Gaining the momentum: eIFL marks five year commitment to Open Access in South Africa

Co-organised with Susan Veldsman, Director of Scholarly Publishing at the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), as part of an international conference, African Digital Scholarship & Curation 2009, in Pretoria

Presenters at the first Open Access conference In South Africa, hosted by SASLI and eIFL/OSI in July 2004

The workshop marks a five-year commitment by eIFL, together with local partners, in support of the development of Open Access in South Africa. This can be tracked in three seminal events. The first OA conference in South Africa took place in July 2004, co-hosted by eIFL/OSI (Open Society Institute) and SASLI (South African Site Licensing Initiative), now SANLiC (South African National Library and Information Consortium). “Open Access Scholarly Communications” was a one-day programme to introduce the OA model in South Africa. Attended by delegates from research and tertiary institutions, scientific councils, libraries and museums, it set the wheels in motion for a follow-on event that captured the momentum and responded to requests on how to put the ideas into practice.

Consequently the first Institutional Repository (IR) workshop in South Africa took place in May 2005 on creating an information infrastructure for library partnerships in the scholarly community”. It was a three-day event organised by SASLI and CSIR/CILLA with support from eIFL, that provided hands-on training on setting up and managing an IR. Participants returned home with a good understanding of technical and policy issues for IRs, installing DSpace, the popular open source IR application and the promotion of IRs within an institution.

Sivulile, meaning "We are Open" in isiXhosa, was an informal group that came together in 2005 to support Open Access in South Africa through advocacy, policy, technology and research, www.sivulile.org

The third key event was co-sponsored by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and aimed to broaden awareness of OA in the region. Speakers from Botswana, Canada, Egypt, Scotland, South Africa and the US were joined by over forty participants from nine southern African countries at the OSISA/eIFL Open Access Workshop for Southern Africa in August 2006 to discuss practical ways in which Open Access projects and policies could be implemented in the region. The programme focused on OA journals, IRs, advocacy and the role of funding agencies in Open Access publishing. Since then, eIFL has continued to sponsor a variety of OA conferences and events throughout the region, and has supported individual librarians to attend key international conferences as part of its capacity building efforts.

“I am pleased to have worked with eIFL and Susan Veldsman to organise the first OA workshop in South Africa in 2004,” said Melissa Hagemann, Program Manager, Open Society Institute. “It was actually the first OA workshop eIFL ever organised and we weren’t sure how OA was going to be received. Thus it is wonderful to see the progress which has been made especially with ASSAf”.

“I have been involved with eIFL in several capacities throughout this time,” said Susan Veldsman, Director of Scholarly Publishing at ASSAf. “The early events gave the momentum that got things going, and we have continued to move ahead with new partners, initiatives and concrete results”.

“eIFL has demonstrated a strong and serious commitment to Open Access in South Africa”, added Eve Gray, eIFL-OA Advisory Committee, “and has established itself as an able advocate for OA throughout the developing world”.

In the meantime, sixteen OA repositories have been established in South Africa and discussions on OA mandates are taking place in universities. ASSAf is running a two year pilot project to convert four of the country's leading journals to Open Access, and a strong community of practice has grown up sharing knowledge and expertise.

The eIFL-OA programme is building a global network of OA repositories and OA journals; provides training and advice on OA policies and practices; empowers librarians, researchers and students to become OA advocates.

May 2009