper provides insights into scholarly journal publishing forums in Tanzania universities. It contextualises the current state of scholarly publishing and factors militating them in addition to providing possible palliatives for addressing them. The study employed a survey research design to collect both qualitative and quantitative data from websites, editors of journals, and directors of research at the universities under review.   The results show that 63 (98.4%) of the scholarly journal forums are available at the selected universities. Journal editors indicated that 46 (71.9%) of their journals are both in print and electronic formats, followed by 11 (17.2%) who indicated only the electronic format as the mode of publication, whereas seven (10.9%) indicated only the print format. The results also show that 43 (67.2%) have adopted the open access philosophy, 16 (25%) have yet to do so and five (7.8%) remain non-committal. Considering the present journal publication realities, there is a need to review the publishing process to accommodate the online journal system (OJS) for the submission and processing of manuscripts.  Furthermore, the study found the preferred mode to be a hybrid because the ICT infrastructure, cost of bandwidth, internet connectivity, and electricity remained an impediment to shifting to the purely online mode. Implicitly, academic journals for Tanzania’s universities should currently be accessible in both print and electronic formats until when technologies dictate otherwise.

 

Implementing open science in East Africa is picking up speed

Posted on by
Reply

“Stakeholders, including academics, researchers and policy-makers in Tanzania, intend to adopt open science and present the plan to the government and implementation partners for funding. However, the decision to make research more accessible means they also have to deal with several challenges.

The East African Science and Technology Commission (EASTECO), Tanzania’s Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), Public Library of Science (PLOS), and Training Centre in Communication Africa hosted a High-Level Multi-Sectoral National Open Science Dialogue for Academic and Research Institutions in Tanzania in mid-February 2023 to discuss the matter – three years after the initial decision to enter into a partnership that would promote open-science principles in the region….”

Advancing Open Science in Africa – three organizations collaborate to increase education and awareness with African Higher Education institutional Leadership. | Training Centre in Communication (TCC AFRICA)Training Centre in Communication (TCC AFRICA)

Posted on by
Reply

“University of Dar-Es-Salaam, Association of  African  Universities (AAU), Public Library of Science (PLOS) and Training Centre in Communication (TCC  Africa)  jointly held the first in a series of blended Open Science workshops, supporting Presidents, Rectors, Vice-Chancellors, Deputy Vice Chancellors, Directors of Research and Directors of Library Services in African Universities in Creating and Implementing Open Access and Open Science policies and mandates in their respective institutions. 

The hybrid workshop, hosted by the University  of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania , targeted institutional leaders in East and Central African universities, but the resulting participation was from wider afield, with 80 participants from across the continent: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania,  Ethiopia (Eastern  Africa), Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana (Southern Africa), Morocco (North Africa) and Nigeria (West Africa).

The Tanzania workshop is the first in a series of four free regional workshops advocating for the Adoption and Implementation of Open Science and Open Access practices in member institutions of the AAU, addressing barriers and challenges to this, with the  desired outcome being engagement and buy-in by the academic community on the adoption of Open Science….”

An analysis of the factors affecting open access to research output in institutional repositories in selected universities in East Africa | JLSC

Posted on by

Kakai, M., 2021. An analysis of the factors affecting open access to research output in institutional repositories in selected universities in East Africa. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 9(1), p.eP2276. DOI: http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2276

Abstract: Institutional repositories (IRs) present universities with an opportunity to provide global open access (OA) to their scholarship, however, this avenue was underutilised in two of the three universities in this study. This study aimed at proposing interventions to improve access to research output in IRs in universities in East Africa, and it adds to the depth of knowledge on IRs by pointing out the factors that limit OA in IRs, some of which include lack of government and funder support for OA and mediated content collection workflows that hardly involved seeking author permission to self-archive. METHODS A mixed methods approach, following a concurrent strategy was used to investigate the low level of OA in IRs. Data was collected from three purposively selected IRs in universities in East Africa, using self-administered questionnaires from 183 researchers and face-to-face interviews from six librarians. results The findings revealed that content was collected on a voluntary basis, with most of the research output deposited in the IR without the authors’ knowledge. The respondents in this study were, however, supportive of the activities of the IR, and would participate in providing research output in the IR as OA if required to do so. CONCLUSION The low level of OA in IRs in universities in East Africa could be increased by improving the IR workflow, collection development, and marketing processes. Self-archiving could be improved by increasing the researchers’ awareness and knowledge of OA and importance of IRs, while addressing their concerns about copyright infringement.

How EIFL’s support helped open up East African research to the world | EIFL

Posted on by

“When EIFL organized the first-ever workshop on open access in Kenya in 2010, there were just seven institutional open access repositories in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Awareness about OA was limited, and very few universities had open access policies.

Seven years later, in 2017, over 50 new repositories had been set up and 33 institutions had adopted open access policies. There were almost 200,000 documents available in the repositories, and download numbers had run into the millions.

This two-page case study tells how EIFL, in collaboration with our partner library consortia, the Kenya Libraries and Information Services Consortium (KLISC), the Consortium of Tanzania Universities and Research Libraries (COTUL) and the Consortium of Uganda University Libraries (CUUL), helped open up East African research to the world….”

Tanzania workshop on Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) | Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS)

Posted on by

“The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO of the UN) in conjunction with several partners organized a series of training workshops in 2016 and 2017 across Asia, Africa and Latin America focused on access to research in agriculture and fisheries. Earlier, workshops were held in Namibia, Myanmar, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Laos PDR, Honduras and Guatemala.

The workshops are aimed at drawing attention to the scope of free online agricultural information available on Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) and International System for Agricultural Science and Technology (AGRIS) and in effectively using these resources. Alongside this core focus, the workshops raise awareness of key trends in scientific publishing in agriculture, fisheries and forestry, with a look at the further range of resources available to researchers in agricultural research, and on Research4Life. 

The most recent workshop was held at Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), 26-27 July 2017. In the United Republic of Tanzania, 115 national institutions are registered for free access to scientific journals and e-books through AGORA and Research4Life.”

Bioline International Official Site (site up-dated regularly)

Posted on by

“Bioline International is a not-for-profit scholarly publishing cooperative committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries. BI’s goal of reducing the South to North knowledge gap is crucial to a global understanding of health (tropical medicine, infectious diseases, epidemiology, emerging new diseases), biodiversity, the environment, conservation and international development. By providing a platform for the distribution of peer-reviewed journals (currently from Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda and Venezuela), BI helps to reduce the global knowledge divide by making bioscience information generated in these countries available to the international research community world-wide….”