South Africa: the first African open access institutional mandate at the University of Pretoria and a new repository at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology

On May 22, 2009 Monica Hammes registered the open access mandate of the University of Pretoria, South Africa: 

To assist the University of Pretoria in providing open access to scholarly articles resulting from research done at the University, supported by public funding, staff and students are required to:

- submit peer-reviewed postprints + the metadata of their articles to UPSpace, http://repository.up.ac.za/ the University’s institutional repository, AND

- give the University permission to make the content freely available and to take necessary steps to preserve files in perpetuity.

Postprints are to be submitted immediately upon acceptance for publication.

Access to the full text of articles will be subject to publisher permissions. Access will not be provided if permission is in doubt or not available. In such cases, an abstract will be made available for external internet searches to achieve maximum research visibility. Access to the full text will be suppressed for a period if such an embargo is prescribed by the publisher or funder.

The Open Scholarship Office will take responsibility for adhering to archiving policies of publishers and research funders, and managing the system's embargo facility to delay public visibility to meet their requirements.

The University of Pretoria strongly recommends that transfer of copyright be avoided. Researchers are encouraged to negotiate copyright terms with publishers when the publisher does not allow archiving, reuse and sharing. This can be done by adding the official UP author addendum to a publishing contract.

The University of Pretoria encourages its authors to publish their research articles in open access journals that are accredited.

More information:

The open access mandate : a key element of open scholarship by Hammes, Monica M.P.

Open Scholarship and research reporting in tandem : creating more value by Olivier, Elsabe

Leslie Carr, Southampton, United Kingdom, created the global picture of hardworking repositories (repositories which receive regular daily deposits) and according to it the UPSpace at the University of Pretoria is the ninth hardworking repository in the world!

And congratulations to the Cape Peninsula University of Technology Libraries on their repository up and running at http://dk.cput.ac.za/. 

eIFL Spotlight Gaining the momentum: eIFL marks five year commitment to Open Access in South Africa is here and presentations from the Gaining the momentum: Open access & advancement of science and research workshop (a part of the African Digital Scholarship 2009 Conference) are here.