OA drive & Digital Scholarship in Africa, Botswana

Event date:

24 Oct 2012 - 25 Oct 2012

1st National Conference hosted/organized by Botswana Library Consortium (BLC)

Target Audience: academics, researchers, authors, journal editors, societal publishers, directors of research institutes, policy makers, research funders/funding agencies, media, government departments, information professionals.

Theme: “Open Access drive and Digital Scholarship in Africa”

“Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder. OA is entirely compatible with peer review and all the major OA initiatives for scientific and scholarly literature insist on its importance. Just as authors of journal articles donate their labor, so do most journal editors and referees participating in peer review” Peter Suber http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm

Open Access (OA) Week is organized to raise awareness, celebrate the progress, share benefits and experiences about providing free online access to research results and their use for socio-economic development. To commemorate the Open Access Week, this year the OA Sub-Committee of the Botswana Library Consortium (BLC) is organizing a two-day conference 24-25 October 2012. The Conference intends to bring together universities, research institutes, colleges, government departments, media, societal publishers, funding agencies, and libraries to share ideas on open-access publishing, policies, access to information, economic benefits and advocacy.

The conference organizers are calling for abstracts on a range of sub-themes, but not limited to:

Sub - themes

Open Access and its promotion at institutional and national level
Open Access advocacy, adoption and promotion in Africa
Open Access and socio-economic development in Africa
Open Access repositories at institutional and national level
Open Access publishing services and software
Open Access and knowledge management
Electronic theses and dissertations in an Open Access environment
Impact of Open Access on digital scholarship
Copyright or Intellectual property rights in an Open Access environment
New approaches to conduct and communicate research and alternative publication methods
Open Access initiatives and benefits in Africa
Open Access policies & strategies at institutional and national level
Models of financially sustained funding programs for Open Access
Role of information professionals in Open access movement
Infrastructure and resources for Open Access in Africa
The future of Open Access in Africa
Building collaborative partnerships for Open Access drives in Africa