CSIR Ghana adopts open access policy
EIFL welcomes the adoption of an open access policy by Ghana’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

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Lucy Dzandu, Simon Osei and Benjamin Folitse from the Ghana CSIR-INSTI institutional repository implementation team at an EIFL open science train-the-trainer event in Addis Ababa on 28 June 2017. Photo by Nancy Pontika.

EIFL welcomes the adoption of an open access (OA) policy by Ghana’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the body mandated by the government to carry out scientific and technological research for national development.

The adoption of the policy emerged out of an EIFL-funded project implemented by the CSIR’s Institute for Scientific and Technological Information (CSIR-INSTI). The project, which aims to foster development and implementation of an OA policy, started in 2015.

In Ghana, and in many other developing countries, research has limited social and economic impact because it is not widely available and accessible. Restricted access to research is also an obstacle to the production of new knowledge. OA helps to overcome these problems by making scientific research visible and freely available online.

The CSIR’s new OA policy will contribute to social development, economic growth and increase research in Ghana by making the vast amount of publicly-funded research that Ghana’s scientists have produced over several decades freely available through a digital repository.

Future CSIR research will also be deposited in the repository, which will be established and maintained by librarians in CSIR institutes working in partnership with information and communication technology units.

About the CSIR OA policy

The OA policy will apply to all works produced by CSIR staff and to all publications generated by the CSIR. All documents that are not classified will be deposited in the planned CSIR digital repository.

CSIR staff will be required to deposit the final, refereed, corrected, accepted drafts (post-prints) of the following kinds of research outputs in the repository: post-print copies of articles, conference and workshop papers, books, book chapters, monographs, reports and technical papers, images, video and audio recordings.

The policy states that:

  • electronic copies of any manuscripts that have been accepted for publication, and are supported in whole or in part by public funding, are to be deposited into the CSIR digital repository immediately upon acceptance for publication;
  • the metadata (title, authors, institutional affiliation, etc) are to be exposed in the CSIR digital repository from the time document or publication is deposited;
  • authors retain ownership of the copyright of published papers where possible; they should not transfer their copyright to the publishers and they should transfer only those rights necessary for publication;
  • the full text of research papers should be exposed in the CSIR digital repository not later than six months after publication, unless there is an embargo period;
  • journal articles and other documents emanating from CSIR journals and other CSIR sources should be deposited in the repository.