Open Access Implications for Sustainable Social, Political, and Economic Development 1799850188, 9781799850182

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Open Access Implications for Sustainable Social, Political, and Economic Development Priti Jain University of Botswana, Botswana Nathan Mnjama University of Botswana, Botswana O. Oladokun University of Botswana, Botswana

A volume in the Advances in Library and Information Science (ALIS) Book Series

Published in the United States of America by IGI Global Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global) 701 E. Chocolate Avenue Hershey PA, USA 17033 Tel: 717-533-8845 Fax: 717-533-8661 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: http://www.igi-global.com Copyright © 2021 by IGI Global. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without written permission from the publisher. Product or company names used in this set are for identification purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or companies does not indicate a claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jain, Priti, 1954- editor. | Mnjama, Nathan Mwakoshi, editor. | Oladokun, O., 1956- editor. Title: Open access implications for sustainable social, political, and economic development / Priti Jain, Nathan Mnjama and O. Oladokun, editors. Description: Hershey, PA : Information Science Reference, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book provides an understanding of the concept of open access within the context of social, political, and economic development and deliberates the critical issues and challenges that face the implementation of open access and its impact on the global economy and sustainable development”-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020005746 (print) | LCCN 2020005747 (ebook) | ISBN 9781799850182 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781799854050 (paperback) | ISBN 9781799850199 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Open access publishing--Africa. | Open access publishing--Economic aspects--Africa. | Sustainable development--Africa. | Communication in learning and scholarship--Technological innovations--Africa. Classification: LCC Z286.O63 O648 2021 (print) | LCC Z286.O63 (ebook) | DDC 070.5/7973096--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005746 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005747 This book is published in the IGI Global book series Advances in Library and Information Science (ALIS) (ISSN: 23264136; eISSN: 2326-4144) British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. All work contributed to this book is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors, but not necessarily of the publisher. For electronic access to this publication, please contact: [email protected].

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Titles in this Series

For a list of additional titles in this series, please visit: https://www.igi-global.com/book-series/advances-library-information-science/73002

Challenges and Opportunities of Open Educational Resources Management S. Thanuskodi (Alagappa University, India) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 315pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799835592) • US $195.00 Examining the Impact of Industry 4.0 on Libraries Josiline Phiri Chigwada (Bindura University of Science Education, Zimbabwe) and Ngozi Maria Nwaohiri (Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 300pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799842255) • US $195.00 Emerging Trends and Impacts of the Internet of Things in Libraries Barbara Holland (Brooklyn Public Library, USA) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 253pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799847427) • US $195.00 Data Analysis and Ethical Considerations of Qualitative Research Projects Silas Memory Madondo (CeDRE International Africa Pvt, Tanzania) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 200pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799844471) • US $175.00 Metamodernism and Changing Literacy Emerging Research and Opportunities Valerie J. Hill (Texas Woman’s University, USA) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 283pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799835349) • US $165.00 Internationalization of Library and Information Science Education in the Asia-Pacific Region Reysa Alenzuela (The University of the South Pacific Emalus Campus, Vanuatu) Heesop Kim (Kyungpook National University, South Korea) and Danilo M. Baylen (University of West Georgia, USA) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 322pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799822738) • US $195.00 Measuring and Implementing Altmetrics in Library and Information Science Research C. Baskaran (Alagappa University, India) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 162pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799813095) • US $195.00 Handbook of Research on Connecting Research Methods for Information Science Research Patrick Ngulube (University of South Africa, South Africa) Information Science Reference • © 2020 • 639pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781799814719) • US $275.00

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Editorial Advisory Board Gbolagade Adekanmbi, Botho University, Gaborone, Botswana Akakandelwa Akakandelwa, University of Zambia, Zambia Harry Akussah, University of Ghana, Ghana Julie Biando Edwards, University of Montana, USA Ruth Hoskins, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa B. N. Jorosi, University of Botswana, Botswana Ali Macharazo, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania Wole Olatokun, University of Ibadan, Nigeria Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha, University of south Africa, South Africa Adeyinka Tella, University of Ilorin, Nigeria



Table of Contents

Preface.................................................................................................................................................. xvi Acknowledgment................................................................................................................................. xxi Chapter 1 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development: Prospects and Challenges in Africa............. 1 Priti Jain, University of Botswana, Botswana Chapter 2 Open Access: A Sine-Qua-Non for Effective Information Service in Open and Distance Learning and Attaining Sustainable Development Goals..................................................................................... 24 Olugbade S. Oladokun, University of Botswana, Botswana Gbolagade O. Oyelabi, Federal College of Education (Special), Akinmorin, Nigeria Chapter 3 Journalists and Open Access: A Roadmap to Sustainable Development and Climate Change Adaptation in Tanzania.......................................................................................................................... 47 Emmanuel Frank Elia, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Chapter 4 Predatory Open Access Journals and Attainment of Educational Sustainable Development Goals in Africa................................................................................................................................................. 64 Wole Michael Olatokun, University of Ibadan, Nigeria Ojinga Gideon Omuinu, University of Ibadan, Nigeria Chapter 5 The Role of Information Institutions in Promoting Information Literacy and Access to Information for Sustainable Development in the Post-Truth Era: The Case of Sweden........................ 78 Proscovia Svärd, Department of Information Systems and Technology, Mid Sweden University, Sweden & Department of Information Science, University of South Africa, South Africa

 



Chapter 6 Preserving Endangered Archives Through Open Access: The Role of the Endangered Archive Programme in Africa........................................................................................................................... 100 Nathan Mnjama, University of Botswana, Botswana Chapter 7 The Concoct of Digital Preservation in Open Access: A Case of the University of Botswana Research, Innovation, and Scholarship Archive.................................................................................. 118 Thatayaone Segaetsho, University of Botswana, Botswana Chapter 8 Challenges for Establishment of Institutional Repositories: The Case of Zimbabwe’s University Libraries............................................................................................................................................... 139 Mass Masona Tapfuma, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa Ruth G. Hoskins, University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South Africa Chapter 9 The State of Access in Open and Distance Learning in Sub-Saharan Africa...................................... 160 Gbolagade Adekanmbi, Botswana Open University, Botswana Chapter 10 Opportunities Associated With Open Access Initiatives: Perspectives of Research Students From Selected Universities in Nigeria........................................................................................................... 183 Adeyinka Tella, University of Ilorin, Nigeria Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha, University of South Africa, South Africa Chapter 11 Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication in Sub-Saharan Africa............................ 205 Tuesday Bwalya, The University of Zambia, Zambia Akakandelwa Akakandelwa, The University of Zambia, Zambia Chapter 12 Open Access Initiatives and its Implications on Research Transformations....................................... 221 Musediq Tunji Bashorun, University of Ilorin, Nigeria Jamiu Oladele Muhammed, LARIS, Faculty of Education, Univeristy of Ibadan, Nigeria Hajarat Abubakar, Kwara State College of Education, Nigeria Chapter 13 Sharing Open Data in Agriculture: A Learning Curve for Developing Countries.............................. 244 Liah Shonhe, Dalian University of Technology, China Chapter 14 Breaking the Walls of Jericho: A Foundation to Enhancing Open Access to Information and Knowledge – An African Perspective.................................................................................................. 267 Donald Rakemane, Office of District Commissioner, Botswana Olefhile Mosweu, University of Johannesburg, South Africa



Chapter 15 Research Data Sharing and Reuse Through Open Data: Assessing Researcher Awareness and Perceptions at the Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI)..................................................... 284 Abel Christopher M’kulama, The University of Zambia, Zambia Akakandelwa Akakandelwa, The University of Zambia, Zambia Compilation of References................................................................................................................ 307 About the Contributors..................................................................................................................... 351 Index.................................................................................................................................................... 357

Detailed Table of Contents

Preface.................................................................................................................................................. xvi Acknowledgment................................................................................................................................. xxi Chapter 1 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development: Prospects and Challenges in Africa............. 1 Priti Jain, University of Botswana, Botswana Open access publishing is a cross-cutting issue that has the potential to contribute to most Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are reliant on improved access to information and knowledge. Open access publishing makes scientific results available for everyone, and thus facilitates new discoveries and empowers researchers through rapid and efficient access to knowledge. Open access is a platform of knowledge management. There is a clear link between open access and access to information, and therefore between open access and sustainable development. International organizations such as WIPO and UNESCO have already recognized this connection and have changed their own internal policies and officially recognize open access as a driver for achievement of the SDGs and sustainable social, political, and economic development. In the above context, this chapter discusses how sustainable development can be realized through open access platforms. The chapter is based on in-depth literature review. The chapter commences with a brief review of the literature on the major concepts, which is followed by a description of the role of open access in attaining sustainable development. Thereafter, the status, prospects, and challenges of open access publishing in Africa are discussed. Finally, the chapter provides recommendations for attaining sustainable developments goals through open access publishing in Africa. Chapter 2 Open Access: A Sine-Qua-Non for Effective Information Service in Open and Distance Learning and Attaining Sustainable Development Goals..................................................................................... 24 Olugbade S. Oladokun, University of Botswana, Botswana Gbolagade O. Oyelabi, Federal College of Education (Special), Akinmorin, Nigeria The modern age has come along with varied dimensions of ‘openness’, ranging from open content, open data, open courses (massive open online courses (MOOCs) to open source and pedagogy, open and distance learning, and open access, among others. In order to meet with the educational needs of people, hardly is there any country where open and distance learning (ODL) does not hold. With scattered adherents and students across different geographical boundaries, ODL is known to leave the doors of institutions of higher learning wide open for the benefit of the marginalized, isolated, underprivileged, and the unreachable for education and training, while they remain in their homes, places of work, and 



other locations pursuing their studies. But a sizeable number of students suffer from failure, low pass rate, and indeed withdrawal from or discontinuance of participation. Nonetheless, ODL seems to work in tandem with the core business of Sustainable Development Agenda, which is out to make the world better for its people, with no one left behind. The Agenda carries along a strong desire for access to information towards achieving the set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In pursuit of the attainment of the goals and mending the debilitating crack of excessive failure rate and not being able to adequately meet the library and information needs of the ODL students, the virtual and ubiquitous role of Open Access (OA) is considered vital. This chapter attempts to provide the nexus between the ODL, OA, and the SDGs even as each of the subjects in the discourse is dissected; a panoramic survey of the related terms is carried out, and socio-political and economic implications of the OA in relation to other subjects are perused. Chapter 3 Journalists and Open Access: A Roadmap to Sustainable Development and Climate Change Adaptation in Tanzania.......................................................................................................................... 47 Emmanuel Frank Elia, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania This chapter explores the role of open access in promoting climate change adaptation and sustainable development. It reviews global trends of journalists’ access to information and specifically discusses Tanzania journalists’ access to and use of climate change information. The chapter further assesses the impact of journalists’ access to open information resources in adapting to climate change and promote sustainable development. The chapter also discusses the challenges journalists encounter in accessing and using open access information resources. It further recommends solutions to the raised challenges and suggests areas for further research. The chapter concludes by giving insights on major issues of concern on open access. Chapter 4 Predatory Open Access Journals and Attainment of Educational Sustainable Development Goals in Africa................................................................................................................................................. 64 Wole Michael Olatokun, University of Ibadan, Nigeria Ojinga Gideon Omuinu, University of Ibadan, Nigeria Putting into consideration the objective of the SDG 4, it would be important to note that the provision, access, and use of information resources such as open access (OA) journals is a sine qua non for quality education in Africa. Despite its importance to the education system, open access journals have been proliferated by predatory journals. Stakeholders in the OA movement and academia claim that predatory publishing is a big problem for scientific communication and could undermine development efforts. Hence, the increasing use of predatory open access journals could affect the attainment of SDGs in Africa; hence, there is the need to raise awareness to enhance the possibility of attaining the SDGs in Africa. This chapter will among others enumerate the possible havocs predatory open access journals can create and the setbacks on the attainment of SDGs in Africa. It will also spell out the necessary prospects of curtailing these havocs and setbacks towards providing quality-based information resources such as open access journals to the education societies in Africa.



Chapter 5 The Role of Information Institutions in Promoting Information Literacy and Access to Information for Sustainable Development in the Post-Truth Era: The Case of Sweden........................ 78 Proscovia Svärd, Department of Information Systems and Technology, Mid Sweden University, Sweden & Department of Information Science, University of South Africa, South Africa The right to access government information has been a key element of sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Declaration. It is further recognized in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, governments are through open government initiatives making information available to the citizens. This is based on a supposition that everyone is information literate and yet this is not the case. Information literacy is defined as the ability to be able to act on the information that is provided to us citizens. Being able to locate, evaluate, and ethically use information is an ability that is crucial to the citizens’ participation in society. It requires individuals to be in possession of a set of skills that can enable them to recognize when information is needed to be able to locate, evaluate, and use it effectively. Information institutions have been the gateways to knowledge, and hence, their resources and services have been crucial to the development of information literate, creative, and innovative societies. This study sought to establish how the information institutions in Sweden were promoting information literacy in accordance with Sustainable Development Goal 16 amidst the post-truth era. The author has applied a qualitative research methodology where interviews have been used as a data collecting technique. Chapter 6 Preserving Endangered Archives Through Open Access: The Role of the Endangered Archive Programme in Africa........................................................................................................................... 100 Nathan Mnjama, University of Botswana, Botswana Archives and manuscript collections, when well preserved, play a pivotal role in the preservation of corporate memory as well as the transmission of culture, building of national identity, and in providing valuable information sources on a variety of issues. However, in many parts of the world, the preservation and accessibility of archives and manuscripts, particularly those privately held, remains a neglected area requiring innovative ways to enhance their long-term preservation and accessibility. This chapter examines how endangered archival collections can be preserved through open access and digitization programmes funded locally or jointly with donor agencies. Specifically, the chapter examines the contribution made by the Endangered Archives Programme, a UK-based programme supported by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, to preserve endangered archives in Africa. The chapter shows that over the past 16 years, the Endangered Archives Programme has made a significant contribution in the preservation of endangered archives held privately and in public archival institutions. The chapter argues that the approach followed by the Endangered Archives Programme clearly demonstrates that collaborative effort in the preservation of endangered archives results in mutual benefits to the local communities as well the research community via the British Library. The chapter concludes by suggesting future directions that may be considered when undertaking similar copying projects. Chapter 7 The Concoct of Digital Preservation in Open Access: A Case of the University of Botswana Research, Innovation, and Scholarship Archive.................................................................................. 118 Thatayaone Segaetsho, University of Botswana, Botswana



Research pursuit in Open Access (OA) has become a center of interest in academic institutions. Academic institutions and publishers have been energetically working hard towards achieving strategic and sustained partnerships in providing OA to information resources. While the work of strengthening these endeavours is ongoing, very little have been done on the logistics for digital preservation of OA resources in Institutional Repositories. This chapter explores digital preservation processes in OA using the University of Botswana Research, Innovation, and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA) as a case study. The chapter establishes the implementation activities, the outcomes, and challenges experienced by UBRISA. The findings reveal that the UBRISA commits to strategically capturing and preserving the intellectual output, raw data, and historic values of the institution for posterity. The UBRISA is challenged by limited budgets, logistical challenges, and limited expertise. This chapter recommends that partnerships and advocacy for legislative structures that support OA are critical. Chapter 8 Challenges for Establishment of Institutional Repositories: The Case of Zimbabwe’s University Libraries............................................................................................................................................... 139 Mass Masona Tapfuma, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa Ruth G. Hoskins, University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South Africa Concern has been raised over low research output from universities in Southern Africa and its poor visibility on the global sphere. However, public universities in Zimbabwe adopted open access (OA) institutional repositories (IR) to increase publication output, access, visibility, and reach to a wide audience. This chapter reports on a study that explored the challenges faced by academics and librarians in Zimbabwe’s public universities in contributing to and managing the IRs. A mixed methods approach was adopted with eight participating universities where directors of research, library directors, faculty/IR librarians, and academics were purposely selected. The study identified several impediments to the success of the IRs and these include academics’ fears and misconceptions regarding OA and IRs, libraries experienced difficulties convincing university managers about OA exacerbated by an absence of enabling conditions to promote IR development. The chapter recommends that OA education needs to be intensified OA/IR and the universities’ policies should recognise publication in OA platforms and enforce deposit mandates. Chapter 9 The State of Access in Open and Distance Learning in Sub-Saharan Africa...................................... 160 Gbolagade Adekanmbi, Botswana Open University, Botswana This chapter examines the state of access in open and distance learning (ODL) and discusses eight nations across sub-Saharan Africa countries. The influence of open universities and private universities in promoting the use and growth of open educational resources (OERs) is seen. Governments are actively involved in enhancing policies to promote access while most visions and agendas of the countries in the sub-continent are linked to and aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The growth of information technological platforms is seen, and their influence on the development of OERs and innovations in educational programmes are evident. For the enhancement of access, the promotion of sustainable development, and the growth of tertiary education, sub-Saharan Africa must aim for more innovative use of modern technologies.



Chapter 10 Opportunities Associated With Open Access Initiatives: Perspectives of Research Students From Selected Universities in Nigeria........................................................................................................... 183 Adeyinka Tella, University of Ilorin, Nigeria Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha, University of South Africa, South Africa The chapter examines the opportunities associated with open access (OA) initiatives from the perspective of research students in selected Nigerian universities. A survey design was adopted to conduct the study, whereby the questionnaire was the instrument of data collection. The findings revealed that OA is perceived by the research students as a good idea, easy, beneficial in terms of access and use and usually makes research more interesting. OA most importantly provides opportunities such as enabling readers with the access to publish articles, the future of scholarly research, and publishes faster than the traditional outlets, along with wider dissemination of research and opportunity of free access to all. Incentives of OA include users’ accessibility, copyright retention by authors, high quality publications, among others; while the disincentives of OA include lack of reach, cost of publishing, and inadequate quality of some OA platforms. A considerable number of respondents have the continuous intention to use OA instead of traditional platforms, for study and research, as an autonomous tool for improving research and to recommend to colleagues. Significant challenges associated with OA include procrastination, inadequate ICT infrastructure, high cost of internet, and slow speed of internet, restrictions placed on using storage devices like discs or flash drive for downloading contents from OA platforms, among others. The chapter made recommendations based on the findings. Chapter 11 Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication in Sub-Saharan Africa............................ 205 Tuesday Bwalya, The University of Zambia, Zambia Akakandelwa Akakandelwa, The University of Zambia, Zambia The concept of open access has opened up access to scholarly communication. Academia today can publish and have access to a cocktail of information resources without restrictions and without paying anything. This chapter seeks to explain open access to scholarly communication and its future in Sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter begins by explaining the concept of open access, various forms of open access publishing, benefits of open access, and a brief history of open access to scholarly communication in Sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter also highlights some notable open access initiatives that have been implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa in the quest to improve access to scientific research findings in order to accelerate economic development. Furthermore, the chapter catalogues some challenges being encountered in the promotion of open access in Sub-Saharan Africa. Lastly, the chapter predicts the future of open access to scholarly communication in Sub-Saharan Africa, based on the current happenings in this sector. Chapter 12 Open Access Initiatives and its Implications on Research Transformations....................................... 221 Musediq Tunji Bashorun, University of Ilorin, Nigeria Jamiu Oladele Muhammed, LARIS, Faculty of Education, Univeristy of Ibadan, Nigeria Hajarat Abubakar, Kwara State College of Education, Nigeria The Open Access initiative enhances innovative forms of scholarly inquiry and aids the impactful communication by transforming the way research output is disseminated and published. Prime objective of OA initiative is to improve wide accessibility and promotes visibility of research outputs without



geographical barriers. This chapter investigates open access initiatives and the principles behind OA. It identifies the characteristics of OA and types of OA publishing business models. Moreover, the chapter discusses the growth of OA in Africa and examines the current trend in OA journals. Also, the chapter identifies various roles played by stakeholders towards adoption and use of OA for research transformation. This chapter examines different benefits and challenges faced by organizations, libraries, publishers, and researchers towards OA adoption and use for the research advancement. Recommendations on how to improve research outputs’ visibility using OA were highlighted. Conclusion and suggestion for further research are provided. Chapter 13 Sharing Open Data in Agriculture: A Learning Curve for Developing Countries.............................. 244 Liah Shonhe, Dalian University of Technology, China The main focus of the study was to explore the practices of open data sharing in the agricultural sector, including establishing the research outputs concerning open data in agriculture. The study adopted a desktop research methodology based on literature review and bibliographic data from WoS database. Bibliometric indicators discussed include yearly productivity, most prolific authors, and enhanced countries. Study findings revealed that research activity in the field of agriculture and open access is very low. There were 36 OA articles and only 6 publications had an open data badge. Most researchers do not yet embrace the need to openly publish their data set despite the availability of numerous open data repositories. Unfortunately, most African countries are still lagging behind in management of agricultural open data. The study therefore recommends that researchers should publish their research data sets as OA. African countries need to put more efforts in establishing open data repositories and implementing the necessary policies to facilitate OA. Chapter 14 Breaking the Walls of Jericho: A Foundation to Enhancing Open Access to Information and Knowledge – An African Perspective.................................................................................................. 267 Donald Rakemane, Office of District Commissioner, Botswana Olefhile Mosweu, University of Johannesburg, South Africa Access to information and knowledge is a fundamental element in an informed and democratic society. Open access (OA) allows users to freely access information and knowledge if they have access to internet. This chapter presents barriers to enhancing OA to information and knowledge with a reference to Africa. The said barriers are akin to the Biblical Walls of Jericho which prevented Israelites from capturing their Promised Land of Canaan. It starts by defining what OA entails, highlights the characteristics of OA and its types. Furthermore, the chapter highlights opportunities brought about by OA to information and knowledge which supports the attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Lastly, the chapter suggest strategies that can be adopted to enhance OA in Africa and thus make it a precursor for the achievement of SDGs. This study is qualitative and used content analysis from available literature to address the research problem. Chapter 15 Research Data Sharing and Reuse Through Open Data: Assessing Researcher Awareness and Perceptions at the Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI)..................................................... 284 Abel Christopher M’kulama, The University of Zambia, Zambia Akakandelwa Akakandelwa, The University of Zambia, Zambia



Research data management is considered a critical step in the research process among researchers. Researchers are required to submit RDM plans with details about data storage, data sharing, and reuse procedures when submitting research proposals for grants. This chapter presents findings of an investigation into the perceptions and practices of ZARI researchers towards research data management. Mixed methods research using a self-administered questionnaire was adopted for data collection. Fiftyone researchers were sampled and recruited for participation into the study. The study established that the majority of the researchers were not depositing their research data in central repositories; data was kept on individual’s devices and was therefore not readily available for sharing. The major challenges being faced by researchers included lack of a policy, lack of a repository, and inadequate knowledge in RDM. The study concludes that research data at ZARI was not being professionally managed. The study recommends for formulation of policies, establishment of repository and staff training. Compilation of References................................................................................................................ 307 About the Contributors..................................................................................................................... 351 Index.................................................................................................................................................... 357

xvi

Preface

The conception of two globally trending concepts, namely, Open Access (OA) and Sustainable Development, culminated in the birth of this book. Recounting our view on the former in our call for paper, we hinted that OA publishing can be used as a strategic tool to avail access to information and achieve universal literacy. While expressing its views on the significance, The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA, 2016) affirms that OA to scholarly publications and information is transforming global relations and means of knowledge production, dissemination and use based on the power of information technologies to enforce free scholarly content. CODESRIA affirms that OA facilitates direct linkages between scholars/authors and the public, and enabling a free flow of ideas vital to the process of scientific inquiry, and the ability of individuals and communities and institutions to address economic, environmental and social development issues, both regionally and globally. In a tone of finality CODESRIA asserts that OA leverages the combined power of scholarly information and technology to serve the public good, but it has not been fully harnessed in Africa and the Global South. Reflecting on the latter, we recalled that sustainable development in the 21st century is founded on access to information and knowledge. Being a baby of the United Nations (UN) with the notion of “leaving no one behind” the sustainable development goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by all UN member states. The UN 2030 Agenda was officially adopted as a framework of 17 SDGs with a total of 169 Targets spanning economic, environmental and social development (IFLA, 2018). The goals cuts across putting an end to poverty, hunger, ensuring good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduction of inequality, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, life on land, peace and justice strong institutions; and partnerships to achieve the goal (United Nations, n.d.). The commendable goals since adoption in 2015 became the agenda of pursuit by the individual signatory nations around the world and at all levels. The universality of the subjects appeared to compel the editors to assemble a group of international authors, researchers, scholars, and subject specialists to register their indelible contributions on the subjects. The contributions are compartmentalised into three streams - first, Open Access and Sustainable Development, second, Preservation of information resources and third, Open Access and Research. Whilst the first stream produced the first five chapters in the book, the second attracted next three chapters and the last seven chapters addressed the third stream.

 

Preface

The uniqueness of the book may be found in the nexus it provides between Open Access and the Sustainable Development Goals. The book therefore promises to be a useful resource for the students in tertiary institutions of learning especially those offering library and information studies, information and knowledge management, archives and records management, media studies, as well as open and distance learning (ODL) and e-learning (ODeL) courses and programmes. In sum, the book contains fifteen chapters under three streams. Specifically, under Open Access and Sustainable Development as a stream, Jain examined the prospects and challenges of OA as a platform for sustainable development in Africa in Chapter 1. She considered OA publishing as a cross-cutting issue that has the potential to contribute to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The chapter acknowledges some international organisations such as WIPO and UNESCO which recognised the connection and consequently changed their internal policies to officially recognise OA as a driver for the achievement of the SDGs. The chapter examines how SDGs can be realised through OA platform and dexterously connected it to knowledge management platform. The chapter elucidates on the status, prospects and challenges of open access publishing in Africa and provides a framework for attaining SDGs through OA publishing in Africa. Oladokun and Oyelabi in Chapter 2 considered Open Access (OA) as a sine qua non for effective information service in open and distance learning and attaining sustainable development goals (SDGs). The chapter discusses the varied dimensions of openness i.e. open content, open data, etc. with emphasis on open and distance learning (ODL) and OA applied to meet the education and, or research needs of people. It notes that with scattered adherents and students across different geographical boundaries, ODL is known to leave the doors of institutions of higher learning wide open for the benefit of the marginalized, isolated, underprivileged and the unreachable for education and training who also suffer from failure, low pass rate and withdrawal from participation. The chapter believes that the joint forces of OA and ODL can effectively work in tandem with the core business of attaining the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) even as the problems in ODL are mitigated. The chapter provides the nexus between the ODL, OA, and the SDGs even as each of the subjects in the discourse is dissected; a panoramic survey of the related terms carried out and socio-political and economic implications of the OA in relation to other subjects are scrutinized. Elia in Chapter 3 tackled the issue of journalists and OA as a roadmap to sustainable development and climate change adaptation in Tanzania. The chapter perceives climate change as posing a serious threat to food security, energy, water resources, infrastructures, tourism, population and biodiversity to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the need to correctly inform the public on proper measures to be taken to address climate change and develop sustainably. The chapter underscores the role of journalists entailing identifying, collecting, synthesizing and disseminating information to users in the desired form. The chapter linked to Tanzania notes that access to OA resources helps journalists to comprehend and cover climate information to the public. In Chapter 4, Olatokun and Omuinu focused on predatory OA journals and the attainment of educational sustainable development goals in Africa. The chapter asserts that “Quality education” ensures inclusive and impartial quality education that promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all which could enhance the propensity to achieve the SDGs in the region of Africa and affirms that OA journals is a sine qua non for quality education in Africa, though proliferated by adulterous journals known as predatory. The chapter adopts the welfare analysis theory, which calls for the need to raise awareness to its cushioning especially in the education environment. The chapter enumerates the possible havocs that predatory OA journals can create and its setbacks on the attainment of SDGs in Africa. It also spells out xvii

Preface

the necessary prospects to curtailing the havocs and setbacks towards providing quality-based information resources for the attainment of the SDGs. In Chapter 5, Svärd assessed the role of information institutions in promoting information literacy and access to information for sustainable development in the post-truth era. The chapter opens up on the right of citizens to access government information as a key element of sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Declaration. Using the concept of information literacy, the chapter asserts that it requires individuals to be in possession of a set of skills to recognize when information is needed and to be able to locate, evaluate, and use it effectively to achieve personal development. Believing that information institutions have been the gateways to knowledge and their resources and services have been crucial to the development of information literate, creative and innovative societies. The study carried out in Sweden applied a qualitative research methodology where interviews were used as data collecting technique. The next three chapters revolved around Preservation of information resources, the second stream. Mnjama blazed the trail here in chapter six with a consideration of OA and the role of the endangered archive programme in Africa. The chapter avows that archives and manuscript collections when well preserved play a pivotal role in the preservation of corporate memory, as well as in the transmission of culture, building of national identity and in providing valuable sources of information on a variety of issues. The chapter notes remorsefully that in many parts of the world the preservation of these valuable assets particularly those privately held remain under constant danger of the ravages of nature, fires, floods, careless handing, etc. The chapter examines the contribution of the Endangered Archives Programme, a UK based programme sponsored by the Arcadia Foundation, in the preservation of endangered archives in Africa. The chapter shows that over the past 10 years, the Endangered Archives Programme has made a significant contribution in the preservation of endangered archives. It argues that the approach followed by the Endangered Archives Programmes clearly shows that collaborative effort in the preservation of endangered archives is one of the best methods not only for preserving such collections but also to increasing access to them through digitization and OA. In Chapter 7, Segaetsho assessed the concoct of digital preservation in OA using the University of Botswana Research, Innovation and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA) as a case study. The chapter is premised on the basis that very little has been done on the preparations required for Digital Preservation (DP) of OA resources such as in Institutional Repositories (IRs). This chapter showcases the DP processes in OA using the University of Botswana Research, Innovation and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA) as a case study. The chapter discusses the implementation of DP at UBRISA, provides an opportunity to reflect on the pragmatic stance of DP, opportunities and challenges experienced at UBRISA. The chapter concludes by providing a perspective for future improvement in DP especially in academic IRs. Tapfuma and Hoskins did the assessment of challenges for the establishment of institutional repositories using Zimbabwe’s university libraries as multi case study in chapter eight. The chapter presents the concern over low research output from universities in Southern Africa and its poor visibility on the global sphere and the intervention of OA through institutional repositories (IRs) in public universities in Zimbabwe. It reports on a study that explored challenges faced by academics and librarians in Zimbabwe’s public universities in contributing to and managing the IRs. Using a mixed methods approach the study established impediments to success of the IRs including academics’ fears and misconceptions regarding OA and IRs, difficulties of libraries to convince university managers about OA exacerbated by an absence of enabling conditions to promote IR development. Recommendations on policies and enforcement of deposit mandates among others were made.

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The last stream, Open access and Research, began with Chapter 9 where Adekanmbi examined the state of access in open and distance learning (ODL) in sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter explores how access is promoted in the context of open educational resources and promotion of sustainable development with eight nations across sub-Saharan Africa in view. From the findings, it was clear that countries in the sub-continent recognize the usefulness of ODL as a way of promoting educational access, especially at the tertiary level. The influence of open universities and private universities in promoting the use and growth of open educational resources (OERs) is also discussed. Government’s involvement in enhancing policies to promote access and attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are considered and how the effort has helped to promote the growth of OA initiatives. The chapter notes that for the enhancement of access, the promotion of sustainable development, and the growth of tertiary education, sub-Saharan Africa must aim for greater and more innovative use of modern technologies. Tella and Onyancha in Chapter 10 considered the opportunities associated with OA initiatives using the lens of research students from some selected universities in Nigeria. A survey was used as the design of the study while data was gathered through a questionnaire developed by the researchers. The findings revealed that OA is perceived by the research students as a good idea, easy, beneficial in terms of access and use and usually makes research more interesting. Significant challenges associated with OA include procrastination, inadequate ICT infrastructure, high cost of the Internet, and slow speed of the Internet, and restrictions placed on using storage devices like discs or flash drive for downloading contents from OA platforms among others. The chapter made recommendations based on the findings. In Chapter 11, Bwalya and Akakandelwa tackle the issue of OA and the future of scholarly communication in sub-Saharan African. It notes with delight that through OA, academia can publish and have access to a cocktail of information resources without restrictions and without any payment and considers its future in sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter explains the concept of OA and its benefits and highlights some notable open access initiatives that have been implemented in sub-Saharan Africa in the quest to improve access to scientific research findings in order to accelerate economic development. It catalogues some challenges being encountered in the promotion of OA in Sub-Saharan Africa and predicts the future of OA in the sub-region. Bashorun, Muhammed and Abubakar in Chapter 12 conducted an assessment of OA initiatives and the implications on research transformations. The chapter investigates the initiatives and the principles behind OA. It discusses the growth of OA in Africa and examines the current trend in OA journals and also identifies various roles played by stakeholders towards adoption and use of OA for research transformation. Considering different benefits and challenges faced by organizations, libraries, publishers, and researchers towards OA adoption and use for research advancement, some recommendations on how to improve research outputs’ visibility using OA were highlighted. In Chapter 13, Shonhe explores the practices of open data sharing in the agricultural sector, including establishing the research outputs concerning open data in agriculture. A desktop research study based on literature review, data from World of Science (WoS) database (with 100 articles published between 2012-2019), repositories such as the Open Data Barometer, European Data Portal, AgTrials Repository and a dataset by Antognoli, Sears and Parr (2017), was carried out. Findings revealed that research activity in the field of agriculture and OA is very low; most productive years, authors and countries were identified; noted with regret that most African countries are still lagging behind in promotion of use and management of open data. From an Africa perspective, Rakemane and Mosweu in Chapter 14 considered breaking the walls of Jericho as a foundation to enhancing OA to information and knowledge. The chapter presents barriers to xix

Preface

enhancing OA to information and knowledge with reference to Africa. The author perceived the barriers as akin to the biblical Walls of Jericho which prevented the Israelites from getting to their promised land. The study is qualitative and used content analysis from available literature to address the research problem. While highlighting opportunities brought about by OA in accessing information and knowledge which support the attainment of sustainable development goals, the chapter suggests strategies that can be adopted by African countries in order to make OA to information a precursor for the achievement of sustainable development. Finally, in Chapter 15, M’kulama and Akakandelwa did an assessment of researchers’ awareness and perceptions at the Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI) with a focus on research data sharing and reuse through open data. Self-administered questionnaire was adopted for data collection from 51 researchers. The study established that the majority of the researchers were not depositing their research data in central repositories, data was kept on individual’s devices and consequently not readily available for sharing. The chapter notes that major challenges being faced by researchers included lack of a policy, lack of a repository, and inadequate knowledge in RDM. The study concludes that research data at ZARI was not being professionally managed and made appropriate recommendations. In conclusion, it is with a great sigh of relief and delight that the editors were able to see this book published, despite the initial odds. The universality of the subjects considered also made it compelling to search for international authors, researchers, scholars, educators, practitioners in the information profession and subject specialists to make their invaluable contributions to the academic and scholarly exercise. Fortunately enough, numerous and willing scholars signified, but could not all be accommodated in this issue. Whilst not claiming that the book cannot be improved upon, it is a great pleasure for us to present the book to everyone who may consider it useful particularly, staff and students of tertiary institutions of learning. Priti Jain University of Botswana, Botswana Nathan Mnjama University of Botswana, Botswana O. Oladokun University of Botswana, Botswana

REFERENCES CODESRIA. (2016). Dakar Declaration on Open Access in Africa and the Global South. Retrieved August 9, 2020, from https://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/images/5/50/Dakar-declaration-2016.pdf IFLA. (2020). Libraries, Development and the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Retrieved August 9, 2020, from https://www.ifla.org/libraries-development United Nations. (n.d.). #Envision2030: 17 goals to transform the world for persons with disabilities. Retrieved January 12, 2020, from https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/envision2030.html

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Acknowledgment

We are thankful to authors for contributing their chapters in the book and their commitment towards the successful publication of the book. Without them it would not have been possible to publish this book. Our utmost thanks goes to our editorial team and the reviewers, who provided timely and judicious feedback to maintain the quality of the chapters. Some of the editorial team members played dual roles, who reviewed the chapters as well contributed a chapter. A very special thanks to you. We are highly indebted to the IGI Global team for their technical and managerial support throughout all the stages of publishing this book. We are particularly grateful to Jan Travers- Director of Intellectual Property and Contracts’ Lindsay Wertman - Managing Director IGI Global, Editorial Intern, Acquisitions, Managing Editor, Acquisitions, who were exceptionally helpful in our book proposal submission to proposal acceptance and contract signing cycle up to book publication. We are grateful to all IGI staff including Maria Rohde and Eric Whalen, who attended to our numerous queries promptly and affably. We would also like to thank our colleagues and the Head of the Department of Library and Information Studies and the Dean of Faculty of Humanities, University of Botswana for providing us an enabling environment that led to the production of this book. Last but not least, we owe very special thanks to our families for their support and consideration as we had to devote a lot of time working on this project and sometimes without attending to our families. We thank the Almighty God, who gave us wisdom and strength to make this book a success. Priti Jain University of Botswana, Botswana Nathan Mnjama University of Botswana, Botswana O. Oladokun University of Botswana, Botswana



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Chapter 1

Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development: Prospects and Challenges in Africa Priti Jain University of Botswana, Botswana

ABSTRACT Open access publishing is a cross-cutting issue that has the potential to contribute to most Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are reliant on improved access to information and knowledge. Open access publishing makes scientific results available for everyone, and thus facilitates new discoveries and empowers researchers through rapid and efficient access to knowledge. Open access is a platform of knowledge management. There is a clear link between open access and access to information, and therefore between open access and sustainable development. International organizations such as WIPO and UNESCO have already recognized this connection and have changed their own internal policies and officially recognize open access as a driver for achievement of the SDGs and sustainable social, political, and economic development. In the above context, this chapter discusses how sustainable development can be realized through open access platforms. The chapter is based on in-depth literature review. The chapter commences with a brief review of the literature on the major concepts, which is followed by a description of the role of open access in attaining sustainable development. Thereafter, the status, prospects, and challenges of open access publishing in Africa are discussed. Finally, the chapter provides recommendations for attaining sustainable developments goals through open access publishing in Africa.

INTRODUCTION Open Access has been defined differently by various scholars and practitioners. Suber (2012) describes open access literature as digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. According to Clare (2019), open access is making research publications freely available for everyone to benefit from reading and using research. Cornell University Library (2019) defines open access as free of charge and often carries less restrictive copyright and licensing barriers than traditionally published works, DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch001

Copyright © 2021, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development

for both the users and the authors. Open access is also viewed as a sprig of scholarly communication.; Roger Williams University (2019) describes open access as a means of disseminating scholarly research that breaks from the traditional subscription model of academic publishing. Thus, open access publishing ensures free and ready availability of scholarly publications; it is free of unnecessary copyright and licensing restrictions; material is available full text online.Open access content can be accessed and used by anybody from anywhere without any discrimination; open access publications can be in any format from texts and data to software, audio, video, and multi-media. The word “open” was coined because the research productivities are openly accessible to the public. Open access is a paradigm shift from the traditional model of scholarly communication to free availability. Open access therefore aids authors in widely disseminating their knowledge to be reused. Initially, open access referred only to research outputs published as peer-reviewed, scholarly articles, but today, it applies to various types of research products including datasets, grey literature, white papers, case studies, peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings, monographs, research data, theses and working papers. Open access is central to ensuring that society benefits from knowledge by informing further research in an area or simply the end user. Open access is also a platform of knowledge management. Open access and knowledge management have different connotations. Knowledge management maximizes the application and reuse of knowledge, usually within an organization, while open access focuses on dissemination and external usage of knowledge. Tise and Raju (2013) viewed open access as a new dawn for knowledge management, while Clobridge (2014) described open access as an external knowledge “push” with knowledge management as an internal knowledge “pull”. In 2003, there was clear emphasis by the Berlin Declaration on open access to knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003, online), “...disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the information is not made widely and readily available to society. New possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the Internet have to be supported”. Supporting open access, in the same year 2003, the International Federation of Library Association and Institutions (IFLA) declared that, the worldwide network of library and information services provides access to past, present and future scholarly literature and research documentation; ensures its preservation; assists users in discovery and use; and offers educational programs to enable users to develop lifelong literacies (IFLA, 2016). Hence, the open access stakeholders are researchers, publishers, peer reviewers, editors, information users and libraries. Open access is an important knowledge management platform and a global knowledge resource. It is also viewed as the mainstay of a knowledge-based economy and sustainable development. According to Open Access nl, (n.d.), open access contributes to the knowledge economy and provides an economic boost. Ogundeindea & Ejohwomub (2016) in a study carried out in Nigeria viewed knowledge economy as a panacea for sustainable development. The key component of a knowledge economy is a greater reliance on intellectual capabilities than on physical inputs or natural resources (Powell & Snellman, 2004). In knowledge-based economy, a country’s growth and economic development depends on the quality, quantity and accessibility of information and knowledge rather than on physical or natural resources. Access to information and knowledge are fundamental for the development of a knowledge-based economy hence open access is also a platform for a knowledge-based economy. The word sustainability is defined in different ways and has no universal definition. Liu (2016) described sustainability as “the capacity to endure”, which is the ability to continue a course without termination. This can also be interpreted as maintaining the status quo or stability. Similarly, sustainable development (SD) has been defined and viewed from different angles. The most frequently cited definition is from “Our Common Future”, also known as the Brundtland Report,in which sustainable 2

 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development

development is defined as: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations, 1987). It is continuity of development in present and future both. The major dimensions of sustainable development are: social, economic, political, and, environmental. Whichever way we perceive, it is the common knowledge that information and knowledge are central to development, hence, open access is a strategic tool to sustainable development as a platform to share and utilize scientific publications.

OBJECTIVES OF THE CHAPTER The focus of this chapter is open access and sustainable development with specific focus on Africa. The chapter pursues the following objectives: § § § § §

Recognize the role of open access in achieving sustainable development Identify the prospects for open access in Africa Ascertain the current status of open access in Africa Identify the challenges of open access in Africa Provide a conceptual model for achieving sustainable development through open access platforms

LITERATURE REVIEW Evolution of concept of open access: The evolution of digital infrastructures has challenged the traditional scholarly communication system. Digital scholarship and openness are the latest trends for making scientific research outcomes freely available. Open access is a paradigm shift from the traditional model of scholarly communication to open access and it is the benchmark of digital scholarship. Open access emerged in order to address the problem of escalating cost of scholarly and scientific journals, which made their access restrictive and allowed publishers a monopoly on research publication. The open access movement gained momentum in 1994 when Stevan Harnad set fire in the academic and publishing world through The Subversive Proposal, which called authors to deposit their work on internet Fire Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers (Cho, 2008; Gideon, 2008). In 2002, Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) Declaration of 14 February 2002 was a milestone towards open access, when an old tradition (publishing research in scholarly journals without payment) and a new technology (Internet) congregated for an unprecedented public good. The public good was electronic distribution of peer-reviewed journal literature completely free and unrestricted accessed by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. BOAI open access Initiative launched a world-wide campaign for open access to all new peer-reviewed research. This Initiative recommended two complementary strategies to realize the objective of open access: self-archiving of refereed journal articles by scholars in open electronic archives and the second, Open-access Journals (BOAI, 2002). Another initiative towards open access was the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing in 2003, which promoted a gradual transition from traditional scholarly publication to open access publishing within the biomedical research community. Bethesda Statement of the Libraries & Publishers Working Group Access Publishing (2003) stated that, open access will be an essential component of scientific publishing in the future and that works reporting the results of current scientific research should be as 3

 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development

openly accessible and freely useable as possible. Libraries and publishers should make every effort to hasten this transition in a fashion that does not disrupt the orderly dissemination of scientific information. Traditionally, there were only two main strategies to open access: open access publishing in Journals (Gold Route) and Open Access Self-Archiving in repositories (Green Route). The “golden road” of open access journal publishing is, therefore where journals provide open access to their articles, either by charging the author-institution for refereeing/publishing outgoing articles instead of charging the user-institution for accessing incoming articles, or by simply making their online edition free for all. The “green road” of open access self-archiving is where authors provide open access to their own published articles by making their own e-prints free for all. Providing gold open access is in the hands of publishers and green open access is in the hands of researchers (Harnad, 2012). Gold open access charges a fee for an article or book processing, while there is no charging fee for green route publishing. A Creative Commons license permits unrestricted reuse of the article whereas reuse may be limited in Green Open Access (Springer Nature, 2020). Georgia State University Library (2020) categorizes Open Access into three categories: • • •

Green – refers to self-archiving generally of the pre-prints or pre-reviewed articles and post-prints in institutional repositories, or the publisher’s version, which is reformatted and appears in print or online Gold – refers to articles in fully accessible open access journals Hybrid – sometimes called Paid Open Access, refers to subscription for open access paid to the publisher or journal by the author, the author’s organization, or the research funder. For example: Open access by Taylor Francis, Online Open by Wiley, or Sage Open by Sage. For a full list visit Publishers with Paid Options for Open Access from SHERPA/RoMEO (Georgia State University Library, 2020). Subscription for Hybrid Open Access is also called the Article Processing Charge (APC). SHERPA/RoMEO (n.d.) classifies publishers into colours for easy identification:

• • • •

Green - refers to publishers whose policies allow accessibility to the pre-print and post-print or publisher’s version/PDF Blue - refers to publishers whose policies allow archiving of the post-print or publisher’s version/ PDF Yellow - refers to publishers whose policies allow archiving of the pre-print White - refers to publishers whose policies do not formally support archiving any version (Georgia State University Library, 2020).

For the purpose of this chapter, open access is defined as dissemination of scholarly publications free of charge in digital form to everyone, which is free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. There is a misunderstanding that open access material is completely free of charge: in fact it is free of organizational bureaucratic tape but there might be a payment in hybrid open access publishing as it has been explained above. It has three main categories: Green, Gold and Hybrid. This chapter will use the term open access to refer to any open access approach and it will be explained with appropriate examples wherever there is a need.

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 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development

Concept of Sustainable Development: The concept of sustainability first appeared in the Brundtland Report published in 1987 (United Nations, 1987). Today, Sustainable Development (SD) has become a fundamental strategy guiding the world’s social and economic transformation. The goal of sustainable development evolves from pursuing the single goal of sustainable use of natural resources to the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Shi, et al., 2019). The Brundtland Commission Report definition of sustainable development emphasizes on meeting the needs of current generation without negotiating the ability of future generations to fulfil their needs (Menash, 2020). According to Menash (2020), the concept of sustainable development is grounded on three pillars: economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability. Under economic sustainability, three main activities are carried out - production, distribution and consumption. Social sustainability encompasses notions of equity, empowerment, accessibility, participation, cultural identity and institutional stability as defined by the United Nations sustainable development goals (RMIT University, 2017). Environmental sustainability is about the natural environment and how it remains productive and resilient to support human life, which includes ecosystem integrity and carrying capacity of natural environment (Menash, 2020). RMIT University (2017) postulates 4 pillars of sustainable development including Social, Human, Economic and Environmental. Human sustainability aims to maintain and improve the human capital in society, such as, health, education systems, access to services, nutrition, knowledge and skills. To achieve sustainable development, the stability of all the above is imperative. To bring the international stability and development, the United Nations first initiated Eight International Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000-2015, which are succeeded by 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGS) On 25 September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the post 2015 development agenda termed “Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. The UN specifically referred to the agenda as a plan of action for the people, the planet and prosperity, which aimed at strengthening universal peace with larger freedom. Agenda 2030 comprises of 17 SDGs and 169 targets. They seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals (2020) and complete what these did not achieve, to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. They are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental. The goals and targets will stimulate action over the next 15 years in areas of critical importance for humanity and the “five Ps”: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, Partnership (UN, 2015). Target 10 in SDG 16 clearly points out: “Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements”. All 17 goals and respective targets depend on access to information. Each SDG has specific targets to be achieved by 2030. This chapter focuses on sustainable development in general not specific to any SDG, but the examples of SDGs are referred to whenever appropriate.

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 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development

OPEN ACCESS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT The overall goal of sustainable development is the long-term social, economic and environmental stability. Sustainability is the foundation of today’s leading global agenda the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development in the 21st century is targeted to be achieved through 17 SDGs. The 2030 agenda’s target 16.10 states: “Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements” (UN, 2015). In all sectors of a country and all spheres of life, access to information is critical. The realization of all other SDGs and for all types of development. SDG 4 for example states: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong opportunities for all”, which could benefit from access to research and data and facilitate learning. Open Access publishing opens educational resources for the development of education. Open data can help achieve the SDGs by providing critical information on natural resources, government operations, public services and population demographics. Open access publishing is to share digital scholarship with everyone to make people informed and be part of development. Being inherent authorities in information management, librarians are playing key roles in open access movement around the world, for example, in setting up institutional repositories, launching open access journals, assist academia archive their scholarly publications, engage with University/Institute administrators and funding bodies, digitization, advocacy etc. (Suber, 2012; Sanjeeva & Powdwal, 2017. IFLA the biggest international professional association in libraries and information profession is actively in support of open access. Access to information, and libraries as institutions that deliver it, are therefore vital to achieving the SDGs (IFLA Library Policy and Advocacy Blog, 2018). IFLA’s advocacy efforts for a better recognition of access to information and libraries’ contribution to development are consistently underlined by initiatives such as the International Advocacy Program (IAP) and the Development and Access to Information (DA2I) report, and earlier in the Lyon Declaration on Access to Information for Development (IFLA Library Policy and Advocacy Blog, 2018). IFLA’s Library Policy and Advocacy Blog (2018) further emphasizes this: “There is an obvious link between Open Access (OA) and access to information, and therefore between open access and the SDGs. Open access is key to ensuring that society benefits from scientific knowledge, by informing further research in the area or simply the end user”. Reviewed literature reveals numerous benefits of open access to researchers, educational institutions, and funding agencies. The following section discusses the benefits of open access and how they lead towards sustainable development: Wider economy and society: Open access opens research access to everyone not only those who can afford it. Anyone can benefit from wider access to research, from small businesses to schools (Clare, 2019). This can lead to sustainable development and increase in national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This benefit of open access therefore enhances the achievement of SDGs, more specifically goal 10 (reduced inequality), as information will be freely available for all to access. Access to Open Educational Resources: The term “Open Educational Resources” (OERs) was created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for Higher Education in developing countries to describe a new global phenomenon of openly sharing educational resources in 2002 (UNESCO, 2019a). Open access provides OERs, which are opened by copyright owners by adding a Creative Commons or any other license that removes some copyright restrictions. Ideally, it should be allowed to others to “retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute” without any need to ask for the permission if the work is copyrighted (Fox Valley Technical College Library, 2019). Education plays a pivotal role in developing a country in every aspect, be it social, cultural, environmental, political, 6

 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development

economic or moral development. Education is the platform that manipulates the needed manpower for national development. The quality of a nation’s education determines the level of its national development (Faiz, 2019). Access to Open Educational resources through open access platforms therefore contributes to national development. This benefit further enhances the achievement of SDG 4 (Quality Education). Unlimited access to open data or open information enhances a learner’s ability to acquire knowledge and be innovative. With increased levels of education, knowledge-based economies will be born and thus be able to achieve the rest of the 16 SDGs within different spheres and capacities. Increased research output: Open Access is a means to increase research output in the following ways: §

§ § §

Open access facilitates scholarly communication/publications and benefits both researchers and research institutions by increasing their global visibility and the prestige and improves research access. It provides evidence for impact and improves researchers’ reputations and that of their host institutions through increased citations (Ezema & Onyancha, 2017; Clare, 2019; University of the Witwatersrand, 2020). Open access publishing serves as a motivator for the author to have the results of their findings accessible as early as possible. Open access articles are viewed and cited more often than the print versions (Springer Nature, 2020). Open access publications and data enable researchers to carry out collaborative research on a global scale and also create new research opportunities (Springer Nature, 2020).

With increased research outputs, visibility and collaboration in open access, nations are likely to have increased knowledge databases/warehouses which in turn will also increase access to information, thus facilitating achievement of the SDGs in different spheres. More specifically, research and development links with SDG 17 which states: “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development”. Research is key to innovation and development. Open access empowers researchers with the latest techniques: Open Access empowers anyone to use powerful text and data mining tools that can analyze the entire research literature, uncovering trends and connection tools, which hold the potential of revolutionizing how research is conducted (SPARC Europe, 2020). This relates to Goal 9 that envisions fostering innovation. The more people build upon the latest research, the more valuable that research becomes and the more likely we are to benefit as a society, with less problems (SPARC Europe, 2020). Return on funders’ investment: Open Access ensures the dissemination and utilization of funded research outcomes by everyone including industry and society to achieve the goal of advancing human knowledge and ultimately improve lives (Clare, 2019; SPARC Europe, 2020). Thus, open access increases the return on funders’ investment. Improved consumption of scientific information: Open access publications are heavily used in comparison to traditionally published research outcomes particularly by those who rarely produce any research findings (Ezema & Onyancha, 2017). Scientific information is both a researcher’s greatest output and technological innovation’s most important resource. Hence, open access has a fundamental role to support the SDGs (UNESCO, 2019b). Scientific information is considered a researcher’s greatest output because scientific papers, being peer-reviewed, are more reliable than other information sources. Technological innovation creates new business opportunities for entrepreneurs and provides them a competitive edge over their competitors in this ever changing and increasingly volatile global business 7

 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development

environment. Improved consumption of scientific information leads to higher profits for businesses, and consequently, higher GDPs. Researchers and their institutions benefit from having the widest audience, more potential collaborators, and more citations of their work, and consequently more recognition (SPARC Europe, 2020). This in turn motivates the researchers for further research leading towards innovation and consequently towards development. In this way, open access publishing is a world-wide knowledge sharing and knowledge application platform relevant to knowledge-based economy. Access to open access educational resources improves the quality of education, which is fundamental in developing a country socially, culturally, politically and economically. Open access publishing, therefore facilitates the achievement of sustainable development and SDGs.

PROSPECTS OF USING OPEN ACCESS SPECIFIC TO AFRICA Open Access is becoming increasingly popular globally and provides unique opportunities for scientists in Africa, South East Asia, and Latin America (Ahinon and Havemann, 2018). African scientists face several hitches when attempting to publish their work in peer-reviewed journals. Open access has offered Africa an unequalled opportunity to showcase its intellectual prowess at a level that had, traditionally been primarily dominated by US and European intellectual centres (Teixeira da Silva, 2018: 497). According to a study by the African Journal Online (AJOL) published in September 2014, of 319 journals listed on the African continent, 197 had open access publication policies (Ahinon and Havemann, 2018). The main prospects of Open Access in Africa are outlines below: Cheaper, cost effective and unrestrained accessibility of educational resources: In Africa, the biggest challenge is finance, so open access has rescued the continent. Adeyokun, Adebowale, & Yaya, (2015, p, 237) appropriately asserted that: “With open access facilities being enjoyed by most academic libraries in some developing countries like Nigeria, they can acquire educational resources like e-books and e-journals at a cheaper rate than to acquire the original hard copies of these resources from their foreign based publishers”. Thus, this is the primary advantage of open access journals in Africa - the unrestrained accessibility to educational resources by any information seekers everywhere at no cost. Education for sustainable development is set out in regional agendas. The Continental Education Strategy for Africa 2016–2025 (CESA) was developed under the auspices of the African Union, which provides continuity on the central role accorded to education in Agenda 2063. Developing the priorities identified by African Ministers of Education set out in the Kigali Declaration that fed into the SDG consultation process can also be seen as a regional response to the education SDG (Tikly, 2019:225). Thus, unrestricted accessibility to educational resources through the open access medium is a blessing for Africa, leading the continent towards sustainable development. Speedy publication of scholarly work: open access is a platform for speedy dissemination of intellectual work and sharing of digital scholarship world-wide. Open access provides African scientists “the opportunity to participate in the international research community” (Okemwa, 2016:13-14). Okemwa (2016) further emphasizes the importance of quick distribution of scholarly research, “There is no need to wait for months, for example, for an article to fit with the theme of a journal before it can be published” (Okemwa, 2016:14). Also, open access of educational materials allow authors an easy access to information resources to enable them to publish their research outputs speedily (Adeyokun, Adebowale, & Yaya, 2015). At least 10 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comprising the 2030

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Agenda for Sustainable Development require constant scientific input (UNESCO, 2019b). Hence, open access is vital for Africa. Enhances easy publication of intellectual works: Open access of educational materials allows authors an easy access to information resources to enable them to publish their research outputs speedily (Adeyokun, Adebowale, & Yaya, 2015). At least 10 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comprising the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development require constant scientific input (UNESCO, 2019b).Through open access platforms all SDGs latest scientific information can be published. Africa can also establish and publish via Africa-based open access platforms (Teixeira da Silva, 2018). This is a good prospect for African scholars especially for new researchers. Elimination of bias against African researchers’ publication: According to ZBW MediaTalk (2019), there is currently a bias on the contribution from African researchers to global scientific production, which is due to the lack of visibility of the content that is produced on and about the continent. MediaTalk (2019) further observes that despite a number of scientific publication platforms and journals, these are not sufficiently visible. Open science is a promising vehicle to reduce or even eliminate this bias in the long run. This is an indication of a progressive future with visibility and growth of African scholarship on the global landscape and a move towards equal access to knowledge. Global visibility and utilization of research findings: Unlike local journal articles that are not on open access websites, African research outputs are limited only to local authors and researchers who manage to pay subscription fees (Adeyokun, Adebowale, & Yaya, 2015). Through open access, African researchers can have global visibility, a diverse audience, easier and cheaper dissemination of research outputs without printing costs, a higher citation rate, and better utilisation of their research outputs. Among the top 100 countries globally, the entire African continent produces approximately only 2 per cent of research output according to Scimago Journal and Country Rank (Teixeira da Silva, 2018: 496). Open access calls for more scholars to come forward and publish their scientific research more extensively because: “The noble objective of open access initiatives will not be realised if scholars in developing countries merely constitute “active consumers” and “passive contributors” (Chrisian, 2018:11). This is generally the case with scholars from low technology regions, who mainly consume the information uploaded by other scholars (Nwagwu, 2016). Ezema & Onyancha (2017, p. 112) were of the view that open access is here “to localize and globalize scientific information for democratization of scholarship globally”. This would provide greater visibility of scholarly output for both the researcher and the research institution and can have a status-heightening effect (Okemwa, 2016). Nwagwu,(2016, p. 71) therefore, came to the conclusion that open access is “an opportunity for African scholars to take the future of scholarship in the region in their own hands—they can share their thoughts and exchange information with one another”.

OPEN ACCESS STATUS IN AFRICA Before deliberating on the challenges of open access in Africa, it would be appropriate to briefly scan through open access status in Africa. The open access movement started to gain momentum in Africa in the mid-2010s. South Africa was an early adopter of Open access and has a relatively strong culture of research production and strong infrastructure of information technology. South Africa adopted open access practices through the development of institutional repositories (IRs). South Africa currently has 44 IRs registered on OpenDOAR. The university librarians have taken the responsibility of repositories 9

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upon themselves (Raju, n.d.). However, open Access movement initiatives and awareness in the whole continent are evident from the following: § § § § § § §

12 Open Science-related (Open Access/Open Data/Open Science) declarations and agreements endorsed or signed by African governments (Academy of Science of South Africa, 2019); 196 Open Access journals from Africa registered on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); 174 Open Access institutional research repositories registered on OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories); 33 Open Access/Open Science policies registered on ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies); 24 data repositories registered with the Registry of Data Repositories (re3data.org) (although the pilot project identified 66 research data repositories); One data repository assigned the CoreTrustSeal. Although this is a start, far more needs to be done to align all African research practices with global standards (Smith, 2019). Availability of free e-learning platforms such as, https://africanfossils.org/, which is a virtual lab for scholars to explore and interact with fossil collections online for free. The aim of African Fossils is to increase public knowledge about prehistory by harnessing modern technology (UNESCO, 2017).

Initially, it was difficult for African researchers to access other African academics’ scholarly work. Research from Africa therefore has a very low international reach, and as a result, is not readily available to other researchers in the region or to the international scientific community (Foxall, 2019). African Journals OnLine (AJOL), the world’s largest online library of peer-reviewed African-published scholarly journals, has changed the situation in Africa. Currently, AJOL publishes 263 Open Access Journals and has 112 250 Open Access Full Text Articles for download. As a result, African-origin research output is now more readily available to Africans and to the rest of the world (AJOL, 2020). According to DOAJ, 19 African countries representing 196 of the 13 773 journals are currently listed on this index that provides access to high-quality, Open Access, peer-reviewed journals (Smith, 2019). Figure 1 shows the IRS in Africa by Region. It is apparent from the Figure 1 that Africa has only 218 repositories of the total of 5319 repositories registered on OpenDOAR. Africa produces only around 0.74% of global scientific knowledge (Smith, 2019). Within the two regions (Eastern Africa and Southern Africa) with the highest number of registered IRs, South Africa (44) and Kenya (41) are in the lead. Figure 2 further shows the increase in IR registration yearly. Though Africa has the smallest number of IRs registered on OpenDOAR it is praiseworthy that the total numbers are not stagnant; rather they are increasing every year. As can be seen on Figure 2, by august 2020 there are already 5388 IRs registered on OpneDOAR. It is evident from the Open Data Barometer (ODB) that most African countries are still lagging in terms of open data readiness and implementation. It can be seen in Figure 3, the overall scores out of 100 and their global ranking out of 115 countries are very low. Nevertheless, it is reassuring to see Kenya in the top first tier of global leaders in open data implementation and impact. As shown in Figure 3, the leaders for each region are Canada, Israel, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, and the UK. Overall, these findings reveal that the regional champions have been improving steadily since the last edition (Open Data Barometer, 2017).

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Figure 1. IRs in Africa by Region. (OpenDOAR, 2020)

Figure 2. Growth of IRs (OpenDOAR, 2020)

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 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development

Figure 3. Barometer’s fourth edition regional champions with their respective overall rankings and scores (Open Data Barometer, (2017)

The discussion that follows below examines some of the challenges that Africa faces constraining open access strategies in various African countries.

OPEN ACCESS CHALLENGES IN AFRICA Despite the enormous potential offered by open access in Africa, literature reveals numerous challenges that inhibit open access initiatives in many African countries. Nwagwu, (2013, p.5) posited that “Cursory evidence shows that many Africans know about open access, but not so much about the science and technology that have developed around it”. Nwagwu further asserted that none of the prevailing open access models, whether green, gold or hybrid are Afro-centric. Despite easy publication of scholarship as mentioned earlier, African scientists still face numerous problems in publishing their work. The major challenges in Africa are: Social and political crises: In Africa, due to social and political crises, access to scientific information becomes less important for policy makers over other challenges, such as, education, hunger and health. Open access is an individual scholar’s affair, who has the sole responsibility for sourcing and using any information materials (Nwagwu, 2013). This prevents African scholars from full utilization of the open access benefits and contributes negatively towards development in Africa.

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High article charges: In most cases in the gold model of open access authors’ fees for publishing the article are higher than the cost of buying the print journals, which is a challenge for African scholars, hence their inability to publish in the gold journals (Nwagwu, 2013). Researchers from Africa are the least able to pay to access information or afford Article Processing Charges (APCs) so either research is not published or is not made freely accessible to all (Ahinon and Havemann, 2018; Foxall, 2019). Particularly, new scholars are not in the financial position to publish in open access journals (Okemwa, 2016). So, high article charges inhibit scholarly publication in Africa. Lack of funding and incentives: Lack of funding and a disproportionate spread of funding opportunities are limitations in Africa that result in low research output. Economic and political problems hamper investment in, and development of, power, telecommunications and technological infrastructures (Fox & Hanlon, 2015). For instance, South Africa, with the highest funding in Africa, is still one of the least funded among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) key partners (Teixeira da Silva, 2018). Likewise, the development of institutional repositories is very expensive, hence many academic institutions in Africa still do not have an institutional repository. Open access archiving requires huge capital, which many universities in Africa may not afford and need support from funding bodies such as, government and other local and international organizations interested in funding research. As noted by several scholars, in Africa, governments pay lip services to research and scholarship (Christian, 2008; Adeyokun, Adebowale, & Yaya, 2015; Ezema & Onyancha, 2017; Teixeira da Silva, 2018). Only 35 out of 54 African Union member countries for example demonstrate some level of commitment to science through investment in research and development. Only two African countries (Kenya and South Africa) contribute 0.8% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to research and development, which is the closest to the African Union’s suggested 1% (Smith, 2019). Hence, African researchers mostly fund their own research. Moreover, there are few incentives for them to make their research openly accessible. Funding, peer recognition and an ICT-enabled research environment are considered as possible major incentives (Smith, 2019). In United Kingdom (UK) Research England supports open access publishing through the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and also has Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). Africa needs to appreciate and emulate such example, funding and incentives both are vital to use open access as a vehicle to sustainable development. Inadequate Information and communications technology infrastructure: The digital divide between developed and developing countries has a negative impact on the actualization of the open access initiative in developing countries. It limits access to open access journals and the ability of institutions to establish and maintain institutional repositories or archives (Christian, 2008; Adeyokun, Adebowale, & Yaya, 2015). Fox & Hanlon (2015) further aver that often technological factors are the predominant reason for lack of engagement with OA. A stable ICT infrastructure including connectivity/bandwidth, high performance computing facilities and data services are critical for Open access publishing. In addition to Internet censorship and the threat commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) bring, power outages on the continent interrupting Internet service delivery are a further challenge. Thus, Africa has a huge infrastructure gap, including both broadband infrastructure and access to broadband services (Smith, 2019). The Internet is the backbone of open access. The problem of Internet access is very predominant in the developing world, mainly due to the high cost of connectivity and the poor state of telecommunication infrastructure (Christian, 2008). Internet access is one of the most recurrent hindrances for scientific research in Africa and remains very low in some regions while Internet penetration remains low across the continent (Attanasio, Giorgi cited in Ahinon and Havemann, 2018). According to a May 2017 Internet 13

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Society report on Internet use in education in Africa, only a few countries such as Botswana, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal and South Africa have made efforts to improve connectivity, which have enabled key actors in the education system to have better access to the Internet (Ahinon and Havemann, 2018). A lack of ICT infrastructure limits access to open access journals and the ability of institutions to establish and maintain institutional repositories or archives (Christian, 2008; Adeyokun, Adebowale, & Yaya, 2015). Lack of awareness and misconception of Open access: There is misconception and lack of awareness of the existence and benefits of open access publishing in Africa (Christian, 2008). This is also reflected in staff promotions. A lecturer’s publication in an open access journal was refused to be considered for an academic promotion because he had paid to get his work published (Christian, 2008; Cheverie et al., 2009; Weller, 2012). Some open access journals, which are free (or very cheap), are considered of poor or low quality, while expensive journals are considered of high quality. This fallacy is a serious impediment to the development and the progress of open access in the developing world (Christian, 2008; UNESCO, 2017). Capacity Building: Capacity building is another issue in Africa. A lack of research training facilities (Ngongalah et al, 2019), a lack of expertise in preparing manuscripts for publication (Chu, et al. 2014) are some of the challenges. Recently, Hajj et al (2020) identified insufficient opportunities for developing research skills and ‘soft’ researcher skills such as, ethics, academic writing research capacity gaps in African research institutions. “There is a need to improve the capacity of African-based researchers in order to enable them to produce and consume reliable science in an era of compromised publishing practices such as the rapidly emerging phenomenon of journal hacking and hijacking, from which no academic benefits” (Teixeira da Silva, 2018:501-502). Building capacity to produce and publish research outputs is important and sustainable means to advance development in Africa as research is key to development. Lack of Government support: Lack of Government support and interest in open access is another problem in Africa (Ezema & Onyancha, 2017) According to Smith (2019), low levels of political willingness among African countries to make funding available towards advancing science, is at the core of this low level of contribution. Like most African governments, the Kenyan government has no explicit policies mandating open access publishing. The authors recommend, African governments should implement policies to ensure that research findings are shared widely, through public funding for open access publishing costs and there should be legislative measures mandating open access publishing for all research pioneered by African governments and publicly funded research or that which is publicly funded akin to UK and Australia for the economic and social benefits of open access for the African region (Matheka, et al., 2014). Lack of advocacy: Many researchers remain unaware of the benefits and the opportunities for open access publishing. As it has been noted by Smith (2019) in her guest post, in addition to a general lack of awareness of open access especially at government level, there is also very low awareness of scholarly publishing platforms, such as, Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Open Journal Systems (OJS) and other tools in support of the research and scholarly publishing process (Smith, 2019) Advocacy for open access is crucial towards securing the support by universities, governments, research funders, charitable funders and other organizations (Matheka, et al., 2014).There have been great strides in open access in the region, still raising more awareness, advocacy and capacity building are needed to improve internet penetration, introduce open access policies and mandates, convert subscription-based journals into open access journals and launch new open access journals and to set up open access repositories and make them sustainable (ENESCO, 2017).

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Predatory publishing in Africa: Probably to contend with publish or perish, increasingly, researchers are publishing in predatory journals predominantly in Africa and “with the advent of predatory journals, the quantity of scientific information on the Internet has spiraled tremendously” (Nwagwu, 2016, p 75). “Predatory publishers are essentially counterfeit publishers. They pretend to be genuine scholarly publishers, but they aim really to generate as much revenue as possible from researchers. They employ the gold (author pays) open-access model, charging authors a fee upon acceptance of a research article for publication” (Beall, 2017, p 55). For example, Shen and Bjork (2015 cited in Ajuwon and Ajuwon, 2018), found that the publication volume of predatory journals identified from Beall’s list (www.beallist.weebly.com) rose from 53, 000 in 2010 to 420,000 in 2014. In Nigeria, “predatory OA publishing is now a lucrative business” (Ajuwon and Ajuwon, 2018, p 3). Ajuwon and Ajuwon (2018:3) further noted that, “the two Nigerian publishers found in Beall’s list established 28 active journals in five years and made an approximate income of $3, 360, 500 during the period”. In South Africa, total number of 3907 papers which constitute 3.4% of the total article production over the past 10 years appeared in predatory journals (Mouton, 2017). This is alarming. Predatory open access journals tend to mislead and cheat authors (Sylvester, 2018). “Research in education and human development is important and greatly benefits society” (Beall, 2017, p 55). Sylvester (2018) has appropriately voiced, that to overcome the challenges of predatory open access there is need for scientific, engineering, technological, sociological, economic and political approaches on the attainment of SDGs, .If the predatory journals are not monitored open access publishing can have a negative impact on research communities, and this can bring a negative impetus on development in Africa. Commercial publishing houses: With the emergence of ICTs, commercial publishing houses have moved from the hard form of journals to online subscription version with restricted access (Christian, 2008). The survival of these commercial publishing houses depends on the survival of the fee-based subscription model, which is threatened by the open access model. This has become a challenge to scholars world-wide including Africa and seems to defeat the purpose of open access to respond to the restrictive access to knowledge in scientific journals, which was also imposed by commercial publishing houses in the form of subscription fees, license fees or pay-per-view fees. Lack of governance of open access/Open Science in Africa: As noted by Ahinon and Havemann (2018), the open science movement in Africa could benefit from a greater involvement of educational and political decision-making bodies. According to figures from the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), in 2018, the number of open access policies on the continent was evaluated at 31, the majority of which were from East African countries (17) and South Africa (9) (roarmap.eprints.org). Ethiopia is the only African country thus far with an open access policy at a national level, announced and released during October 2019, paving the way for other African countries to hopefully follow suit (Smith, 2019). There is therefore “an urgent need for national policies to spell out what open access means in and to Africa, providing guidelines for the adoption and institutionalization of the movement” (Nwagwu, 2016, 75-76). To summarize, for Africa to address its many challenges through open access, there is a need to develop policies, incentivize research sharing, skills development, and proper infrastructure and affordable and stable connectivity (Smith, 2019).

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CONCLUSION RECOMMENDATION The chapter discussed the attainment of sustainable development through open access, and the current status of open access in Africa. The chapter also deliberated on numerous prospects of open access and the challenges that researchers and academia are confronted with in Africa in showcasing their research through open access knowledge platforms. Based on the foregoing, it could be concluded that in spite of several initiatives towards open access publishing, Africa is still not contributing substantially to the global scientific research output. “Africa continues to lag behind in the global open access movement despite some positive accomplishments, such as Egypt’s impressive number of open access journals and South Africa boasting the largest number of repositories. By and large, there are African countries where open access has little impact (Fox and Hanlon, 2020, p 708). Hence, it is imperative for all key players (authors/researchers, institutions, publishers and government/policy makers) to come on board with joined hands to benefit from open access to its fullest potential and through it, attain sustainable development. Despite numerous challenges, African scholars should not miss out on this valuable prospect if they wish to have a sustainable future for themselves and the future generations. Otherwise, “Africa’s slow pace in adopting scientific information management strategies, which could enhance the exploitation of open access advantages, will continue to devalue the significance of open access in the national development in Africa” (Nwagwu, 2016, p.77). Open access can definitely prove to be a blessing for the continent by incapacitating the challenges. By diffusing scientific information and knowledge freely to everyone through open access platforms, Africa will be able to build knowledge-based economies and thereby, enhance sustainable development and become part of global economy. In order to overcome some of the challenges, the author puts forward the following recommendations. Figure 4. Roadmap for OA as a platform for sustainable development (Developed by author)

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RECOMMENDATION The linkage between the proposed measures and the attainment of sustainable development is shown in Figure 4: Open access policies and standards: Formulation of clear vision, strategies and policies on ownership of research outputs, and quality standards to handle intellectual property/copyright issues are crucial for publishing open access research. Government and academic institutions should come up with open access policies and standards. Open access policies should clearly state the need to publish or provide access to raw data alongside the published articles. This will reduce duplication of efforts and permit other scholars to emulate and learn from the available data. There is need for mandatory policies to selfarchive the scientific research publication including students’ thesis and dissertation. National and panAfrican policies for open access and collaboration between the various actors in Research and Economic Development will play a key role in making science more visible within and outside Africa. This can be achieved strategically by creating an environment conducive to the implementation of Open Science practices on the one hand, and by making the above-mentioned initiatives and services complementary, interoperable and thus more effective on the other hand (Ahinon and Havemann, 2018). Adequate ICT infrastructure: A robust ICT infrastructure, including high-speed Internet connection/ bandwidth, high performance computing facilities and data services, is indispensable for open access publishing. A suitable ICT infrastructure will help to disseminate and share knowledge more effectively through open access platforms at the global level. A lack of ICT infrastructure limits the use of open access platform to their fullest potential. Government support: To make the information and knowledge accessible to everyone Government has a key role to play in the open access movement. Governments should be committed to adequate funding for research and innovation of their scholars and academics, adequate budget, adequate ICT infrastructure and high-speed Internet. This can also be achieved by ensuring that necessary equipment and ICT infrastructures are available within knowledge repository institutions such as archives and libraries which are knowledge hubs. Africa-based Open access platforms/repositories: Studies have shown that organizations in Africa are lagging behind in developing institutional repositories. It becomes important for organizations showing magnanimity to Africa in respect of access to scientific information on open access basis to adopt approaches that conform to Bethesda, Budapest and Berlin definitions of open access. In this way, open access initiatives could fit the needs, goals and developmental agenda of the developing countries (Nwagwu, 2013). In addition, there is need to set up sustainable open access repositories and encourage researchers and students to self-archive (UNESCO, 2017). Provision of research funding: To encourage open access publishing African scholars require research funding. Because of financial issues, most researchers are unable to fund for themselves and it limits them from contributing to global research knowledge databases and developmental goals. This calls for academic institutions and the governments to assist potential researchers in their research projects and make their research reachable world-wide through open access. Increased capacity building: Honest efforts to build human capacity in the developing world would require the full adoption and implementation of the tenets of open access by organizations and agencies, which have become famous for their magnanimity toward developing countries and their scientific initiatives (Nwagwu, 2013, p 8). Capacity building also entails supporting scholars through research grants and sponsorship to conferences. 17

 Open Access as a Platform for Sustainable Development

Incentives: Academic institutions should provide incentives to encourage researchers and academia to publish through open access platforms and recognize open access publications in promotions and tenure evaluation. Recognition of open access publications for promotions and research funding could be incentive strategies to encourage new researchers and research funding. Open access advocacy: It is imperative to conscientiously promote open access benefits to educate scholars and other stakeholders and eliminate the misunderstanding to associate open access with vanity publishing. Open access publishing should be recognized by a wider community on individual and institutional levels. The open access advocacy should be accompanied by awareness campaigns. This could be succeeded via conferences, workshops, professional associations and by hosting a national open access week. Librarians can play a crucial role in the rigorous advocacy and awareness of open access publishing among faculties, government, potential funding agencies and readers, potential readers, and other libraries and stakeholders. This would also increase their visibility to the academia and world at large. Final Remarks: The paper concludes with Smith’s (2019, online) suggestion that “A future federated African Open Science Platform (AOSP) in which policies, skills, incentives and infrastructure needs are addressed will not only encourage more collaboration among researchers in addressing the SDGs, but it will also benefit the many stakeholders identified as part of the research process. But only if there is commitment from African governments”. Most importantly, African countries should consider implementation of regionally relevant and supporting policies and standards for open access publishing and information access. Policies are key to the attainment of open access publishing. Every other strategy implemented towards the attainment of open access should be based on the stipulated policies.

REFERENCES Adedamola Ogundeindea, A., & Ejohwomub, O. (2016). Knowledge Economy: A panacea for sustainable development in Nigeria. Retrieved February, 20, 2020, from https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/ Adeyokun, B.O., Adebowale, T.O., & Yaya, J.A. (2015). The Prospects and Challenges of Open Access Educational Resources (OAER) in the Library Retrieval System. Asian Journal of Education and e-Learning, 3(4), 234-242. Ahinon, J., & Havemann, J. (2018). Open Science in Africa – Challenges, Opportunities and Perspectives. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://elephantinthelab.org/open-science-in-africa/ AJOL. (2020). African Journals Online (AJOL). Retrieved January 31, 2020, from https://www.ajol.info/ Ajuwon, G.A., & A.J. Ajuwon, A.J. (2018). Predatory publishing and the dilemma of the Nigerian Academic. African Journal of Biomedical Research, 21(1), 1-5. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from file:///C:/ Users/jainp/Downloads/165957-Article%20Text-427905-1-10-20180131.pdf Beall, J. (2017). Predatory journals, peer review, and education research. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 29(1), 54–58. doi:10.1002/nha3.20173 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. (2003). Retrieved January 19, 2020, from http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess- berlin/berlin_declaration.pdf

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Bethesda Statement. (2003). The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/48547523_The_Bethesda_Statement_on_OpenAccess_Publishing BOAI. (2002). Budapest Open Access Initiative. Retrieved February 22, 2020, from https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read Cheverie, J. F., Boerrcher, J., & Buschman, J. (2009). Digital Scholarship in the University Tenure and Promotion Process. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 40(3), 219–230. doi:10.3138/jsp.40.3.219 Cho, A. (2008). Open Access in Academic Libraries: The Beginning of the End for Publishing? Retrieved January 18, 2020, from http://www.suite101.com/content/open-access-a66396 Chu, K. M., Jayaraman, S., Kyamanywa, P., & Ntakiyiruta, G. (2014). Building research capacity in Africa: Equity and global health collaborations. PLoS Medicine, 11(3), e1001612. doi:10.1371/journal. pmed.1001612 PMID:24618823 Clare, H. (2019). An introduction to open access. Retrieved January 18, 2020, from https://www.jisc. ac.uk/guides/an-introduction-to-open-access Clobridge, A. (2014). Knowledge Management and Open Access. Retrieved January 26, 2020, from https://fireoakstrategies.com/knowledge-management-and-open-access/ Cornell University Library. (2019). Open Access Publishing: What is Open Access? Retrieved January, 19, 2020, from https://guides.library.cornell.edu/openaccess/home El Hajj, T. (2020). Strengthening capacity for natural sciences research: A qualitative assessment to identify good practices, capacity gaps and investment priorities in African research institutions. Retrieved March, 19, 2020, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0228261 Ezema, I. J., & Onyancha, O. B. (2017). Open access publishing in Africa: Advancing research outputs to global visibility. African Journal of Library Archives and Information Science, 27(2), 97–115. Faiz, B. (2019). Role of Education in National Development. Retrieved January, 18, 2020, from https:// voiceofbalochistan.pk/opinions-and-articles/healtheducation/role-of-education-in-national-development/ Fox Valley Technical College Library. (2019). Open Access (OA) & OER: What is the difference between OA and OER? Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://library.fvtc.edu/OA/vsOER Foxall, K. (2019). How open access journals can increase Africa’s research impact. Retrieved January, 19, 2020, from http://www.openaccessweek.org/profiles/blogs/how-open-access-journals-can-increaseafrica-s-research-impact GeorgiaState University Library. (2020). Open Access: Types of OA. Retrieved February, 15, 2020, from https://research.library.gsu.edu/c.php?g=115588&p=754380 Harnad, S. (2012). What is open access? Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://www.eprints.org/ openaccess/

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IFLA. (2016). IFLA Statement on Open Access to Scholarly Literature and Research Documentation. Retrieved February 7, 2020, from https://www.ifla.org/publications/ifla-statement-on-open-access-toscholarly-literature-and-research-documentation IFLA. (2018). How open access can help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Retrieved March, 15, 2020, from https://blogs.ifla.org/lpa/2018/10/24/how-open-access-can-help-achieve-sustainable-development-goals-sdgs/ IFLA Library Policy and Advocacy Blog. (2018). How open access can help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Retrieved February 17, 2020, from https://blogs.ifla.org/lpa/2018/10/24/ how-open-access-can-help-achieve-sustainable-development-goals-sdgs/ Kimura, J., & Clobridge, A. (2014). Strategic Expansion of Analytics Capacity through Knowledge Management. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://fireoakstrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ Health-Analytics-Knowledge-Management-Collaboration.pdf Liu, S. (2017). Sustainable Development. Retrieved February, 20, 2020, from https://www.sciencedirect. com/topics/engineering/sustainable-development Matheka, D. M., Nderitu, J., & Mutonga, D. (2014). Open access: academic publishing and its implications for knowledge equity in Kenya. Global Health. Retrieved February, 22, 2020, from https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1744-8603-10-26 doi:10.1186/1744-8603-10-26 Meghana Manohar Sanjeeva, M. M., & Powdwal, S. C. (2017). Open Access Initiatives: Reframing the role of Librarians. Library Herald, 55(4), 467–468. doi:10.5958/0976-2469.2017.00037.9 Mensah, J. (2019). Sustainable development: Meaning, history, principles, pillars, and implications for human action: Literature review. Retrieved February, 24, 2020, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ pdf/10.1080/23311886.2019.1653531?needAccess=true Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). (2020). The 8 MDG Goals. Retrieved March 17, 2020, from https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sdgoverview/mdg_goals.html Mouton, J. (2017). Predatory publishing in South Africa: Scale and challenges. Retrieved February, 15, 2020, from https://ru.za.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=36503156 Nature, S. (2020). Benefits of Open Research. Retrieved January 18, 2020, from https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/about/benefits Ngongalah, L. (2019). Tackling the research capacity challenge in Africa: An overview of African-led approaches to strengthen research capacity. Retrieved February, 21, 2020, from https://www.biorxiv. org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/01/13/518498.full.pdf Nwagwu, W. E. (2013). Open Access Initiatives in Africa: Structure, Incentives and Disincentives. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 39(1), 3–10. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2012.11.024 Nwagwu, W. E. (2016). Open Access in the Developing Regions: Situating the Altercations about Predatory Publishing. Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 40(1), 58–80.

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Okemwa, O. (2016). Open Access, Scholarly Publishing and Knowledge Production in Sub-Saharan Africa: Opportunities and Challenges. Retrieved February, 22, 2020, fromhttps://www.google. co.uk/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=Opportunities+and+Challenges.+Ondari+Okemwa& hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiwsazIlfrqAhUSh1wKHZj0AEQQsAR6BAgLEAE&biw=1366& bih=657#imgrc=dNuohwqQJnDxvM Open Access.nl. (n.d.). What is open access? Retrieved February, 22, 2020, from https://www.openaccess.nl/en/what-is-open-access Open Data Barometer. (2017). Global Report (4th ed.). Retrieved January 31, 2020, from https://opendatabarometer.org/4thedition/report/#findings_recommendations OpenDOAR. (2020). Directory of Open Access Repositories. Retrieved January 31, 2020, from http:// www.opendoar.org/ Powell, W. W., & Snellman, K. (2004). The Knowledge Economy. Retrieved January 31, 2020, from https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kaisa/files/powell_snellman.pdf Raju, R. (n.d.). Open Access publishing support in South Africa. https://www.ifla.org/files/assets/ academic-and-research-libraries/publications/reggie_raju.pdf Research England. (2018). Open Access Research. Retrieved February 19, 2020, from https://re.ukri. org/research/open-access-research/ RMIT University. (2017). The four pillars of sustainability. Retrieved February, 22, 2020, from https:// www.futurelearn.com/courses/sustainable-business/0/steps/78337 Roger Williams University. (2020). Scholarly Communication & Open Access. Retrieved February 28, 2020 from https://www.rwu.edu/library/help-and-services/information-faculty/scholarly-communicationopen-access SHERPA/RoMEO. (n.d.). Definitions and Terms. Retrieved February 16, 2020, from http://www.sherpa. ac.uk/romeoinfo.html#colours Shi, L., Han, L., Yang, F., & Fao, L. (2019). The Evolution of Sustainable Development Theory: Types. Goals, and Research Prospects. Smith, I. (2019). Guest Post: Overview of the African Open Access Landscape, with a Focus on Scholarly Publishing. Retrieved February, 16, 2020, from https://blog.doaj.org/2019/10/11/guest-post-overviewof-the-african-open-access-landscape-with-a-focus-on-scholarly-publishing/ SPARC Europe. (2020). Key OA benefits. Retrieved February 15, 2020, from https://sparceurope.org/ what-we-do/open-access/oa-benefits/ Suber, P. (2012). Open Access Overview: Focusing on open access to peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm Sylvester, B. (2018). Open Access for Sustainable Development, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) AG, Basel, Switzerland. Retrieved February 15, 2020, from https://blog.mdpi. com/2018/01/15/open-access-for-sustainable-development/

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Teixeira da Silva, J., Adjei, K., Owusu-Ansah, C., Sooryamoorthy, R., & Balehegn, M. (2018). Africa’s challenges in the OA movement: Risks and possibilities. Online Information Review, 43(4), 496–512. doi:10.1108/OIR-04-2018-0152 Tikly, L. (2019). Education for sustainable development in Africa: a critique of regional agendas. Retrieved February 10, 2020, from https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12564-019-09600-5.pdf Tise, E. R., & Raju, R. (2013). Open Access: a new dawn for knowledge management. Paper presented at IFLA 2013. Retrieved January 31, 2020, from http://library.ifla.org/248/1/207-tise-en.pdf UNESCO. (2017). Global Open Access Portal. Retrieved February 16, 2020, from http://www.unesco. org/new/en/communication-and-information/portals-and-platforms/goap/access-by-region/africa/ UNESCO. (2019a). Open Educational Resources (OER). Retrieved February 15, 2020, from https:// en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies/oer UNESCO. (2019b). Open Access to Scientific Information. Retrieved February 28, 2020, from https:// en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies/open-access-to-scientific-information United Nations. (1987). Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development Our Common Future. Retrieved February 17, 2020, from https://www.are.admin.ch/are/en/home/sustainabledevelopment/international-cooperation/2030agenda/un-_-milestones-in-sustainable-development/1987-brundtland-report.html United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved February 15, 2020, from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld United Nations. (n.d.). Sustainable Development Goals. Retrieved January 2, 2020, from https://www. un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ University of the Witwatersrand. (2020). Scholarly Communication/Publication: Benefits of Open Access. Retrieved January 31, 2020, from https://libguides.wits.ac.za/c.php?g=145385&p=953655 Weller, M. (2012). Digital scholarship and the tenure process as an indicator of change in universities. RUSC. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal, 9(2), 347–360. ZBW MediaTalk. (2019). Open Access: AfricArXiv facilitates knowledge exchange between Africa and Europe. Retrieved January 19 2020, https://www.zbw-mediatalk.eu/2019/09/open-access-africarxivfacilitates-knowledge-exchange-between-africa-and-europe/

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Africa: A continent located south of Europe and bordered to the west by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east by the Indian Ocean. It is the second-largest continent in the world, after Asia. Knowledge-Based Economy: In knowledge-based economy, a country’s growth and economic development depends on the quality, quantity and accessibility of information and knowledge rather than physical or natural resources.

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Knowledge Management: Knowledge management is a purposeful management process to capture, exploit, share and apply both tacit and explicit knowledge for the benefit of the employees, organizations, its customers. Open Access: Dissemination of scholarly publications free of charge in digital form to everyone, which is free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Sustainable Development: Sustainable development is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges related to poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. The 17 International Goals are set to be achieved by 2030.

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Chapter 2

Open Access:

A Sine-Qua-Non for Effective Information Service in Open and Distance Learning and Attaining Sustainable Development Goals Olugbade S. Oladokun https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7609-2760 University of Botswana, Botswana Gbolagade O. Oyelabi Federal College of Education (Special), Akinmorin, Nigeria

ABSTRACT The modern age has come along with varied dimensions of ‘openness’, ranging from open content, open data, open courses (massive open online courses (MOOCs) to open source and pedagogy, open and distance learning, and open access, among others. In order to meet with the educational needs of people, hardly is there any country where open and distance learning (ODL) does not hold. With scattered adherents and students across different geographical boundaries, ODL is known to leave the doors of institutions of higher learning wide open for the benefit of the marginalized, isolated, underprivileged, and the unreachable for education and training, while they remain in their homes, places of work, and other locations pursuing their studies. But a sizeable number of students suffer from failure, low pass rate, and indeed withdrawal from or discontinuance of participation. Nonetheless, ODL seems to work in tandem with the core business of Sustainable Development Agenda, which is out to make the world better for its people, with no one left behind. The Agenda carries along a strong desire for access to information towards achieving the set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In pursuit of the attainment of the goals and mending the debilitating crack of excessive failure rate and not being able to adequately meet the library and information needs of the ODL students, the virtual and ubiquitous role of Open Access (OA) is considered vital. This chapter attempts to provide the nexus between the ODL, OA, and the SDGs even as each of the subjects in the discourse is dissected; a panoramic survey of the related terms is carried out, and socio-political and economic implications of the OA in relation to other subjects are perused. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch002

Copyright © 2021, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

 Open Access

INTRODUCTION Open access (OA) can be seen as an offshoot of scholarly communication. Roger Williams University (2019) considers open access as a means of disseminating scholarly research that breaks from the traditional subscription model of academic publishing. The institution further notes that OA has the potential to accelerate greatly the pace of scientific discovery, encourage innovation and enrich education by reducing barriers to access. In another discourse, Roger Williams University (2020) asserts that the rapid exchange of information on the internet, rising journal prices, and the mandate for OA to publicly funded research are changing the nature of scholarly communication. Widén (2010) adds his voice to the scholarly communication issue when, in retrospect, he states that the communication and dissemination of research ideas, initiatives, and results, has long historical roots. The author however acknowledged some important turning points in recent years in the development of the Internet and the web which has had a major impact on many areas today. Scholarly communication has always been the hallmark of the academia and research community. It emanates from and derived its root in research and scholarly work the academics are expected to execute. Research and publication is generally known as one of the three-legged trivet that academic rests, others being teaching and service. According to the Association of College & Research Libraries (2020), scholarly communication is the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. Creaser (2011) also articulates that scholarly communication covers a wide spectrum of activity, broadly in two areas – publishing and disseminating the results of research, and providing access to the published material. The scholarly communication mostly comes in the form of print and digital. Of late, digital scholarly communication seems to have held sway as the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web has had a tremendous impact on many areas in today’s society. One such area is open access. In breaking away from the traditional subscription model of academic publishing, OA equips itself with the capacity to accelerate greatly the pace of scientific discovery, encourage innovation and enrich education by reducing barriers to access. Open access shifts the costs of publishing so that readers, practitioners and researchers obtain content at no cost (Roger Williams University, 2019). This chapter is anchored on open access with two threads running in it. First, it is viewed that open access constitutes an effective information service in open and distance learning environment, and second, that open access is capable of effecting the attainment of sustainable development goals. Open and distance learning (ODL) is a system which attempts to remove the (administrative and educational) constraints that would otherwise make them closed (Coffey, 1977), but embraces greater dimensions of openness and flexibility, whether in terms of access, curriculum or other elements of structure (UNESCO, 2002). Smith maintains that this form of education may include such characteristics as vertical grouping, cross-age teaching, independent study, individualised rates of progression, open plan schools, and unstructured time and curriculum. In order to meet with the educational needs of people who could not be accommodated in the limited space that the traditional face-to-face institutions could offer, ODL becomes a system that beckons to institutions and governments to consider. In some cases, especially the mega ODL institutions, the system not only attracts adherents from the country of location, but also across borders and different geographical boundaries. ODL leaves the doors of institutions of higher learning wide open for the benefit of the marginalized, isolated, underprivileged and the unreachable for education and training (Oladokun, 2002), while they remain in their homes, places of work and other locations to pursue their studies and upgrade themselves at a distance. This seems to work in tandem with the core business of Sustainable Development which is out to make the world better 25

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for its people, with no-one left behind. The challenge of appropriately meeting the information needs of ODL students’ and providing adequate student support service constitutes an area that open access will assist in plummeting. Open Access is believed to have the capability to assist in removing library constraints which favour the idea that the learner must access information resources in a specific place, at definite times and over a stated period. The Agenda for Sustainable Development and the accomplishments of the set goals is another significant element of this chapter. It is a framework of the United Nations designed for the betterment of the generality of people. The Agenda contains 17 goals that cut across various significant issues of life. These include: no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, fighting inequality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, Industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, life on land, peace, justice and strong institutions, and partnerships. Whilst all the goals are pertinent, it is noted that obtaining a quality education is the foundation to improving people’s lives and sustainable development. In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and indeed, making information accessible, libraries and information service play a vital role. But a modern library boasts of effective service to customers not only within its limited location, but also virtual. Open access carries in its wings virtual platform in design, as well as free and unrestricted access in scheme. This makes the application of open access an inevitable tool which should be embraced to reach the unreached and the marginalized. This chapter professes that the attainment of the SDGs rest squarely on easy, free and unrestricted access to research outputs and scholarly publications in journals and other scholarly communication outlets which open access offers.

RELATED CONCEPTS The academia has never run short of entreaties and encouragement to increase their tempo on research and innovation. In recent past, the response to the appeal can be said to have made the advent of innovation with varied but related dimensions of ‘openness’ conceivable. Apart from open access which is the subject of this discourse, other notable and related terms that openness has delivered range from open content, open data, open courses (massive open online courses (MOOCs) to open source and pedagogy, open university, open education, and open learning. As most of them will echo or feature in this paper, it is considered necessary to open a few lines of dialogue on them at this juncture. First, open content is considered a license that applies to copyrightable content and based on the premise that educational content should be freely developed and shared “in a spirit similar to that of free and open software” (Wiley, 2003, Caswell, Henson, Jensen, and Wiley, 2008). Rouse (2019) in a post alluded to the license made freely available and licensed according to permission granted under the 5R activities, namely: Retain: that users may freely download, copy, store and manage the content; Reuse: that the content may be reused freely, for example on a website or in a class or workshop; Revise: that it is lawful to make changes to the content itself, for example reformatting or translating it; Remix: that the content may be combined in a mashup with other open content and Redistribute: that the content may be freely shared either in its original form or after being subjected to any permitted alteration. Similarly, Open data according to Opendatasoft (2017) is digital information that is licensed in a way that it is available to anyone, with just a few stipulations. The organization affirms that the data is 26

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typically either public, open, or attributed. Any data or content that is free to use and distributed falls under the idea of open data. Tennant et.al (2016) observe that the overall movement of OA has become conjoined with the drive for Open Data. They note that data sharing is fundamental to scientific progress, because data lead to the knowledge generated in research articles and that data sharing has become a common requirement, together with OA, for both research funding and publication. European Commission (n.d.) confirms the assertion when it states that open data is data that anyone can access, use and share. The Commission affirms that open data becomes usable when made available in a common, machinereadable format. In establishing the significance, the Commission notes that Governments, businesses and individuals can use open data to bring about social, economic and environmental benefits, adding that it has the power to help improve services, grow economies and protect our planet. The philosophy behind open data is the scientific method that builds upon existing research to develop breakthroughs that ultimately help people and the planet we share (Opendatasoft, 2017). The relationship of open data in this instance is not far to fetch. Other prominent examples of open data include: published academic research, Government financial data, market data statistics that can be accessed via a search engine and the stock information found scrolling on newsfeed. Writing on Open courseware, otherwise known as massive open online courses (MOOCs), Vioreanu (2019) asserts it is a totally revolutionary educational concept, allowing people worldwide free access to online lectures, readings and learning materials provided by universities and colleges. Vioreanu states that as an open digital publication, open courseware is similar to an online course, as it includes planning materials and evaluation tools, in addition to educational content. Vioreanu however confirms that these studies do not provide certification or access to direct teacher assistance, they only consist of lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists, assignments, demonstrations and students’ work. In his treatise, Pop (2019) declares that MOOCs give students the option of studying a subject in depth without the constraints of a traditional university course. Pop noted that students can be anywhere in the world as the resources are all online and they do not require previous qualifications. Pop affirms that the courses are open to anyone, regardless of whether they have studied before or not. In his assertion that a MOOC is free or almost free, Pop comparatively observes that unlike traditional university courses, most MOOCs are available free of charge. In other words, the author submits that, there is no worry of having to pay huge tuition fees though some may have a small registration fee, but these are rare exceptions! By “Open source”, as another related term, is meant something people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible, while the open source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance (OpenSource, 2019). While identifying the difference between open source software and other types of software, Open Source indicated that some software has source code that only the person, team, or organization who created it—and maintains exclusive control over it can modify. According to Open source, this type of software is called “proprietary” or “closed source” software. Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop are examples of proprietary software. Open source software according to Finley (2019) is the software distributed with a license that allows anyone to use, view, modify, and share the software’s source code. LibreOffice and the GNU Image Manipulation Program are examples of open source software. Whilst writing on its advantages, Pickett (2019) asserts that lack of cost is a key advantage, but also affirms that open source software (OSS) has several additional benefits including: •

Offering a valuable learning opportunity for programmers. They can apply skills to the most popular programs available today 27

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• • •

Quality can be easily and greatly improved when its source code is passed around, tested, and fixed. More secure than proprietary software because bugs are identified and fixed quickly. Constantly subject to updates, with little chance of becoming unavailable or quickly outmoded, an important plus for long-term projects.

Open educational resources (OER) is yet another related concept. UTA Libraries (2018) in a declaration states that open projects frequently result in the creation of OERs. UTA Libraries aver that OER are free teaching and learning materials that are licensed to allow for revision and reuse, adding that they can be fully self-contained textbooks, videos, quizzes, learning modules, and more. UNESCO (2019) also asserts that open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. Earlier, UNESCO (2013) provides support to the assertion when it notes that the potential of open educational resources for re-use and adaptation by everyone, especially those in resource-poor environments, is a great opportunity to achieve quality education for all. Giving a hint on what seems to be its emergence and benefits, UNESCO (2019) affirms that since 2002, when the term Open Educational Resources first emerged, till today, OER has increasingly been recognized by the international community as an innovative tool for meeting the challenges of providing lifelong learning opportunities for learners from diverse levels and modes of education worldwide’. Reed (2018), Director of OER, University of Texas Arlington, expressed perception on what is believed to be the benefits derivable from OER, when it was indicated that using OER in the classroom can improve student engagement and success; provide immediate, equitable access to resources; save money for your students; and provide you a venue to use flexible, high-quality learning materials in your individualized curriculum. It thus seems unequivocally that the filament of free access runs through the usefulness of the various concepts that are considered related to open access as discussed above. The extent of the relationship can obviously be gauged against the discourse of extant literature as reviewed shortly. Also carried out, is the review of literature in open and distance learning, which is another related and key concept that defines this paper.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM There are two intrinsic subjects that are woven to the main theme, open access, of this essay. These include open and distance learning (ODL) and sustainable development goals. The open and distance learning programmes are largely disconcertingly known to register a high number of incomplete students as they suffer from failure, low pass rate and indeed withdrawal from or discontinuance of participation in the programmes (Oladokun, 2016). After acknowledging the problem of high attrition rates of distance education in South Africa and other places, Killen et al (2003) highlight the need for universities to take a fresh look at why many of their distance learners fail and what they can do to improve the chances of success of all students. In a paper titled Student retention in distance education: are we failing our students?, Simpson (2013) suggests that there is a ‘distance education deficit’ with many distance institutions having less than one-quarter of the graduation rates of conventional institutions. The paper

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brought together some data on student retention in distance education in the form of graduation rates at a sample of distance institutions. Flannery (2011) in a comment on the study of 51,000 Washington State Community College students indicated Columbia University researchers found that students who took online courses were more likely to fail or drop out of the course than students who took the same course in person. Seven years after the postulation Gregori, Maritnez and Moyano-Fernande (2018) in a study at Spanish National Distance Education University, confirmed the high failure and dropout rates. In their paper titled Basic actions to reduce dropout rates in distance learning”, they observed that there are a lot of online resources, such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and distance learning courses. They note with concern a high dropout rate of about 90% in MOOCs and 50% in the courses of the Spanish National Distance Education University, among other examples. In a similar study on students’ dropout rates in massive open online courses (MOOC) at a United Kingdom University, Onah, Sinclair and Boyatt (2014) observed that one of the major recurring issues raised in both academic literature and the popular press is the consistently high dropout rate of MOOC learners. The authors contritely affirm that although many thousands of participants enroll on these courses, the completion rate for most courses is below 13%. Further, while examining the school dropout in graduate distance education in Brazil, de Oliveira, Oesterreich and de Almeida (2018) regret the high failure rates recorded in the National Training Programmes in Public Administration (PNAP), which aimed to train public administrators in the interior of Brazil. Specifically, the researchers note that the high failure rates in the programs have been an obstacle to achieving the objectives of PNAP, because they prevent the training of labor precisely where it is most needed. This paper emphasizes that appropriate academic assistance can be provided to distance learners through open access in their scattered locations where their libraries have failed and consequently accentuates that some reduction in dropout and failure rates among ODL students can be experienced. The second stream of this chapter examines the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) attainment vis-à-vis the viability and incorporation of open access. It is noted among others that the SDGs include ending all forms of poverty, hunger, health, fighting inequality, etc. But it is also recalled that the SDGs has a predecessor in Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (World Health Organization, 2020). It is observed that quite a number of the eight MD Goals are related to or incorporated into the new 17 goals in the Agenda for Sustainable Development. These include eradication of extreme poverty and hunger among others. Experience in a number of developing countries during the fifteen years of the MDGs revealed that though serious efforts were made, little achievements were recorded in a number of cases. For instance, Abur et al (2013) in their study of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Poverty Reduction in Nigeria noted that the MDG goals, targets and indicators relating to poverty reduction and hunger are quite relevant in the case of Nigeria. The authors noted with regret that while poverty is accelerating at a terrific speed, progress towards minimizing the menace is at a slow pace and implementation of the partnership goals has lagged. Holding the view that the launching of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 preceded the debut of open access, this chapter subscribes to the view that the impact of open access at the time of MDGs might be low but excusable. The belief now stands that open access is gaining momentum, getting popular and can effectively be deployed to assist in attaining the Agenda of Sustaining Development.

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LITERATURE REVIEW The key descriptors in the title of this paper are given significant consideration in the review of literature. The review starts with open access and extends to open and distance learning.

OPEN ACCESS Breakthroughs leading to improved living conditions are direct products of education, learning and research. Unlike in the age when communication is mostly print-based and access to research result was tardy, literature records it that the new age when information and communication technology is factored into scholarly communication, improvement is witnessed and access to research results fast-tracked. Open access emerged as a product of digital revolution where research findings are communicated through the Internet. Several authors and organisations (mentioned shortly) have made attempts to explain and define open access as a concept. Springer Nature (2020), a publishing outlet, refers to open access (OA) as free, unrestricted online access to research outputs such as journal articles and books. Springer Nature further emphasized that open access content is open to all, with no access fees. SPARC (2019) another independent organization affirms that open access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. As if to echo its implication SPARC states that open access ensures that anyone can access and use the results – to turn ideas into industries and breakthroughs into better lives. In its attempt to provide further clarity, Finch Group (2012) - the Working Group set up to examine how UK-funded research findings can be made more accessible, asserts that open access is not just a matter of removing payment barriers, but of rights of use and reuse. The Group observed the move towards a regime in which more content is made accessible free at the point of use to more people, in the UK and across the world. In the same vein, Research England (2018), a national funding body for research in the UK, declares that open access refers to unrestricted, online access to the published findings of research. The national funding body for research expressed its commitment to supporting successful approaches to open access publishing and increasing public access to research findings when it proclaims that Governments and research funders - nationally and internationally - have encouraged a move towards open access. Open Access.nl (n.d.), a Dutch National website dedicated to provide information for academics on open access describes open access as a broad international academic movement that seeks free and open online access to academic information, such as publications and data. Affirming the stand of all institutions of higher education in the Netherlands and the Dutch government to the ideal pursued by the open access movement, the website declares that everyone should be able to read and reuse the results of publicly funded academic research online. It notes that when anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search for and search within the information, or use it in education or another way within the legal agreements, the publication is called ‘open access’, as there are no financial, legal or technical barriers. At an intellectual gathering in Berlin otherwise known as Berlin Declaration (2003), the belief was rife that the Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. The declaration observed that for the first time ever, the Internet offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of worldwide access. It holds the view that the mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the information is not made widely and readily available to society. 30

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It asserts that the new possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the Internet have to be supported. The Declaration defines open access as a comprehensive source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the scientific community. It admonished that in order to realize the vision of a global and accessible representation of knowledge, the future Web has to be sustainable, interactive, and transparent, adding that content and software tools must be openly accessible and compatible. Perhaps the most detailed definition is contained in the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) Declaration of 14 February 2002. Open access is seen as free availability on the public internet permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. As reputable groups and organisations compete to make their views known on open access and what it stands for, some scholars and researchers also strive to make their voice heard on the concept. For instance, in his guest editorial of ACS Omega, Curry (2017) asserts that open access is one part of the digital tapestry that is transforming access and attitudes to the processes of creation and dissemination of information by stakeholders within and without the research community. Suber (2004), who is considered one of the earliest thought-leaders on open access, in a brief introduction to open access, states that open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Suber affirms that what makes OA possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder. Guédon (2017) describes open access as simply a way to express the crossfertilization of the very culture of science with new technologies to create the optimal communication system science needs. Anderson (2013) in a paper on Open access scholarly publications as OER postulates that open access journal articles are a form of “open educational resources” (OERs) particularly for graduate students. In its discourse of the antecedent of open access, the BOAI (2002) perceives the convergence of an old tradition of scholars’ willingness to publish research work in scholarly journals without payment and the new Internet technology bearing good fruits for the public. This appears to be in tandem with Suber’s assertion when he observed that in most fields, scholarly journals do not pay authors, who can therefore consent to OA without losing revenue. The BOAI believes the public good made possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. In its message on the position of the UK Funding Bodies, Research England (2018) affirms that Open access is central to UK Research and Innovation’s ambitions for research and innovation in the UK. It notes that the UK Funding Bodies, including Research England, are committed to supporting successful approaches to open access publishing through the Research Excellence Framework (REF). It declares that it became a requirement that certain research outputs submitted to any research assessment exercise after 2014 be made as widely accessible as possible. Quite a number of the proponents of open access that made efforts to define or explain the concept have also subscribed to different ways of publishing open access. Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), Suber (2004), SPARC (2019), Springer Nature (2020), and others agreed on two outlined strategies as

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primary vehicles for delivering open access to research articles, namely self-archiving and open access journals •

•

Self-Archiving in Repositories: is encouraged where scholars make their published journal articles available to the world through self-archiving them. Suber (2004) advocates the need for the scholars to be trained and given the assistance to deposit their published works in the open electronic archives. BOAI (2002) states that the archives may contain un-refereed preprints, refereed post prints, or both. The Initiative also notes that Archives or Repositories may belong to institutions, such as universities and laboratories, or disciplines, such as physics and economics. This, in other words, has been referred to as the green route where the peer-reviewed and accepted version of the article is made available in an institutional or subject repository, after an embargo period has elapsed since the article appeared in the journal (thereby allowing the journal publisher a window in which to exploit the article commercially) Open Access Journals. According to Openaccess.nl, this platform otherwise known as the golden route may involve a charge known as ‘article processing charges’ (APC). The charges are paid for by authors or their institutions and the publications are done through publishers platforms in full open access journals. Springer Nature (2020) claims that Content published via the golden route is accessible immediately on publication.

BENEFITS OF OPEN ACCESS A number of wide-ranging benefits are perceived to have joined forces together to stimulate the increasing interests of researchers, authors, scholars, research funders and librarians in open access. Research England (2018) – a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) body, asserts that open access developed from a view that the freedom to access and use research outputs has considerable benefits for authors, researchers, funding bodies and the wider higher education sector. Some of the benefits as summarised by authors such as Anderson (2013), Research England (2018), SPARC Europe (2020) and others include: Expanding access. Open access is believed to have the capacity for prompt and widespread dissemination of research findings, and attracting the prospect of tens or hundreds of thousands of online readers against the appeals from only tens or hundreds of readers that print-based journal enjoy. The higher impact readership brings about the much needed peer recognition that is translated into institutional raises, exposure and promotions. Economic growth driven by publicly funded research: Open access is seen to be capable of benefiting both the efficiency of the research process and economic growth. Since the findings of research are freely made available, anyone can exploit and utilize them for economic development and their benefits. Other people can build on the research. SPARC Europe (2020) affirms that funders invest in research to advance human knowledge and ultimately improve lives. As a consequence, the organization notes that open access increases the return on that investment by ensuring the results of the research they fund can be read and built on and used by anyone, including Industry and Society. Further, since the academics and researchers benefit from wide online readership and consequently peer recognition, they also enjoy not only exposure, promotions and opportunities for travel, but also occasional stipends and small fees for service contracts.

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Special needs of developing countries. Open access affords the academics, researchers as well as students in developing countries opportunities to obtain information needs and increase public understanding of research. It is common knowledge that many institutions of higher learning in developing countries are in financial straits and their libraries are hardly able to acquire adequate information resources for the use of researchers. Rather than letting them concentrate on their core business of teaching, research and service, the promotion of the academics in some cases is now tied to their ability to hunt, beg for and attract funds to their institutions from anywhere funding could be sourced. Open access seems poised to definitely meet the special needs of the academics and distance learners in developing countries that their cash-strapped libraries and institutions can ill-afford. Open access also appears crucial to fulfilling the tenets of sustainable development goals in so far as distance learners in developing countries are concerned. Anderson (2013) admits that the case for extending access to academics in developing countries and to those amateurs and professionals throughout the world who are not associated with a university or government research library is both compelling and obvious. Citizen science. Anderson (2013) argues that citizen science is probably as old as human knowledge itself and consists of ordinary people working alone or together to resolve problems using basic or increasingly sophisticated tools and techniques of science. SPARC Europe (2020) expresses the belief that the more people that can access and build upon the latest research, the more valuable that research becomes and the more likely we are to benefit as a society. Alluding to the three reasons of Silverton (2009) for the explosion of citizen science, Anderson notes the availability of powerful new tools that enable people to freely contribute to projects, the growing awareness of the value in work produced and a growing government and sponsor interest in disseminating or translating science and its results to the citizenry. The modus operandi of the open access model makes data available to anyone with internet access. Greenwood (2018) asserts that the model is useful for lifelong learners and also transcends academic affiliation. He evokes the idea that some researchers regard access to knowledge as a human right and states the argument of others that since research is largely funded by taxes, all citizens should have access to its results. He thus concludes that open access makes citizen science possible. Challenge to Profiteering. The case has also been advanced that open access is a challenge to the obvious excessive profit making by journal publishers. Anderson (2013) argues that normal academic publishing model for scholarly work sees the academic submitting his work to a publisher (at no charge to the publisher), the article being reviewed by a team of volunteer editors and reviewers (again, at no charge to the publisher), and then the author (or his or her educational institution) having to pay large fees to access the published work. The advent of open access is therefore considered a necessary instrument dedicated to challenge the belated, excessive profiteering and undue advantage of the commercial publishers of academic journals. Open Access Netherlands (n.d.) contends that open access is also the term for a new business model for academic publishing that makes research information available to readers at no cost and that it contrasts with the subscription model, in which readers have access to scholarly information, usually via a library, by paying a subscription.

OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING (ODL) Open and distance learning (ODL) presents a thread that runs round other fundamental concepts that feature prominently in this chapter. According to UNESCO (2002), the term ODL reflects both the fact that all or most of the teaching is conducted by someone removed in time and space from the learner, 33

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and that the mission aims to include greater dimensions of openness and flexibility, whether in terms of access, curriculum or other elements of structure. Ghosh, et al (2012) confirm that the concept of open learning and distance education system focuses on open access to education and training to make the learners free from the constraints of time and place, and offering flexible learning opportunities to individuals and groups of learners. Oladokun (2016) drawing inference from The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) states that distance means ‘standing apart’, ‘separation’, and ‘remoteness’. He presents the picture that the term distance education might connote the form of study where there is separation between the learner and the teacher. In other words, teaching and learning between the teacher and learner are conducted at a distance. This therefore symbolizes the major distinction between this method of education delivery and the conventional face-to-face teaching and learning process. Remoteness is a common feature of this form of education. Consequent upon the fact that the students who enrolled in this type of education are hardly seen at the campus of their institution to enjoy any form of face-to-face interaction with their lecturers, they are sometimes referred to as remote learners. Learning from their remote locations, Simond (2008) proclaims that open and distance learning focuses on releasing learners from constraints of time and place whilst offering flexible learning opportunities. Several authors have made attempt to explain the openness of ODL. In a review during his Convocation lecture at the National Open University of Nigeria, Okebukola (2013) opines that if we say there is “open education”, then there must be “closed education”. Beyond this trite statement is the serious definitional issue of the concept of open education. Okebukola was of the view that perhaps we can add open (and) distance education for completeness adding that open learning and distance education refer to approaches to learning that focus on freeing learners from constraints of time and place while offering flexible learning opportunities. He insists that for many students, ODL is a way of combining work and family responsibilities with educational opportunities. In the same tone, Simond (2008) avows that for a lot of married and working adults, ODL is a way of combining work and family responsibilities with educational opportunities. Similarly, in its discourse of the potentials of ODL, UNESCO (2002) enumerates what ODL means to different stakeholders. For instance, the organization considers that ODL means more freedom of access, and thereby a wider range of opportunities for learning and earning qualification. It was also seen as a cheaper alternative to pursuing a course through conventional methods. For employers, UNESCO submits that ODL is seen to offer the possibility of organizing learning and professional development in the workplace, which is often more flexible and saves costs of travel, subsistence etc. From the perspective of governments, UNESCO declares that traditionally, distance education has been introduced in order to: • • • • •

increase access to learning and training opportunity; provide increased opportunities for updating, retraining and personal enrichment; improve cost-effectiveness of educational resources; support the quality and variety of existing educational structures; enhance and consolidate capacity.

As if to establish a proper understanding of ODL, Daniel (2019) alluded to Prasad’s (2018) application of the word dharma - the “principles that guide us to do the right things” and listed the elements of the dharma of ODL to include: 1) An instrument to democratise education - This means opening access widely and letting learners manage their learning. Open admission policies assume that it is exit standards, not entry standards, that matter 2) A means for social justice. ODL can offer opportunities to people in 34

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resource-poor areas, covering a wide geography. Being more inclusive, it is especially helpful for women who lack the independence of movement to attend campus classes 3) A means for development adding that The Commonwealth of Learning’s (COL) mission is learning for sustainable development. COL helps governments expand the scale, efficiency, and quality of learning with appropriate technologies, particularly ODL. This is used extensively for capacity building as well as developing skills and professional competence in the working population 4) Mediating education with technology. Although at varying speeds, ODL systems are being revolutionised by interactive technologies and open educational resources. 5) Quality as an imperative. Quality is essential for achieving dharma in distance education. The quality of learning materials, student support services, student evaluation, and administrative services are critical to system effectiveness and ODL’s legitimacy and credibility. The public visibility of ODL systems makes them more open to general scrutiny. 6) The teacher as a facilitator. Teaching in ODL is facilitative rather than expositional. The identity of academics in these systems is complex and inclusive because of the division of labour between the teaching functions of materials preparation and student support, and 7) The institution teaches. In conventional education the teacher teaches, but in ODL the institution teaches (Keegan, 1996). Good logistics, quality materials, and effective student support are important requirements for successful ODL. Keegan (1996) has made a useful comparison of the traditional face-to-face education and distance learning. He states that distance education not only shares the goals of conventional education, but it also aims at providing access to historically under-served, place bound, and highly motivated population. Distinctively, Keegan declares that distance education is said to be open because of students’ freedom and programme flexibility. In a tone that seems to bring further clarity, Keegan notes that distance education is flexible and open in terms of its admission requirements, that is, not as rigid as in conventional institutions, freedom in terms of place of study, time, place, and composition of study programme, content and didactic approach. He further states that it is intended to offer useful learning opportunity to recipients at a time and local environment convenient to them. He affirms that contacts between the students and institutions are provided through interactive and non-interactive media and the form of education may also be provided through some contact at study centre. Unlike the conventional face-to-face instruction, the delivery medium, according to Keegan, plays a crucial role in minimising the gap between teaching and learning. Daniel (2019) seems to appropriately sum up the issue of openness with the statement of the first chancellor of the UK Open University (UKOU), Lord Geoffrey Crowther (1969), who captured the public imagination at the UKOU’s inaugural ceremony when he proclaimed its purpose of being “open as to people, open as to places, open as to methods and open as to ideas”. Daniel declared that by operating at scale with low costs, raising the standard of learning materials, and introducing newer communications technologies, open and distance learning promised to transform higher education generally. In a related development, Okebukola (2013) declares that the ‘open’ nature of distance learning might be formally institutionalised in such policies as open admissions, and freedom of selection of what, when and where to learn. The openness of distance learning is also seen in relatively flexible organisational structures, delivery and communication patterns as well as the use of various technologies to support learning. Open (and) distance learning is aimed at bridging the time, geographical, economic, social, educational and communication distance between student and institution, student and academics, student and courseware and student and peers. In a point blank abstracting of the elements of distance education, Adekanmbi (1998) affirms that distance education is a non-traditional approach to teaching and learning as it veers away, most of the time from the traditional eye-ball to eye-ball practice common in traditional classroom situations. He further asserts that part of the elements is the existence of some distance mostly 35

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physical, but possibly also social between the teacher and the learner. Generally, open distance learning focuses on removing barriers to access learning, flexibility of learning provision, student-centeredness, supporting students and constructing learning programmes with the expectation that students can succeed.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ODL STUDENTS Researchers have always sounded a note of caution not to regard distance learners as homogeneous group. It is however known that “many distance students do share broad demographic and situational similarities that have often provided the basis for profiles of the “typical” distance learner in higher education” (Thompson, 1998). As distance learners register for their programmes, it is important to note that the demography of these learners may have some impact in their effort to meet their information needs. For instance, the learners come from different households and communities that may be rural or urban, poor or rich. Nyirenda (1996: 3) observes that characteristics of learners in this category will “include gender, age, marital status and family size, place of residence (whether rural or urban), social status and responsibilities, income and financial resources” among others. Each of these factors is capable of influencing the information environment of the learners and ability to access information. For instance, if somebody lives in a place that does not have electricity, accessibility to information and technological devices like computer, telephone and the Internet facilities and indeed, articles from open access sources will be hampered. The problem of digital divide could be more pronounced in people living in the socio-economic divide and environment where one has all the facilities at his disposal and the other that does not. It is already noted that distance learners can be found everywhere and anywhere – in metropolitan as well as non-metropolitan areas, urban or rural locations. Nyirenda (p.5) further argues that “the environment in which the learner undertakes his/her learning affects learning one way or another”. Those living in remote villages may also not have easy access to postal and transportation services which can make it difficult for them to easily receive materials that can be of advantage to them in writing their assignments, tests, research etc. unlike those that live in urban areas. Access to the Internet facilities to obtain necessary information may also be debarred. Kamau (1998: 6) is of the view that distance learners from their remote locations “may also experience lack of facilities such as study centres, schools, libraries and laboratories which may hinder learners’ progress”. Thus, rural-urban dichotomy is clearly visible, even as information divide between the rural and urban areas is distinct. In addition Kamau suggests that a distance learner is also likely to depend totally on course text even as his study is likely to be interrupted by extended official field trips and also has limited access to library and other similar services. In another treatise, Kamau (2005) indicates that isolation is one of the characteristics of distance learners. As if to influence their learning and information environment, she pleads that distance learners also need human support from tutors, mentors and fellow learners to reduce the feeling of isolation. In their separate write-ups, Rogers (1989), Cranton (1989) and Simpson (2013) considered the following as general characteristics of distance learners. • • •

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Students are adults by definition (maturity) Students are all engaged in a continuing process of growth (value learning) Students bring a package of experience and values (experience)

 Open Access

• • • •

Students usually come to education with set intentions (motivated) in what May et al (1999) has defined as learning motivation, learning style, cognitive processes Students bring mature expectations about education itself (realism) Students often have competing interests (employment, family and social life). May et al (1999) describe the competing interests characteristic as task factors where work, society, family duties, etc. interfere with studies. Students juggle with the demands of work, illness, bereavement and other life experiences. Distance students have many calls on their time and energy that must affect their progress

All the issues raised in this section constitute part of the issues confronting distance learners in their information environment and studies. It therefore connotes a source of frustration for a distance learner to bring matured expectation to education with set intentions and motivation only to get there and find the facilities like libraries and other resources to assist in meeting their information needs are not readily available. This appears to be a conundrum where open access can intervene and solve in its virtual disposition.

OA SUITABILITY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS With the notion of “leaving no one behind” the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by all United Nations Member States. The predecessor of the SDGs was Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) launched in 2000 and expired in 2015. It seems appropriate to launch the SDGs in order to sustain and improve on the successes and developments recorded in MDG in various nations after its expiration. The ambitious agenda is woven around 17 interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that cut across putting an end to poverty, hunger, ensuring good health and well-being, quality education gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduction of inequality, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, life on land, peace and justice strong institutions; and partnerships to achieve the goal (United Nations, n.d.). The laudable goals since adoption in 2015 became the agenda of pursuit by the individual signatory nations around the world and at all levels. Out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), SDG4 is dedicated to education. UNESCO (2017) believes that education is a human right for all throughout life and that access must be matched by quality. Confirming that the UNESCO is the only United Nations agency with a mandate to cover all aspects of education, it has been entrusted to lead the Global Education 2030 Agenda through Sustainable Development Goal 4. Higher education is mentioned in target 4.3 of SDG4 which states “By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university.” It will be noted that higher education also revolves around other goals related to poverty (SDG1); health and well-being (SDG3); gender equality (SDG5) governance; decent work and economic growth (SDG8); responsible consumption and production (SDG12); climate change (SDG13); and peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG16). In a blog post, IFLA (2018) affirms that access to information, and libraries as institutions that deliver it, are key to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). IFLA pointed out 37

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target 10 in SDG 16 which states “Target 16.10: Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements”, adding that it is true for many other SDGs and their respective targets. The post attempts to secure the connection when it emphatically states that there is an obvious link between Open Access and access to information, and between open access and the SDGs. IFLA reiterates that open access is key to ensuring that society benefits from scientific knowledge, by informing further research in the area or simply the end user. In a release, UNESCO (2017) boasts that at least 10 out of the 17 SDGs comprising the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development require constant scientific input. UNESCO affirms that given the scenario, there is an absolute need to remove restrictions in order to disseminate research outputs to intended stakeholders. UNESCO thus believes that OA has a fundamental role to support the SDGs and is committed to making OA one of the central supporting agendas to achieve the SDGs. Similarly, Sylvester (2018) in a blogpost of MDPI - a pioneer in scholarly open access publishing, accentuates that achieving inclusive and equitable quality education for all is one of the United Nations’ SDGs and ensuring that no one is left behind. Sylvester therefore notes that through its open access policy, MDPI aims to contribute to sustainable development by making research available for everyone, thus facilitating new discoveries and empowering researchers to have rapid and efficient access to knowledge. Writing on some of the approaches that can be undertaken through the management of higher education related to the target of Sustainable Development Goals, Utama et al (2018) suggested five strategies which seem to provide an overview of what programmes the university can undertake to encourage faster achievement of the targeted SDGs. These include, first, improvement of higher education quality where they cite Sum and Jessop (2013) that the quality of higher education, will greatly affect the progress of a nation, through knowledge based economy and competitiveness. Utama et al affirm that the low quality of education will produce graduates who do not have sufficient capacity and competency. Second, improvement of higher education equity. Third, improvement of sanitation and environment where they advocate for the need for awareness of all unit in higher education institutions on the importance of a clean and healthy environment. Fourth, improvement of research and innovation, believing that innovation cannot be done without good research, which required the funding and availability of adequate facilities, but also excellent human resources. Fifth, global partnership which is one of the goals of SDGs, will increasingly play important role in the future development of the world. They suggest that at university level partnership in higher education greatly influences its development and sustainability.

IMPLICATIONS The Agenda for Sustainable Development emerged as a new paradigm to ensure socio-political and economic development for all - without leaving anyone behind. SDGs are a new set of global development priorities which emerge from the ashes of Millennium Development Goals. Since its launching in 2015, every indicator seems to suggest a wide acceptance of the principles of sustainable development as nations are motivated to promote the agenda and improve the living standard for their citizenry. Basiago (1999) believes that in the most basic sense, ‘social sustainability’ implies a system of social organization that alleviates poverty. Mensah and Casadevall (2019) confirm this in their agreement with Littig & Grießler, (2005) when they assert that basically, social sustainability connotes a system of social organization that alleviates poverty. ‘Economic sustainability’ implies a system of production that satisfies present consumption levels without compromising future needs. The ‘sustainability’ that ‘economic 38

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sustainability’ seeks is the ‘sustainability’ of the economic system itself (Basiago (1999). Conversely, the concept of “Political Sustainability”, according to Broniatowski and Weigel (2004) is an action that allows for the fulfillment of current political goals and resource needs without compromising future goals and needs. In other words, they contend that politically sustainable actions simultaneously build support for, and advance, an item on the political agenda. From the foregoing therefore, some salient issues, constituting takeaways, are bound to transpire. These include: •

•

•

•

•

Innovative ideas towards ending poverty and hunger. It is already established that open access has the capacity for prompt and widespread dissemination of research findings that can be used, re-used and adapted for any beneficial purpose. Any innovative idea derived from research findings implies an attempt towards ending poverty and hunger as the ideas obtained from research findings can be converted to business and profitable ventures. Believing that breakthroughs often come from unexpected places, SPARC Europe (2020) stresses that open access expands the number of potential contributors to research from just those at institutions wealthy enough to afford journal subscriptions to anyone with an internet connection. This is seen as an endeavor capable of fostering economic growth. While it is also an attempt at ‘social sustainability’ implying a system of social organization that alleviates poverty, it is as well considered a step in the right direction of economic sustainability where a system of production satisfies present consumption levels without compromising future needs. Open access promotes quality education. In developing countries where academic libraries experience financial straits to subscribe to high quality journals, open access can bridge the gap and bring about quality education even as attempts are made to fight inequality between the haves and haves-not, traditional education and ODL. Open access also means that the problem of inadequate library and information support that has plagued open and distance learning (ODL) over the years, especially in Africa and other developing countries, can be nipped in the bud. As noted in its website, Roger Williams University (2019) affirms that open access carries the potential to accelerate greatly the pace of scientific discovery, encourage innovation and enrich education by reducing barriers to access. Fight against inequality and inequality reduction. The institution of open access and the opportunities it offers to the scattered ODL students not only implies a fight against inequality, it also reduces inequality in the services the library offers to them when compared to those offered to the regular face-to-face students. Fight against inequality and inequality reduction are part of the goals embedded in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. With open access, scholars, researchers and students are better informed and freely equipped from diverse of sources to perform at optimal level and make more meaningful contribution to governance as technocrats’. This could be seen as political sustainability which constitutes an action that allows for the fulfillment of current political goals and resource needs without compromising future goals and needs. The copious benefits adduced to open access seem to imply that most, if not all, institutions of higher learning will covet, formulate and implement institutional repository (IR) policies so that researchers and scholars can deposit their research outputs for the readership. Of course, the policy and practice are in place already in many institutions of higher learning even in developing countries. Other institutions are still mapping out their plans for the implementation of IR policy. Perhaps it will be an encouragement to staff to populate the IR with their research output, findings 39

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and publications if the policy of self-archiving or get-assistance-to-archive your publications is tied to the promotion of staff. In order to make the effort more successful, perhaps a champion can be appointed in each department or faculty that will drive the policy of self-archiving.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS Central to this chapter is the postulation that open access (OA) is a sine qua non to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. OA is also considered a bail out for open and distance learners who live in scattered locations away from their institutions of learning and consequently lack adequate library and information support to meet their information needs. Inadequate support is seen as a drawback for the lofty goals of ODL culminating in tardiness of the learners to complete their studies. In some cases as earlier noted, ODL programmes are disturbingly known to register a high number of incomplete students as they suffer from failure, low pass rate and indeed withdrawal from or discontinuance of participation in the programmes. It will serve the best interest of ODL institutions to move closer to instituting OA platforms for the benefit of their distance learners. As often observed to have been designed to balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the social, economic and environmental, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were carefully crafted by the United Nations as itemized earlier in this essay. No doubt, the issues raised in this discourse are interlaced around the institutions of higher learning where the products of open access are manufactured. Utama et al (2018) write that the role of higher education institutions in achieving the target of SDGs is enormous. Lest it is assumed that it was as a result of the quality education in SDG4, Utama and colleagues stressed that the role is not only related to the 4th goal of education, but also with other goals such as sanitation and environment, innovation, and global partnership and others. This accounts for the clamour for increase in the tempo for research, which generates ideas, publications and innovations from the institutions of higher learning and made available through the OA. It is evident that the world is experiencing great changes and developments. There is a paradigm shift in socio-political and economic lives of people culminating in revealing a new world order. The impulsive advent of coronavirus, codenamed COVID-19, and its social or physical distancing protocol has added a new fillip to the outcry that emboldens not only distance or e-learning, but also the application of OA at remote locations. In the new world order, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing global disruptions it brought have irrefutably joined forces to become a prominent feature for the world to appreciate the fundamental values of information and communications technology not only in disseminating information, but also in closing distances. In academia, prior to the COVID-19 intervention, new developments and changes are witnessed at the instance of the Internet and web that have made a major impact on many areas in today’s society (Widén, 2010). For instance Widén further observed that the amount of electronic information and publications has greatly affected scholarly communication and created many challenges for academic libraries. But beyond the challenges, many opportunities can be found in OA, which are capable of facilitating solutions to the innumerable problems the ODL has signaled and the ambitious Agenda of the SDGs. As efforts are being made to meet the SDGs and overcome some of the major challenges perceived in ODL including in the characteristics of the learners, institutions of higher learning should intensify the effort to create and appropriately populate their institutional repositories. Provision of appropriate links to other major repositories and OA sites where

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free access to regular and up-to-date information can be obtained without let or hindrance, should also be given consideration.

REFERENCES Abur, C. P., Eche, E., & Torruam, J. T. (2013). Clement Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Poverty Reduction in Nigeria. International Journal of Basic and Applied Science, 1(3), 504–510. doi:10.17142/ijbas-2012.1.3.5 Adekanmbi, G. (1998). The University of Botswana’s outreach response to promoting flexible learning opportunities. Adult Education and Development, 51, 155–177. Anderson, T. (2013). Open access scholarly publications as OER. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 14(2), 81–95. doi:10.19173/irrodl.v14i2.1531 Association of College & Research Libraries. (2020). Scholarly Communication Defined. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/principlesstrategies Basiago, A. D. (1999). Economic, social, and environmental sustainability in development theory and urban planning practice. The Environmentalist, 19(2), 145–161. doi:10.1023/A:1006697118620 Berlin Declaration. (2003). Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. Retrieved from https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration British Academy. (2012). Understanding the implication of open access publication in humanities and social sciences disciplines. Retrieved from https://issuu.com/thebritishacademy/docs/british_academy_higher_education_perspectives_-_un Broniatowski, D. A., & Weigel, A. L. (2004). Political Sustainability in Space Exploration Architectures. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/adamross/www/BRONIATOWSKI_AIAA06.pdf Budapest Open Access Initiative. (2002). Read the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Retrieved from https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read Caswell, T., Henson, S., Jensen, M., & Wiley, D. (2008). Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal education. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/469/1001 Coffey, J. (1977). Open learning opportunities for mature students. In T. C. Davies (Ed.), Working Paper 14: Open Learning Systems for Mature Students. Council for Educational Technology. Cranton, P. (1989). Planning instruction for adult learners. Wall and Emerson Inc. Creaser, C. (2011). Scholarly communication and access to research outputs. In W. Evans & D. Baker (Eds.), Libraries and Society: Role, Responsibility and Future in an Age of Change (pp. 53–66). Chandos Publishing. doi:10.1016/B978-1-84334-131-4.50004-2 Crowther, G. (1969). Speech by Lord Crowther, first Chancellor of The Open University at the presentation of the Charter [Transcript]. Retrieved from https://www.open.ac.uk/library/digital-archive/pdf/ script/script:5747089b4a53f

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Curry, S. (2017). Guest Editorial: Open Access: Principles, Practice, and Potential. ACS Omega, 2(6), 2803–2804. doi:10.1021/acsomega.7b00707 PMID:31457618 Daniel, J. S. (2019). Open Universities: Old Concepts and Contemporary Challenges. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 20(4). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/ index.php/irrodl/article/view/4035/5166 de Oliveira, P.R., Oesterreich, S.A. and de Almeida, V.L. (2018). School dropout in graduate distance education: evidence from a study in the interior of Brazil. Educ. Pesqui., 44. Retrieved from doi:10.15901678-4634201708165786 European Commission. (n.d.). What is open data? https://www.europeandataportal.eu/elearning/en/ module1/#/id/co-01 Finch Group. (2012). Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications. Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings. Retrieved from https://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf Finley, K. (2019). The WIRED Guide to Open Source Software. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/ story/wired-guide-open-source-software/ Flannery, M. E. (2011). Study Shows Students Taking Online Courses more likely to fail. Retrieved from http://neatoday.org/2011/07/26/study-shows-students-taking-online-courses-more-likely-to-fail-2/ Ghosh, S., Nath, J., Agarwal, S., & Nath, A. (2012). Open and distance learning (ODL) education system: past, present and future: a systematic study of an alternative education system. Journal of Global Research in Computer Science, 3(4), 53–57. Greenwood, J. R. (2018). Who benefits from open access? Retrieved from https://www.enago.com/ academy/benefits-open-access/ Gregori, P., Martínez, V., & Moyano-Fernández, J. J. (2018). Basic actions to reduce dropout rates in distance learning. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29031190 Guédon, J. C. (2017). Open Access: Toward the Internet of the mind. Retrieved from https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/open-access-toward-the-internet-of-the-mind IFLA. (2018). How open access can help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Retrieved from https://blogs.ifla.org/lpa/2018/10/24/how-open-access-can-help-achieve-sustainable-developmentgoals-sdgs/ Kamau, J. W. (1998). Learner Characteristics. Paper presented at the tutors workshop organized by Distance Education Unit – CCE, University of Botswana. Kamau, J. W. (2005). Characteristics of distance learners. In Tutors training manual … written by the staff of Distance education unit, University of Botswana. Gaborone: DEU – Centre for Continuing Education Keegan, D. (1996). Foundations of distance education. Routledge.

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Killen, R. de K., Marais, A. & Loedolf, P. (2003). Success and failure in distance education: perceptions of South African students and lecturers in Business Management. SAJHE/SATHO, 17(2). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272457943_Success_and_failure_in_distance_education_perceptions_of_South_African_students_and_lecturers_in_Business_Management Littig, B., & Grießler, E. (2005). Social sustainability: a catchword between political pragmatism and social theory. International Journal of Sustainable Development, 8, 65–79. Retrieved from from https:// www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2019.1653531 May, S. C., Chan, M. S. C., Yum, J. C. K., Fan, R. Y. K., Jegede, O., & Taplin, M. (1999). A comparison of the study habit and preferences of high achieving and low achieving Open University students. Paper presented at the 13th annual Conference of the Asian Association of Open University. Beijing, China. Mensah, J., & Casadevall, S. R. (2019). Sustainable development: Meaning, history, principles, pillars, and implications for human action: Literature review. Cogent Social Sciences, 5(1). DOI: doi:10.1080/ 23311886.2019.1653531 National Policy on Education. (2004). Federal Ministry of Education/ National Educational Research and Development Council. NERDC. Nyirenda, J.E. (1996). The characteristics of learners in distance education. A paper presented by at the Distance Education Orientation Workshop organized by the Centre for Continuing Education, University of Botswana. Okebukola, P. A. (2013). Open Education and the March To 2020: Can Nigeria Make it? Pre-Convocation Lecture of the National Open University of Nigeria delivered on 18th January 2013, Lagos, Nigeria. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/5162275/Open_Education_And_The_March_To_2020_Can_Nigeria_Make_It Oladokun, O. (2016). Distance Education in Botswana and Library Service: Matters Arising Since the Colonial Period for the Records. Botswana Notes and Records, 48, 116–136. Oladokun, O. S. (2002). The practice of distance librarianship in Africa. Library Review, 51(6), 293–300. doi:10.1108/00242530210434037 Open Access.nl. (n.d.). What is open access? Retrieved from https://www.openaccess.nl/en/what-isopen-access Opendatasoft. (2017). What is Open data? Data insight. Retrieved from https://www.opendatasoft.com/ blog/2017/02/16/what-is-open-data OpenSource. (2019). What is open source? Open source resources. Retrieved from https://opensource. com/resources/what-open-source Pickett, P. (2019). How Open-Source Software Works. Retrieved from https://www.thebalancecareers. com/what-is-open-source-software-2071941 Pop, A. (2019). MOOCs - What Exactly Are They? Retrieved from https://www.distancelearningportal. com/articles/401/moocs-what-exactly-are-they.html

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Prasad, V. S. (2018). Higher education and open distance learning trajectory in India: Reflections of an insider (version 1). Hyderabad, India: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University OER Repository. Retrieved from http://www.braouvidyagani.in Reed, M. (2018). Scholarly Communication: Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from https://library. uta.edu/scholcomm/open-education/oer Research England. (2018). Open Access Research. Retrieved from https://re.ukri.org/research/openaccess-research/ Roger Williams University. (2019). Open Access Publishing: Open Access Defined. Retrieved from https://rwu.libguides.com/openaccess Roger Williams University. (2020). Scholarly Communication & Open Access. Retrieved from https:// www.rwu.edu/library/help-and-services/information-faculty/scholarly-communication-open-access Rogers, J. (1989). Teaching adults. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Rouse, M. (2019). Definition - Open content. Retrieved from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/ open-content Silvertown, J. (2009). A new dawn for citizen science. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 24(9), 467–471. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2009.03.017 PMID:19586682 Simond, M. (2008). Issues and Challenges of Open Distance Learning. Retrieved from http://ezinearticles. com/?Issues-and-Challenges-in-Open-and-Distance-Learning&id=979598 Simpson, O. (2013). Student retention in distance education: Are we failing our students? Open Learning, 28(2), 105–119. doi:10.1080/02680513.2013.847363 Smith, S. D. (2011). The meaning of open education. Foxgrove. SPARC. (2019). Open Access. Retrieved from https://sparcopen.org/open-access/ SPARC Europe. (2020). Setting the Default to Open: Open Access benefits. Retrieved from https:// sparceurope.org/what-we-do/open-access/oa-benefits/ Springer Nature. (2020). What is open access? Retrieved from https://www.springernature.com/gp/ open-research/about/what-is-open-access Suber, P. (2004). A very brief introduction to Open Access. Retrieved from http://legacy.earlham. edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm Sum, N. L., & Jessop, B. (2013). Competitiveness, the knowledge-based economy and higher education. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 4(1), 24–44. doi:10.100713132-012-0121-8 Sylvester, B. (2018). Open Access for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from https://blog.mdpi. com/2018/01/15/open-access-for-sustainable-development/ Tennant, J. P., Waldner, F., Jacques, D.C., Masuzzo, P., Collister, L.B., & Hartgerink, C.H.J. (2016). The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review. F1000Reseach 2016, 5(632). doi:10.12688/f1000research.8460.3

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The Oxford English Dictionary. (1989). (2nd ed., Vol. 4). Clarendon Press. Thompson, M. (1998). Distance Learners in Higher Education. In C. C. Gibson (Ed.), Distance Learners in Higher Education: Institutional Responses for Quality Outcomes (pp. 10–18). Atwood Publishing. Retrieved from http://www1.worldbank.org/disted/Teaching/Design/kn-02.html UNESCO. (2002). Open and distance learning: trends, policy and strategy considerations. Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000128463 UNESCO. (2017). UNESCO’s Open Access and Education initiatives built around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Retrieved from http://aims.fao.org/activity/blog/unescos-open-access-andeducation-initiatives-built-around-sustanaible-development UNESCO. (2018). Higher education and the sustainable development goals. Retrieved from https:// en.unesco.org/themes/higher-education/sdgs UNESCO. (2019). Open educational resources (OER). Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/themes/ building-knowledge-societies/oer United Nations. (n.d.). #Envision2030: 17 goals to transform the world for persons with disabilities. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/envision2030.html UTA Libraries. (2018). Introduction to Open pedagogy. Retrieved from https://libguides.uta.edu/openped Utama, Y. J., Ambariyanto, A., Zainuri, M., Darsono, D., Setyono, B., & Putro, S. (2018). Sustainable development goals as the basis of university management towards global competitiveness. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1025, 012094. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1025/1/012094 Vioreanu, D. (2019). What is Open Courseware? Studying Online for Free in 2020. Retrieved from https://www.distancelearningportal.com/articles/193/what-is-open-courseware-studying-online-forfree-in-2020.html Widén, G. (2010). New modes of scholarly communication: implications of Web 2.0 in the context of research dissemination. In Transforming Research Libraries for the Global Knowledge Society. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/scholarly-communication

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS COVID-19: is a recently discovered infectious disease caused by coronavirus. Open Access: A publishing outlet for scholarly communication that makes results of research and academic publications freely available or accessible online to anyone without attracting any cost. Open data: Easily accessible data that anyone can access, use and freely share to anyone else to benefit from. Open and distance learning (ODL): A system of education that attempts to remove the administrative and educational bottlenecks experienced in the traditional face-to-face system and brings about self-directed and flexibility in learning such as place and time of learning.

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Scholarly communication: A system through which scholarly work is created, reviewed and disseminated to the academic, research or scholarly community Social sustainability: A system of social organization that promotes welfare of members/people and mitigates lack and poverty. Sustainable development: The idea or belief that ensures life improvement for mankind and guarantees that human society is able to meet its current needs without jeopardizing the chances of future generations to meet their own needs.

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Chapter 3

Journalists and Open Access: A Roadmap to Sustainable Development and Climate Change Adaptation in Tanzania Emmanuel Frank Elia University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

ABSTRACT This chapter explores the role of open access in promoting climate change adaptation and sustainable development. It reviews global trends of journalists’ access to information and specifically discusses Tanzania journalists’ access to and use of climate change information. The chapter further assesses the impact of journalists’ access to open information resources in adapting to climate change and promote sustainable development. The chapter also discusses the challenges journalists encounter in accessing and using open access information resources. It further recommends solutions to the raised challenges and suggests areas for further research. The chapter concludes by giving insights on major issues of concern on open access.

INTRODUCTION Societies around the globe have of recent experienced notable climate changes. The changes have had adverse effects to people’s livelihoods. Developing countries have extensively been affected by the impacts of climate change as they are resource constrained. Undeniably, climate change menace has more negatively affected the economies and development of developing countries which the majority are in Africa. Most of the key income generating sectors that have employed the majority of people from developing countries are climate-dependent. Such sectors include agriculture, livestock keeping, forestry and tourism. These sectors which are in fact seriously affected with climate change and key in sustainable development as they also contribute large stake of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of most developing countries. In addition, the aforementioned strategic sectors are crucial for people’s DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch003

Copyright © 2021, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

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livelihood and essential in ensuring food security and water availability and sustainability. Societies ought to be educated on proper use of existing natural resources in order to protect them for the present and future generations and develop sustainably. There is a need for journalists to inform the public on climate change in order to use available natural resources. Climate change adaptation is one of the key processes needed for a society to attain sustainable development. Journalists are an important bridge in sourcing and disseminating information on climate change for sustainable development. Their role is crucial in identifying the challenges facing societies and informing better ways to address them. Notwithstanding their unique role in the society, journalists face a number of challenges in reporting and covering climate related stories in media. This chapter therefore explores challenges journalists face when covering climate change and sustainable development information to the audience. The chapter further establish the impact of open access resources, which are available freely from the internet, in journalists’ learning and reporting on climate change. Access to comprehensive and relevant climate change information from open access resources is crucial to journalists not only in preparing quality frames and stories to be reported but and also increasing number of stories covered. Clear stories reported on media can promote publics’ understanding and ultimately promote climate change adaptation and sustainable development.

BACKGROUND Climate change poses a serious threat to food security, energy, water resources, infrastructures, tourism, population and biodiversity to countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The sustainable growth of these sectors largely depends on how the public is correctly informed on proper measures to be taken to address climate change and develop sustainably. To efficiently use resources without compromising the future and address climate change, the public ought to have access to appropriate information through journalists. Journalist’s role entails identifying, collecting, synthesizing and disseminating information to users in desired form. Their access to free, relevant and timely information is critical in promoting climate change adaptation and sustainable development. Access to open resources helps journalists to comprehend and cover climate information to the public. Open access resources not only provide journalists with free information but also ensure easy access and use of climate change information resources that fosters understanding and learning among citizens. In the recent years, the world has witnessed adverse climate change impacts which have threatened initiatives to achieve sustainable development. Climate change menace is a cross cutting global challenge societies in the world face. It occurs as a result of increased human related activities in a prolonged time of over 30 years (Schafer and Schlichting, 2014). Of late, the world has witnessed an increase in climate change related disasters with developing countries being most affected, (United Nations [UN], 2019). Despite climate change posing threat to societies across the globe, developing countries with low adaptive capacities and those frequently attacked by natural climatic disasters such as Honduras, Jamaica, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Zambia (Boykoff and Roberts, 2007), are more prone to adverse impacts of climate change. Resultantly, climate change which has cross-cutting effects tends to have severe impact in a number of key economic sectors such as agriculture, water, infrastructure, irrigation, human settlements, wildlife, water, livestock and forestry. Other sectors affected by climate change include industry, business, religion and sports.

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The majority of people (413 million) who are living in extreme poverty are from sub-Saharan Africa (United Nations [UN], 2019). Tanzania is located in the Eastern African region and is among countries in the sub-African being affected by climate change. Climate change has affected her economic growth and poverty eradication efforts. The economy of the East African country depends on rain-fed agriculture and tourism which largely depend on the environment. These sectors largely depend on weather and climate and are increasingly being affected by changes in the environment, climate change to be specific. The pressure exerted on the environment as a result of global dynamics on climate may have serious impact to livelihoods if dire measures are not timely taken to combat the situation. On the other hand, Sustainable Development is an economic development strived towards attaining development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the well being of the future generations to meet their basic needs (Mwakajinga 2013). Sustainable development envisages protecting resources for the well being of the future generations. It informs how human beings should address their basic daily needs without compromising with the environment. The Brundtland Commission and the Kyoto Accord were fundamental global initiatives which laid milestone to sustainable development (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2014). The resolutions from these initiatives emphasised on ways of developing sustainably by minimising pollution and protecting the environment. As such, economic activities and growth should consider efficient use of resources and applying clean efficient technologies in production. To address the prolonged effects of climate change to livelihoods and promote sustainable development, in 2015, the (UN) established seventeen (17) global development goals. These goals are also being referred to as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs were set for countries around the world to achieve by 2030. Out of the 17 goals, 5 goals are directly linked to climate change. These include the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG1) which targets on eradicating poverty in the society. The second goal strives to fight hunger (SDG 2) and the sixth target envisions societies having access to clean water and sanitation (SDG 6). Goal thirteenth sought to promote actions which combat climate change and its impacts (SDG 13). The fifteenth target aims at protecting biodiversity, minimising desertification and sustainable use of forests (SDG 15). The public rely on journalists to be informed on proper ways of addressing climate change and SDGs. They also educate and create awareness on the status each country has attained in implementing the goals. Journalists are therefore crucial in promoting publics’ understanding as they are important sources involved in collecting and disseminating information which can promote climate change adaptation and sustainable development. Journalists have a direct impact in comprehending climate change as they decide on the type and amount of information the public receives (Dotson, Jacobson, Kaid and Carlton, 2012). Their critical roles in climate change adaptation and sustainable development entails reporting the cause and effects of climate change and informing countries or communities best strategies to adopt to address climate change challenge (Shanahan, Shubert, Scherer and Corcoran, 2013). Journalist’s ability to adequately access and synthesis of information is therefore fundamental in evaluating the extent to which parties have progressed in adapting to climate change and sustainable development. In fact, journalists influence public understanding by appropriately framing and reporting on climate change and sustainable development (Elia, 2019a). Journalists’ information transfer, sharing and communicating scientific knowledge has made journalists important catalysts in information knowledge sharing (Schafer, Berglez, Wessler, Eide, Nerlich and O’Neill, 2016). The public behavioural change to a large extent is influenced by how these media practitioners frame stories, the content they choose and the frequency of reporting a story (Dotson, Jacobson, Kaid and Carlton, 2012; Elia, 2019a). Through quality framing 49

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of environmental issues, journalists become essential cogs in informing the public on proper decision to address climate change and sustainable development (Young and McComas, 2016; Gkiouzepas and Botetzagias 2017). Debatably, despite journalists disseminating climate change information for sustainable development, the public still seems to be lacking adequate information and knowledge on how to effectively tackle the climate change problem. In fact, the pace towards implementing SDGs by most sub-Saharan African countries including Tanzania has not been promising (UN, 2019). The public inaccessibility to climate change information for sustainable development could be attributed by a number of factors including laws which affect access to information, changes in journalists’ means of news gathering and dissemination, lack of skills, inadequate subject expertise, political climate, insufficient training and barriers to internet access (Media Council of Tanzania [MCT] 2019; Elia 2019b). Traditionally, journalists seek information from sources for reporting in newspapers, radio and on TV (Tagbo, 2010). They use sources and channels such as politicians, scientists, government officials and extension officers to access climate change and sustainable development information (Han, Sun and Lu, 2017; Elia, 2019b). Of late, journalists use internet and Smartphones to prepare and share climate change information to the public. The use of these tools has changed journalistic roles and the manner to which information is collected and disseminated to the audience (Apuke, 2016; MCT, 2019). Lately, the advent of technology and use of internet have provided an opportunity for journalists to easily and timely access information on climate change and sustainable development. Internet facilitates access to both restricted and openly accessed resources. Open access refers to online resource freely accessed information on internet which allow users to download, read, copy, edit, distribute and using it without infringing the authors rights (Pinowar, Priem, Lariviere, Alperin, Mathias, Norlander, Farley, West and Haustein, 2018). As open access are freely available and affordable, they can be timely and conveniently accessed compared to restricted resources. The fact that open access resources can be accessed with no cost, they can promote readership, citation and on whole usage. Journalists around the globe are increasingly using the internet and in particular social media in journalistic activities to access and disseminate information timely (Bosch, 2012; Muindi, 2018). Although the public expects journalists to report on events timely, there is less attention being paid to understand journalists’ practices. Such practices include how and where journalists look for relevant and trustworthy information particularly in this information explosion era (Atton and Mabweazara, 2011; Elia, 2019b). To effectively exploit open access information from the internet, journalists need to self-learn and/or be trained to acquire information management skills (Elia, 2019b). Journalists in developing countries such as the United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden may produce better frames and report on climate change and sustainable related stories compared to those from developing countries as they have advanced in technology use, receive frequent training and have access to climate change information (Elia, 2019c; Menezes, 2018; Shanahan, 2009; Schafer and Schlichting, 2014 and Boykoff and Roberts, 2007).

MAIN FOCUS OF A CHAPTER This section has four sub-sections. The first subsection describes global trends of journalist access to information. Second sub-section explains on Tanzania journalists’ current status of accessing and using climate change information. The third sub-section narrates on the impact of open access in climate change 50

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and sustainable development. The last sub-section discusses challenges Tanzania journalists encounter in accessing and using climate change information.

Global Trends of Journalist’ Access to Information Globally, journalists use both print and electronic resources such as books, newspapers, internet, conferences, policy makers and researchers to access information. Information on climate change and sustainable development is also widely accessed from these sources. Schafer and Schlichting (2014) observed that scholarly information including that of climate change that can be accessed, originates from Europe, North America, Asia, Ocenia, Latin America and Africa respectively. Despite an array of sources which can be used by journalists, recently journalists around the globe have increasingly been using the internet to access online information resources. Internet accessibility which provides vast open online resources has recently been progressively used by the media in the last decade. In fact internet has changed the way information is sourced, managed and disseminated by journalists (Schafer and Schlichting, 2014). Advancement in technology and information infrastructure has debatably resulted into heightened use of the internet by journalists. For example, Tandoc, Cabanes and Cayabyab (2019) observed a high interaction between the public and journalists through social media in Philippines, Germany and Brazil. The trend around the globe indicates journalists in developed countries to be advanced in using internet compared to developing countries (Alejandro, 2010; Schultz and Sheffer, 2010; Atton and Mabweazara, 2011; Alvarez, 2012; Vis, 2013; Tandoc, Cabanes and Cayabyab, 2019). Although technology advancement in developed countries such as the USA, Germany, Britain and Sweden have promoted their journalists’ internet use and technocrat capabilities compared to those from developing countries, indubitably, developing countries particularly from Africa have recently recorded a sharp increase in internet and mobile phone usage (Mabweazara, 2015). A report by State on Internet Freedom by Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa [CIPESA] indicates Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal Zimbabwe and Botswana as leading nations on internet usage (CIPESA, 2019). As access to internet is a pre-requisite in accessing open resources, these recent statistics could imply that journalists in these countries have a better access to internet. Depending on other factors which influence access to online information such as availability of smartphones, I-pads and computers, journalists in these African countries could be more adept in adapting to internet use and extensively accessing open access information resources. Access to information could influence climate change adaptation and sustainable development. For example, Mabweazara (2015) noted in West Africa access to mobile phones to speed up sharing of information and promoted development. In sub-Saharan Africa, internet has facilitated sharing of information among journalists and has increasingly been used to reach the audience. Some few scholars who have indicated that internet has penetrated in journalistic activities in sub-Saharan Africa include Bosch (2012), Azziz, (2014), Mabweazara (2015), Muindi (2018) and Elia (2019a). In East Africa, Kenya appears to lead other countries in journalists’ use of internet. Despite the fact that journalists in other countries in East Africa also use internet in journalism, studies of Mabweazara (2015), Sasaka, Otike and Ng’eno (2017) and Muindi (2018) attest that Kenyan journalists were more adept to use the internet, particularly social media for journalistic activities compared to other East African countries. Based on the two recent CIPESA reports statistics on internet users, one factor which could explain Kenyan journalists’ adeptness in social media use could be their easy access to internet. Mabweazara (2015) noted that access to technology was crucial in promoting usage. Although journalist’s use of social media for journalistic activities was 51

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high in Kenya, studies in Tanzania by Elia (2019b) and MCT (2017) indicated low use of social media among journalists in performing their journalistic roles. However, the Tanzania studies indicated generally journalists’ internet use to have recently soared. There are a number of factors which influence journalist’s access to information resources. The factors include conferences (Nwabueze, Nnaemeka, Umeora and Okika 2015); journalists’ specialised knowledge (Tagbo, 2010 and Elia, 2019a); Language (Bosch, 2012; Elia, 2019b); Internet (Apuke 2012; Hossain and Islam, 2012; Aziz 2014); Reading culture (Elia, 2019b); training (Menezes, 2018); cost of access to technology (Mabweazara, 2015); trust (Dotson, et al. 2012); information literacy skills (Elia, 2019b). Among these factors, internet appears to be a unique attribute which also influences other factors and promote journalists access to information. For instance, journalists can learn or conduct self-training on a topic of interest such as climate change through reading open access resources. Through reading, journalists can also develop writing skills, information literacy skills and language by constantly reading freely tutorials on internet. Ultimately, journalists can become specialised in climate change coverage and cognizant of sustainable development issues by accessing open access resources. Journalist’s expertise can further positively contribute in promoting climate change coverage and contribute in government establishing climate actions. Journalists’ expertise may therefore promote climate change adaptation and stimulate sustainable development process in a respective country. For example in 2007 journalists in Costa Rica significantly contributed in developing its National Strategy for Climate Change (Shanahan, 2011).

Access and Coverage of Climate Change Information by Journalists in Tanzania The number of journalists in Tanzania varies and is estimated to be between 600 and 6000 (Aziz, 2014; MCT,2017). They are registered in media houses and freelancers. Tanzania has 11 well established media companies that offer broadcasting and print services. These include the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC), Mwananchi Communication Limited (MCL), Tanzania Standard Newspapers (TSN), Uhuru Media Group and the IPP Media. Others are the Africa Media Group, New Habari Corporation, Sahara Media Group (SMG), Clouds Media Group (CMG), Global Publishers, and Business Times Limited. Three of the named media houses, namely TBC, TSN and Uhuru Media Group are owned by the state. The named media houses own an estimated 158 radio stations, 109 newspapers and 34 television stations (MCT,2019). Of late, Tanzania has recorded an increase in the number of mobile phones and internet users. For example, internet and mobile phone users have recently soared and reached 23 million and 43 million subscribers (MCT, 2019). In fact, the majority (90%) of Tanzania journalists indicate to use internet (Elia, 2019b). The recently remarkable development observed on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Tanzania could have been contributed by establishment of new policies such as the newly ICT revised policy, 2016 and the Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content) Regulations, 2017. These frameworks have had major impact in promoting internet and mobile phone use in Tanzania. For example, of late the Tanzania has observed the number of TV operators soaring to 90 online TV operators offering online broadcasting services an increase in online radios reaching to 25 stations (MCT. 2019). CMG, IPP MEDIA and SMG area few well established media houses which have switched towards online radio services while TSN, Uhuru Media Group, New Habari Corporation and MCL which initially provided newspapers services established online television business (MCT. 2019).

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Based on the literature and statistics provided, it appears that most journalist in Tanzania are using digital technology, internet and smart mobile phone in sourcing, synthesizing and reporting gathered information to the public. Specifically, the expansion of internet infrastructure has expanded journalists’ network and facilitated transfer and sharing of information on climate change and sustainable development. In such the internet has not only enabled journalists to acquire new knowledge, but have also enhanced timely provision of information to users. Social media are applications which depend on the internet to function. Of recent, journalists have been using social networks in journalistic activities. They have as such used social media to respond to consumers’ news needs. These applications have positively changed news consumption and provided journalists with their own space to interact with the audience outside the scope of their editors (Tandoc, Cabanes and Cayabyab, 2019). In Tanzania, Aziz (2014), MCT (2019) and Elia (2019b) found journalists have shifted from paper-based practices to more interactive digital and online resources use in news processing and sharing. In fact, journalist have increasingly use Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram in sharing and accessing information. Despite the availability of various social media, Tanzania journalists prefer Facebook and Twitter over other social media (Aziz, 2014). Previous studies in Tanzania (see Aziz, 2014; MCT, 2017) indicated journalists least use social networking applications in journalistic activities. However, current studies of MCT (2019) and Elia (2019b) have affirmed heightened social networks use among journalists. Although journalists make use of the internet generally in seeking and disseminating information on climate change and sustainable development, least (37.5%) use social media to access climate change information (Elia, 2019b). The findings suggest that journalists make more use of websites compared to social media platforms when it comes to accessing climate change information. The major reason in such scenario can be that journalists have a wider access to open access information resources from search engines websites compared to social media platforms which have content limitations. Another possible reason for low use of social media in accessing climate change information could be journalists use social media for social gratification and entertainment (Aziz, 2014) and not for news gathering and reporting. This could probably explain why Tanzania journalists use more search engines in accessing information on internet compared to social media (Elia, 2019b, 2019c). The other possible reason for the trend explained could be journalists in Tanzania have yet attained information skills to use social media in news gathering and reporting. Apart from other sources available, journalists in Tanzania access climate change information through conferences, researchers, print sources, policy makers, politicians, communities and newspapers (Siyao and Sife, 2018; Elia, 2019b). Interestingly, Elia, (2019b) found journalists in Tanzania access journal articles which are basically open access resources to broaden their knowledge on climate change and sustainable development. Access to open resources for reporting is crucial as journalists not only lack adequate local content on climate change but it is difficult for them to locate print grey information related to climate change. Most of such information is located in Libraries where they have limited access to (Hossain and Islam, 2012) and can hardly share information in a friendly manner. However, access to sources is not enough as journalists’ interest, awareness to a field of study, easy access to a scholarly resources influences access to resources (Peters, 2013). The majority of Tanzania journalists use the internet and open access information sources on climate change as they are free, conveniently, timely accessed. Access to such open resources can promote their understanding and access to timely and free climate change information and develop sustainably. Scholars, who include journalists in most developing countries like Tanzania, face challenges in accessing scientific 53

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information from subscribed journals due to the high cost. Resultantly, academic institutions in Tanzania have collaborated and established a consortia-Consortium of Tanzania University and Research Libraries (COTUL) to have a wider scope of information resources and address funding challenges. Despite the availability of COTUL, journalists are still not well informed of its existence neither its function. One reason for their low awareness could be that COTUL interacts more with academic and higher learning institutions. However, even if the journalists were aware of the Consortia, they would still need access to passwords and proximity to the higher learning institutions to be able to access the resources which basically are not in an open access format. Often said, reporting scientific findings such as that on climate change is challenging to many journalists. One reason that could explain the problem is the uncertainty and complexity of climate change science (Boykoff and Boykoff, 2007; Bosch, 2012).Tanzania not being exceptional, has journalists who have challenges in comprehending climate change (Elia, Field Data, 2018). The challenge could be attributed by the fact that most journalists around the world lack sufficient time to acquire and process information before disseminating to the audience (Hossain and Islam, 2012). In fact journalists they need time to source, understand, synthesise information on climate change and sustainable development before reporting. Thus, open access provides journalist with a better platform for news gathering and content verification on global challenges facing the society such as climate change. Openly accessed resources also provide journalist with a better platform to compare and analyse extensive available free resources, which resultantly can increase quality reporting, coverage and comprehension on climate change. Journalist’s access to open access can therefore foster adaptation by enabling the public better understand climate change by producing clear frames, making the climate agenda more visible. Content verification can promote adaptation by making the climate agenda more visible through clearly framed stories which are easily comprehended and by the public (McCombs, 2011).

Open Access, Climate Change Adaptation and Sustainable Development Open access can promote adaptation to climate change and sustainable development. In the context of this chapter, journalists’ access to open resources can enhance adaptation to climate change and sustainable development by promoting self-learning. Self-learning can impart journalists with new useful information and knowledge which can be disseminated and shared to the selected audience such as farmers. In fact, the availability of open access and technology have enabled journalists globally to create networks which help them to improve quality reporting and coverage on topic of common interest (Shanahan, 2011). For instance, farmers can decide on an appropriate product of her/his choice and make use of the information provided by journalists to improve production. A farmer can be aware of and choose types of resistant and high yielding seeds to improve cultivation and productivity. Journalists’ ability to access open resources can help farmers access information on new varieties which can be introduced and cultivated in new areas which have never been introduced before. For example, Singida region in Tanzania which is semi-arid has recently started to cultivate cashew nuts. Of late, the scientists found climatic conditions in this region to support the growth of cashew nuts. In such a context, journalists’ access to open resources could provide appropriate information to early adopters and foster the adoption process which ultimately will promote SDGs. Moreover, journalists’ access to open resources on environmental clean and renewable technologies, fertilizers and environment friendly crops can promote their understanding of a variety of related products. Journalists’ understanding of new technologies can be beneficial to the public as users may 54

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be in a position to understand newly introduced products and adopt innovations, evaluate their relative advantage and build capacity on trialability (Rogers, 2003). Journalist’s access to open resources can help the public avoid income loss, properties, capital growth and promote sustainable development. In such a context, undeniably journalist’s access to open resources could foster stewardship in implementing sustainable development goals. Journalist’s timely access to information on climate change can facilitate timely access to such information to targeted stakeholders and foster adaptation. In the agricultural sector purview, journalists can act as an important link for farmers to access relevant and timely information which promotes coping and adaption to new varieties, food security and ultimately eradicate poverty. Farmer’s adoption of new farming technologies, crops and diversification of economic activities has the potential of increasing food production and addressing SDG1 and SDG2. Journalist’s ability to access open information resources can also hasten achieving SDG 6. In recent times, human socio-economic activities have increased, with more pressure and exploitation on natural resources such as water and affecting national economies (IPCC, 2014). In fact, 700 people could be displaced by 2030 and half the world’s population is experiencing extreme water scarcity (UN, 2019). Water being a scarce resource and a necessity to almost all living organisms on earth, ought to be well protected for the next generation to equally be able to use. Access to open resources can help journalists broaden their knowledge on best practices which can be used to protect water catchment areas, water bodies and adopting efficient and sustainable irrigation schemes. As open access resources are freely available on the internet, journalists can access resources conveniently and share the information through their social networks. The advent of technology, particularly internet and smart phones has enabled journalists to reach out a wider audience and could timely and positively inform the public on strategies to address water scarcity, access to clean water and sanitation challenges. In the world, there are approximated 2 billion people who face water stress (UN, 2019). Open access resources can provide awareness to journalists on experiences around the world on the extent of water scarcity problem. Journalists’ awareness and understanding of the challenge can instigate learning interest among journalists to inform the public on proper ways to protect water bodies and efficiently preserve and use water. For example, journalists who acquired knowledge from openly accessed resources can inform the public efficient strategies in water/rainfall harvesting. Relevant knowledge on water conservation mechanisms can be used in day-to-day activities for livelihood wellbeing. In addition, proper conservation strategies can protect the publics’ welfare such as by preventing waterborne diseases. Journalists can also use open access resources to learn and inform the society through media on proper sanitation by recommending on the proper design of user friendly toilets. Sustainable Development Goal 13 sought to address climate actions for sustainable development. Journalist’s access to open resources can educate the public on proper climate actions to be adopted to address climate change menace. The public needs timely and relevant information on climate change for a resilient, dynamic and sustainable society. Journalists can use open resources to learn from different environmental friendly technologies used in various sectors in other areas and compare with existing technologies and advise the public on efficient technologies which may have maximum economic returns based on expected relative advantages and benefits (Rogers, 2003) to be accrued. Access to open resources can also create awareness to journalists on types of pollutants on land, sea and air and actions which ought to be taken to minimise environmental impacts. Journalists’ access to open sources can help them report comprehensively on success stories on implemented environmental plans from countries, organisations or individuals. Such actions can help combat climate change by

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advising governments and individuals on ways to reduce vulnerability and adopt environment friendly strategies and technologies which protect the environment for sustainable development. Open access can also play a great role in informing the government and policy makers on the progress and status achieved in addressing SDGs by comparing each country’s progress. Reporting of the development of SDGs plans and their implementation by journalists who have extensively make use of open access information can indeed promote achieving the target within the set time and promote sustainable use of resources and climate change adaptation. Open access can thus catalyse the achievement of SDGs by informing the public on best climate action practices to be adopted in a society and expected benefits. For example journalists can access open resources, learn from other countries how to address the challenge of plastic bags and inform the public on expected benefits to the environment and sustainable development. The public and policy makers may build more trust in such success stories and ultimately adopt a new environmentally friendly practice. Journalists in Tanzania played a crucial role in informing the public of problems of plastic bags and benefits in using environmental friendly bags for a sustainable society. Their ability to understanding and communicate with the society on the problem seems to have been largely contributed by their access to open resources. The fifteenth SDG among other issues sought to manage forests, combat desertification and land degradation and promote biodiversity. Biodiversity loss and land degradation have continued to threaten the world progress on SDG 15 (UN, 2019). Despite human beings persistently engaging in land degradation through deforestation and cropland expansion- which destroy the vegetation, forests protection remains one of the fundamental strategies to address climate change. Forests not only release oxygen to the air but absorb carbon released as toxic pollutant gases generated from global warming. They also contribute to rainfall formation, hosting variety of animal species and balancing the ecosystem. In fact, forests are crucial in air, water and generally ecosystem purification. Journalist’s access to open resources can positively promote attaining of SDG 15 by translating the acquired knowledge read from open access resources to conserve forests. New knowledge received by journalist can reduce land degradation and protect biodiversity by informing the public on available options to be used to protect the environment. If the public applies the new knowledge, it can reduce pressure on forest resources depletion, usage for create a balanced ecosystem. Journalists’ access to open resources can also foster the smooth transfer and sharing of experiences from successful case studies such as Latin America. For instance, the knowledge from journalists can educate the public on mutual benefits that can be accrued in better forest management activities. The successful engagement of the public can result into effective utilisation of forest products, improve income and promote sustainable development goals. Moreover, journalists can conveniently access, learn independently and share information and knowledge through open access with regard to feasible and plausible strategies to combat land degradation and life of other organisms. Thus, open access will have contributed in creating a sustainable and environmental friendly society. Moreover, open access can contribute positively in the implementation of climate change strategies and sustainable development goals by promoting quality of story frames prepared by journalists. Open access can therefore impart skills in preparing frames and transform journalists from preparing poor to high quality framing and reporting. The quality frames produced can result into better informed policy makers and citizens who can contribute in effective policy making (Shanahan, 2011). Explicitly said, increased in climate change information coverage has been informed by the availability and predominance of open access information sources.

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Challenges Journalists Face in Access to and Use of Open Access Information Undeniably, journalists’ access to and use of open access resources have had positive impact to the achievement of SDGs. Notwithstanding the benefits on access, there are a number of challenges journalists encounter in the course of accessing open resources. In this chapter, seven challenges have been identified as major barriers to the access and use of open access resources among journalists in Tanzania. One biggest challenge many journalists face in most African countries including Tanzania is insufficient English language proficiency. As it is well known, English is not the first language to most African countries including Tanzania. For instance in Tanzania, English language is the third spoken language to most people. Most Tanzanians speak their first native language followed by Kiswahili which is the official communication language. English is used as the medium of instruction in schools hence less widely spoken by the majority of Tanzanians. Considering that there is vast information in English than native language, journalists ought to possess English language proficiency to access and understand information on the internet. Thus, although journalists can access open resources from the internet, English language incompetency can prevent them from identifying relevant source needed. Resultantly, the journalist can fail to understand and repackage the information content to the audience. Journalists’ challenges to English language and lack of vernacular languages were also observed by Shanahan (2011) and Bosch (2012). Another barrier journalists encounter in the access and use of open sources in a society is culture. Journalists in most African countries operate under multicultural environment (Atton and Mabweazara, 2011). Cultural diversity can prevent journalists’ effective use of open access resources in two ways. First, in a country like Tanzania with more than 120 different languages, ethnic backgrounds and civilisation (Petzell, 2012), repackaging information from open access resources becomes challenging. The situation is more complex as the climate related information is mostly prepared from western culture. In such a scenario, information gathering and dissemination process becomes an uphill task to the majority of journalists. As such, journalists need more time and expertise to understand climate change. They also need time to develop experience and capacity in repackaging and communicating information to suit local taste and Tanzanian context. In order for messages prepared by journalists to be adequately communicated and utilised by people, for instance in rural areas where the majority with strong cultural values lives, journalists need to be conversant with specific culture of a society for the intended message to be effectively received and used. Thus for countries with diverse cultural backgrounds like Tanzania and Nigeria, access to open resources cannot simply guarantee easy adoption of information even with the availability of technology. Journalists need to be conversant and understand powerful socio-cultural multifaceted dynamics embedded in climate change and sustainable development. Understanding of cultural issues can promote journalists sift through communities power relationships and social structures. Comprehending on cultural dynamics and values is crucial towards adopting effective strategies to promote climate change adaptation and sustainable development (Young and McComas, 2016). The third barrier is financial constraints. Media houses in some developing countries like Tanzania have of recent recorded financial constraints as a result of changes in global economy, policies, technology and political condition in respective countries (MCT, 2019). Revenue dwindling poses a serious threat to the existence of journalists as they become less endowed with resources to perform their day-to-day journalism activities. Meagre financial resources can contribute to journalists failing to use internet and ultimately not accessing open access resources. Thus, even with the availability of internet and open access resources, journalists still need funds to conveniently access internet at any location. Insufficient funds 57

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can therefore adversely affect journalism practices. As climate change is multi-disciplinary, journalists who cover such a field need more time to source and understand on the topic. Inadequate resources, particularly funds may result into journalists’ failing to specialise in reporting. Its effect can manifest in journalists preparing poor quality frames and reduce quantity of climate change information covered. Subject expertise is critical in climate change news coverage (Menezes, 2018; Elia, 2019a; Elia 2019b). Lack of access to scientific trusted sources is another predicament affecting journalists’ use of open resources. Open access provides resources and gives the user freedom to choose a resource he/she prefers. However, despite the availability of vast open resources on internet, not all seem to be trustworthy resources. Opponents of open access have labelled it as of poor quality stressing that it lacks peer review. Despite this being a fallacy, it remains clear that not all content posted on the internet is valid and reliable. In reporting, trustworthiness and factual information content is crucial to most journalists (Hossain and Islam, 2012). Facts prevent journalists/media houses from facing legal measures against them if the information is proven to be false. Thus, despite heightened usage of internet in accessing climate change information, journalist are still sceptical and less trust some openly accessed resources from the internet (Maibach, et al., 2018; Elia, 2019b). Journalists also face a challenge of insufficient access to local open access climate change information on internet. Generally a large body of information on climate change accessed from the internet by journalists in developing countries is in open access format (Elia, 2019c). This has contributed to least coverage of local climate change information in African countries such as Nigeria, Uganda and Namibia (Tagbo, 2010; Corner, 2011; Gicheru, 2014). Although open access provides access to freely available climate change information, most open access information is prepared and disseminated by international sources (Elia 2019c). For example, in South Africa and Tanzania, Shanahan (2011) and Elia (2019a) respectively found extensive coverage of international news on climate change. Access to international sources pose a challenge to most African journalists due to language problem, insufficient reporting skills and context irrelevancy. As a result, more of what is covered on climate change in developing countries media is a replicable of the western. In such a setting, developing countries might be caught-up in reporting other countries progress in climate change and sustainable development and not of respective countries. Another serious cog affecting journalists’ access to and use of information for sustainable development is the lack of information literacy skills. In most developing countries including Tanzania, journalists lack basic information literacy skills (Hossain and Islam, 2012) to enable them seek information and become life-long information seekers. According to a recently media study conducted for journalists in Tanzania Elia (2019b), one journalist attested, “Although journalists use the internet to access climate change information, few know the most valuable websites to visit to retrieve such information”. The implication is that journalists probably search the information on internet serendipitously and lack necessary skills to use advanced search tools and key words which can retrieve desired content within a short time. As journalists are always constraint with time to beat deadlines (Hossain and Islam, 2012), a need for information literacy skills cannot be over emphasised. Poor information searching skills can result into journalists’ poor access to quality resources which may translate to poor coverage and public understanding of climate change and sustainable development. The last, albeit not least challenge which affect journalists in accessing and using open access resources in Tanzania is poor reading culture. Journalists ought to extensively read information from open access resources to have a broader perspective and knowledge on sustainable development. In fact, journalists reporting on climate change and sustainable development need a good command of language and reading 58

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culture to be prolific. Specialised knowledge to report on climate change and sustainable development issues hinges on a broader understanding of socio-economic and environmental issues which is also broadly linked to the journalists’ reading culture. In fact, journalists ought to have a comprehensive and extensive insight of events related to sustainable development to make meaningful coverage. Journalists need to embark on frequent reading of open access resources from different fields of study so as to translate ongoing processes, targeted SDGs, achievements and actions to be taken to communicate a comprehensible and sensible message to the audience. It is through journalists’ clear understanding of the interconnectedness between societal matters addressed by the SDGs, the public can make informed decision on the information to be utilised. It is against this backdrop, even if journalists have access to open resources, poor reading culture may result into irrelevant stories on climate change and sustainable development being reported. Poor reading culture may also cause journalists to copy and paste a story without relating to the context. Such practice can affect the quality of frames journalists prepare as they fail to engage with appropriate reading resources. Irrelevant reading resources may have an effect in informing journalists’ ability to set an agenda to the audience to capture. Thus, reading culture may have water down efforts to adapt to climate change and timely achieving the sustainable development goals.

RECOMMENDATIONS Despite open access being crucial, journalists’ challenges ought to be tackled to quicken achieving SDGs. Based on the analysis, the chapter suggests a number of pertinent issues which need attention to promote climate change and sustainable development. The chapter suggest that the government strive to develop open access climate change local content and ensure journalists have free, timely and convenient access to information. This can be done by packaging information from scientific sources to the native official language, Kiswahili. Access to local climate change content from open resources can be ensured by enabling journalists have access to ‘grey’ scientific resources from the government, research institutions and non-governmental organisations. Media houses should prepare and implement language training programmes for journalist to improve English language proficiency and instil reading culture. The media houses also need to allocate resources for journalists to have access to climate change. The media houses can improve the reading culture by ensuring journalists have access to resources in both print and electronic formats by making their libraries operational. Media houses should adjust their managerial and editorial policies to accommodate training of specialised journalists. The policies should facilitate journalists’ access online resources from any location through the internet. Media can also enhance the quality of framed stories by capacitating journalists through paying fees to enrol in online journalism professional comprehensive training. In addition, media also provide funds to journalists to travel and practise investigative journalism to identify salient socio-cultural issues affecting climate change adaptation and attaining sustainable development. Journalists also need to be frequently trained on searching information from the internet to access relevant and trustable online resources. Moreover, journalists should be vigilant and enthusiastic in self-learning to promote adaptation and enable desired sustainable development outcomes. Online searching skills can save journalists’ time to seek online information of their choice. Saving time can also imply that journalists can have adequate time to comprehend and create interesting and clearer stories which can significantly have impact to the society. Positive impact means attainment of the sustainable development goals and improved quality of life of Tanzanians. 59

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FUTURE RESEARCH The chapter elaborated on a link between journalists’ access to climate change open information resources and achieving sustainable development, particularly adapting to climate change. Despite the enormous contribution of journalists in attaining sustainable development, the author suggests more research on types of open access resources journalist’s use and the role of social media in sustainable development. As the journalists in developing countries are increasingly using internet and particular social media, the contribution of social media in sustainable development has not extensively been researched.

CONCLUSION The study concludes that open access plays an important role in communicating climate change and sustainable development information to users. It can promote food security, address hunger and poverty, inform judicious climate actions and strategies and protect forests and biodiversity. Despite the positive roles, diverse and extensive African languages and culture tend to delay the flow of information among key stakeholders involved. Journalists ought to be conversant with multitude local languages and culture to reach out a wider audience and have impact. As open access needs up-to-date technology such as mobile phones and the internet, media houses should transform from traditional information seeking and dissemination pathways and practices to accommodate current technology requirements. Although open access can positively influence new knowledge and reporting, the study concludes that lack of local content is a major problem to most countries in covering climate related information. In addition, it can be concluded that information literacy skills among journalists is an important interface which if effectively conducted, it can promote journalists’ access and use of open resources and remarkably foster sustainable development.

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Mabweazara, H. M. (2015). Mainstreaming African digital cultures, practices and emerging forms of citizen engagement. African Journalism Studies, 36(4), 1–11. doi:10.1080/23743670.2015.1119486 Maibach, E., Craig, R., Yagatich, W., Murphy, J., Patzer, S., & Timm, K. (2018). Climate matters in the newsroom: Society of environmental journalists’ member survey, 2018. Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University. doi:10.13021/ G8S97H McCombs, M. (2011). The agenda-setting role of the mass media in the shaping of public opinion. Available at: www.researchgate.net/publication/237394610_The_AgendaSetting_Role_of_the_Mass_Media_in_the_Shaping_of_Public_Opinion Media Council of Tanzania. (2017). State of the media 2016. Media Council of Tanzania. Media Council of Tanzania. (2019). State of the Media in Tanzania 2017-2018. Media Council of Tanzania. Menezes, S. (2018). Science training for journalists: An essential tool in the post-specialist era of journalism. Frontiers in Communication, 3(4), 1–5. doi:10.3389/fcomm.2018.00004 Muindi, B. (2018). Negotiating the balance between speed and credibility in deploying Twitter as journalistic tool at the Daily Nation Newspaper in Kenya. African Journalism Studies, 39(1), 111–128. doi :10.1080/23743670.2018.1445654 Mwakajinga, L. K. S. (2013). Development studies for colleges and universities: achieving growth through constant implementation of new professional life standard, techniques and innovative ideas. Nyambari Nyangwine Publishers. Peters, H. P. (2013). Gap between science and media revisited: Scientists as public communicators. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(3), 1–8. doi:10.1073/ pnas.1212745110 PMID:23940312 Petzell, M. (2012). The linguistic situation in Tanzania. http://ojs.ub.gu.se/ojs/index.php/ modernasprak/ article/view/1187/1026 Pinowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J.P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J. & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of open access articles. DOI doi:10.7717/peerj.4375 Rogers, E. (2003). Diffusions of innovations (5th ed.). Free Press. Sasaka, E. L., Otike, J., & Ng’eno, E. (2017). Information needs and information seeking behaviour ofmedia professionals in Kenya: A case of Nation Media Group. The StrategicJournal of Business and Change Management, 4(4), 961–992. Schafer, M., Berglez, P., Wessler, H., Eide, E., Nerlich, & O’Neill, B. (2016). Investigating mediated climate change communication: A best-practice guide. Research Report, 6. Schafer, M. S., & Schlichting, I. (2014). Media representations of climate change: Ameta- analysis of the research field. Environmental Communication, 8(2), 142–160. doi:10.1080/17524032.2014.914050 Schultz, B., & Sheffer, M. L. (2010). An exploratory study of how Twitter is affecting sports journalism. International Journal of Sport Communication, 3(2), 226–239. doi:10.1123/ijsc.3.2.226

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Shanahan, M. (2009). Time to adapt? Media coverage of climate change in non- industrialised countries. Available at: https://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/17029IIED.pdf Shanahan, M. (2011). Why the media matters in a warming world: A guide for policymakers in the Global South. Available at: https://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/G03119.pdf Shanahan, M., Shubert, W., Scherer, C., & Corcoran, T. (2013). Climate change on Africa: A guide book for journalists. United Nations Education and Science Organization. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0022/002254/225451e.pdf Siyao, P. O., & Sife, A. (2018). Coverage of climate change information in Tanzanian newspapers. Global Knowledge. Memory and Communication, 67(6/7), 425–437. Tagbo, E. (2010). Media coverage of climate change in Africa: A case study of Nigeria and South Africa. Reuters Foundation. University of Oxford. Tandoc, E. C. Jr, Cabañes, J. V. A., & Cayabyab, Y. M. (2019). Bridging the Gap. Journalism Studies, 20(6), 857–871. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2018.1463168 United Nations. (2019). The Sustainable Development Goals report. Author. Vis, F. (2013). Twitter as a reporting tool for breaking news: Journalists tweeting the 2011 UK Riots. Digital Journalism, 1(1), 27–47. doi:10.1080/21670811.2012.741316 Young, C., & McComas, K. (2016). Media’s role in enhancing sustainable development in Zambia. Mass Communication & Society, 19(5), 629–649. doi:10.1080/15205436.2016.1201688

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Climate change: Refers to a long-term climatic condition emerging as a result of human being excessive production of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The gases affect the ozone layer, cause global warming and change rainfall and temperature patterns. Climate change adaptation: Practices people apply when adjusting to changes brought by climate change. The society adapts by adopting and adapting new livelihood strategies to exist and develop sustainably. Internet: Networked computer protocols linking webpages across the entire globe used in communication. They webpages provide online information in both open and closed systems. Journalist: Information professionals engaged in gathering, processing and disseminating information of interest to the audience in a society through mass media. Open access: A situation which permits people to freely access, use and share scholarly information by removing communication barriers. Sustainable development: Entails human beings’ progressive economic growth and resources utilization which also considers the future generations. Sustainable development goals: Are seventeen global interconnected targets prepared and set by the United Nations where parties agree to achieve by 2030.

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Chapter 4

Predatory Open Access Journals and Attainment of Educational Sustainable Development Goals in Africa Wole Michael Olatokun https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2780-2161 University of Ibadan, Nigeria Ojinga Gideon Omuinu University of Ibadan, Nigeria

ABSTRACT Putting into consideration the objective of the SDG 4, it would be important to note that the provision, access, and use of information resources such as open access (OA) journals is a sine qua non for quality education in Africa. Despite its importance to the education system, open access journals have been proliferated by predatory journals. Stakeholders in the OA movement and academia claim that predatory publishing is a big problem for scientific communication and could undermine development efforts. Hence, the increasing use of predatory open access journals could affect the attainment of SDGs in Africa; hence, there is the need to raise awareness to enhance the possibility of attaining the SDGs in Africa. This chapter will among others enumerate the possible havocs predatory open access journals can create and the setbacks on the attainment of SDGs in Africa. It will also spell out the necessary prospects of curtailing these havocs and setbacks towards providing quality-based information resources such as open access journals to the education societies in Africa.

INTRODUCTION A major goal in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provides a great plan to achieve quality and equal education especially in Africa. Other goals in the SDGs are to reduce poverty, reduce hunger, ensure DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch004

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 Predatory Open Access Journals and Attainment of Educational Sustainable Development Goals in Africa

good health and well-being of people, gender equality, provide clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, ensure decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequality, provide sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, enhance life below water, life on land, peace and justice strong institutions and partnerships to achieve the goals. A major strategy to attain the quality and equal education goal is through the provision of effective learning environment which cuts across the provision of information and the necessary tools to manage the information and knowledge such as the open access initiative. Ogunmodede, Apata and Nwokeoma (2017) noted that there seems to be a link between Open Access and the attainment of quality and equal education; but quality and equal education can also play a mediating role between Open Access (OA) and the attainment of other SDGs. Therefore, the role of Open Access in the attainment of quality and equal education and also other SDGs cannot be overemphasized. Providing improved access to equal and quality education can have positive impetus on sustainable development (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2018) and a strong education system does enhance other sectors of the economy towards achieving economic growth and development (Bokova, 2015). UNESCO (2017) affirmed that education is both a goal in itself and a means to attaining other SDGs. It is not only seen as an integral part of sustainable development of nations but also as major enabler for the attainment of other SDGs. To this end, education with Open Access as its enabler remains a part and also represents an essential strategy in the pursuit of the SDGs. According to Ogunmodede et al. (2017), access to and utilization of information resources such as research publications for which Open Access has become a notable tool is vital for modern development which could include sectoral development especially in Africa. Olurode (2017) noted that there is a dire need in recent times to draw attention to the use and application of research findings and publications so as to enhance sectoral and national development and reducing human sufferings especially in Africa. Putting into consideration the objectives of the SDGs, with focus on goal 4, which is to ensure equal and quality education, it would be important to note that “promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all” entails the provision of necessary resources and infrastructures such as the Open Access to provide a better environment towards enhanced learning opportunity. To this end, the education systems must respond to this pressing need by defining relevant learning objectives and learning contents, hence, the provision and use of information resources such as open access journals for better learning. Open access (OA) refers to the provision of free and unrestricted online access to research outputs such as journal articles, books, among others (Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2019). In the same vein, open access journals are journals that publish research outputs such as journal articles and books and provide them for free online for users to access or read. According to Suber (2012); UNESCO (2015) and Omiunu (2019), there are different types of OA models used in the open access business model and include: “gold, green, and hybrid models”. A gold journal is an open access journal which makes published contents available for free on the publisher’s website for readers/users. However, there is a delay in the gold open access model before such articles become free for readers on the publisher’s website (usually 12 months) (Kieńć, 2015). Also, the green open access journal is one which publishes non-free content, but allows its authors to republish their articles in various open access repositories such as Research gate, Google scholar, academic, institutions’ websites, among others. To this end, while the article on the website of the publisher is placed as pay-walled, the author can place the same article on various other repositories. The hybrid open access journals are generally pay-walled and offer the possibility for authors to open individual articles by paying an extra fee otherwise their articles would be placed on subscription before user can access them. All these models have some advantages and disadvantages. 65

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Geib (2013) noted that the core idea of open access is the basis of its key advantage- that articles are freely available for anyone anywhere who wishes to read them towards achieving a high elasticity of geometrical increase in distribution, readership and usability. Also, readers and libraries need not to pay or subscribe for any article or journal. In addition, it also tends to make funded research publicly free and available to all hence, becoming a major source of information for the education system. Moreover, the philosophy of OA relates to enhancing equality within and between the academic and information community (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012). Since the import of SDG is to reduce inequality especially those confronting Africa in access to education which also constitutes the access and use of various information resources such as scientific and research outputs, it is important to draw attention to the fact that the philosophy of OA supports Africa development. Therefore, a faulty OA system may have negative significant impetus on the quality education system because such OA resources serve as inputs to the education system to enhance its quality output. Despite its elastic importance to the education system, open access journals have been proliferated by adulterous journals known as predatory hence, constituting nuisance in the OA and academic environments. The major reasons why predatory journals and publishers are termed adulterous is because according to Mouton (2017), they are OA journals that exist for the sole purpose of profit: they generate profits by charging (excessive) author fees, also known as article processing charges (APCs). In addition, they solicit manuscripts by spamming researchers (especially through yahoo and gmail accounts) providing fake and unrealistic impact factors for their journals (Beall, 2015). They also have bizarrely broad or disjointed scopes and boast of extremely rapid publication. Moreover, they often have poor editorial quality because they have fake editorial boards or –at its best –editorial boards that consist of a small number of individuals from the same organisation or country. They often enlist members of editorial boards that are not experts in the field and often include scholars on the editorial board without their knowledge or permission. These features make predatory publishing a threat to the OA and the academic environment which could have tremendous negative effect on the quality of education hence, the attainment of SDGs. According to Crawford (2014), “predatory journals” implies the intention to injure or exploit others for personal gain or profit. Also, Petrişor (2016) noted that ‘predatory journals’ referred to as “consuming” or “devouring”. Juxtaposing the definition of Crawford (2014) and Petrişor (2016), and other pioneers of predatory open access (POA) studies such as Beall (2012), its existence and operation in the open access system could tend to devour, injure, exploit the education system and in extension other SDGs in Africa. Suber (2013) noted that, it is not that open access is not good, but the bad and dishonest OA journals known as POA have given the OA initiative a bad name hence, the problems of POA should not be allowed to defame OA (Olijhoek and Tennant, 2019). In addition, scientists, governments, and journalists have claimed that POA publishing is a big problem for scientific communication because of the increasing use of POA journals and its negative impact on education reputation and system. In addition, for the fact that Africa has larger share of involvement in POJ and that this has led to African research and research output being ‘overlooked, undervalued’ and covers only 2% of the world research output has demean the African education system at the global level (Maclure, 2006; Moahi, 2012; Tarkang and Bain, 2019). These issues related to POJ have called for the need to raise awareness to its cushioning especially in the education environment to enhance the possibility of increasing quality of education and hence the attainment of other SDGs especially in Africa. Shen and Björk (2015); Nwagwu and Ojemeni (2015) and Ajuwon and Ajuwon (2018) noted that a large percentage of scholars in Africa published in and use predatory journals. Since predatory publishing constitute a major threat to the credibility of academic 66

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publishing and quality of education worldwide and the academic society (Maclure, 2006; Moahi, 2012; Tarkang and Bain, 2019; Naidu and Dell, 2019), it deems fit to state that, its elastic negative impetus can also affect the attainment of sustainable development goal four which is achieving quality and equal education and in extension other SDGs due to the link between the education system and other SDGs. Africa plays very significant role in the attainment of the SDGS as it is widely recognized that the SDGs will only succeed, if they succeeded in Africa because the possibility for attaining SDGs are very low in African countries when compared to the developed countries hence, the need to focus on Africa (Shettima, 2016). Putting into consideration the sustainable development goal 4 -to enhance quality education, it is paramount to draw attention to the fact that such lack of quality in the open access system which is a major characteristics of predatory journal as stated by Petrişor (2016) could diminish and pose negative impetus on the strive to achieve quality and equal education in Africa hence, reducing the possibility of attaining SDG 4 in Africa and could also have consequences on the attainment of other SDGs. This is because according to Mitchell, Rose & Asare (2018), the provision of access to research output does foster the achievement of quality education and in extension other SDGs in Africa. Therefore, POJ could undermine the attainment of the SDG goal 4 and other SDGs in Africa. Adapting the welfare analysis theory, which evaluates the effect of environmental changes on consumers’ wellbeing which is also a subset of the SDGs, it is important to note that there is need for a fundamental change towards education’s role in global development such as the attainment of SDGs. This is because, beyond the education system, open access, as a subset of the education system has a catalytic impact on the economy and also on the well-being of individuals and the future of the world (UNESCO, 2017). Hence, circumventing the elastic negative effects of predatory open access on achieving educational SDG and in extension, other attainment of SDGs in Africa, is the main thrust of this paper. It also has elastic impetus on the attainment of the SDGs and also other development strategies in the education system and also in the national economy. This is because most of the publications and research outputs various sectors used for decision making in every nook and cranny of the economy, educational system inclusive. To this end, this paper aims to enumerate the impact of POA journals on achievement of quality education system hence, on the attainment of SDGs in Africa. Therefore the study seeks to address the following research objectives: i.

Examine the relevant problems that POA journals could pose on the attainment of educational SDG in Africa, ii. Ascertain the prospects of POA journals relative to the attainment of educational SDG in Africa, and iii. Enumerate the major strategies that could be deployed to cushion POA towards the attaining the educational SDG in Africa.

Review of Literature The relationship between POA and the education is elastic and has in it a mixed bag of advantages and disadvantages. According to Hall (2008), open access offers a wide range of solution to problems confronting issues of development at sectoral and national levels. It also provides solutions to the existing problems in the education sector and among its stakeholders such as scholars, teachers, students, among others. As a result, it has the potential to enhance development in the education system and other sectors of the economy of Africa. This is because such scientific and research outputs and findings could 67

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be used for various decision making processes at individual, organizational, sectoral and national levels which could either affect growth and development positively or negatively hence, its effect on educational SDG and other SDGs in Africa. In addition, Peterson, Emmett & Greenberg (2013) and Omiunu (2019) stated that communication of scholarly and research output is the life blood of the academic society and by extension of sectoral and national development. Some of the relationships between OA including POA and the academics or education system are listed below: • • •

• • • • • •

enhances visibility and impact of scholarly work. This would increase the propensity for such works to be used among the stakeholders in the academic sector such as scientists, students, researchers, teachers, among others; provides free access to scientific knowledge and information thereby making such research outputs available for use and resuse; strengthens the basis for knowledge transfer (education), development (research) and valorization thereby cushioning knowledge hording and increase knowledge transfer, dissemination and use in the education system. In this way, there would be no or low level of knowledge amnesia in the education system; the less privileged regions, organizations or individuals have access to all Open Access articles hence, inequality and segregation could be cushioned to the barest minimum; they are published sooner than articles in non-Open Access journals. In a case where users may need such information for decision making, when such information is not available, decision making could be challenging and may lead to problems; They reach wider audiences than those published in non-Open Access journals. This is a major objective of open access- to reach wider audience free of charge; OA tends to give and increase the online recognition of authors and their publications (Alhoori, Choudhury, Kanan, Fox, Furuta and Giles, 2015); It also increases the citation of authors (Alhoori et al., 2015). When such works are made available, scholars, scientists, students, teachers, and others use the work consistently; It can also increase the performance of students and teachers. In the absence of such information resources, performance in the academic system may be thwarted. This is because availability of resources are sine qua non for better performance of students and teachers. This is because students and teachers rely on such resources to enhance their performance in academic activities. This could be one of the major reasons why there are disparities in the education system between developed and developing countries such as Africa.

From the ongoing discussions and aforementioned point, the relevance of OA and POA to the education system are perfectly elastic. However, with the demise and the hot debate of the OA and POA, it is necessary to draw attention to the fact that the education system may experience a negative impetus in the long run if not tackled. Thus, a major challenge in the open access initiative and the predatory open access is that of sustainability. Geib (2013) argued that open access models might not be able to sustain and support the research publication in the long run. This could pose challenge on the attainment of SDGs especially in Africa where research quality is low, and knowledge of research activities and process are also low (Aina, 2002; Ekhaguere et al., 2006; Falase (2006; Njuguna and Itegi, 2013; Save, Niang, Orondo, William, Oyinlola, Bongo,and Chiwona, 2017; The World Bank Group, 2019). 68

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Since, they publish almost anything and everything, scholars and researchers, students and teachers, individuals and organizations/institutions in Africa may tend to remain at this low level of research literacy, and low research quality. This is because predatory journals fail to provide the necessary editorial process that could lead to transfer and upgrade of knowledge or rather mentorship and monitoring which could close the research knowledge gap and enhance research skills and quality in the long run. To this end, this could affect the education system. Also, the use of these poor quality journals could be misleading in decision making and grave errors could be made which could lead to failure and hence setback in sustainable development in Africa. Hence, there in need to cushion the elastic negative impetus that OA and POA journals could bring to development which could affect the attainment of the SDGs in Africa.

Methodology The systematic literature review is adopted in this article, and information resources from both traditional and internet resources are harnessed and juxtaposed to drive the objectives of this study. Also, information resources used cover a wide range of period to be able to articulate the POJ history. However, it was ensured that recent and relevant information resources related to the theme of the study are obtained and used for this study. Materials used cover mainly between 2000 and 2020 to give room for the transformations that have occurred in online publishing and to also follow the trend of the introduction and growth of POJ. Content of relevant information obtained were subjected to analysis, and a systematic review of relevant articles and information was done to drive relevant argument of the study in order to drive the course of this study.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS Predatory Open Access Journals and the Attainment of Educational SDG in Africa: Problems and Prospects Predatory Open Access Journals have been explained, as well as its link to the education system and also to the academia. However, there is need to highlight the possible ways either positive or negative these POA can influence the attainment of the SDGs in Africa. The impetus that OA could have on sustainable development cannot be excessively enumerated or discussed. Nevertheless, it is important to provide a few of them that could be used provide a better strategy to cushion the negative effects of POA on the attainment of SDGs in Africa. According to Sylvester (2018), open access can contribute to sustainable development by making research available for everyone, thus facilitating new discoveries and empowering researchers to have rapid and efficient access to knowledge. However, there are elastic problems that POA can bring to development which include individual, education and national. Olijhoek and Tennant (2019) noted that the problems of POA are more of an education problem, because journals are the primary communication and reward system for researchers and scholars globally.

Problems of POA on Educational SDG The major problems which POA journals could pose on the attainment of educational SDG in Africa include: 69

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•

•

•

•

•

•

Scholars from developing countries such as Africa could be at high risk of becoming the victim of POA journals (Sudeep, 2017), hence, its negative effect on the attainment of SDGs could be grave in Africa due to the fact that high level of lack of research literacy and knowledge would tend to continue accompany with the increasing use of false scientific and research outputs- this may eventually lead to false development or unsustainable development in Africa; Predatory Open Access journals tend to mislead and cheat authors (Sylvester, 2018) hence, may misleading in decision making not only for the education sector but for other sectors in the economy which could have impetus of the attainment of SDGs in Africa. This is because there exist a link between the research and scientific outputs and the development of the sectors in the economy. Hence any change or false publication or research outputs could create grave consequences on the sectoral and national development ; Open Access can be unsustainable for research communities if high-cost options are allowed to continue to prevail in a widely unregulated scholarly publishing market (Tennant et al., 2016). To this end, such lack of sustainability in operation and in its activities could also have negative impetus on the attainment of SDGs in Africa hence, the gap between developed and developing countries like Africa such as occurred in the attainment of MDGs could continue; Open Access can also be unsustainable for research communities if the activities of the POA journals are not cushioned. This is because research communities have a direct link with the activities and the use of POA journals. Such can jeopardize the performance of the research communities die to the wrong use of fake and wrong scientific and research outputs which tend to diffuse into the academic and research community without restriction; Also, some challenges of open access on the attainment of SDGs cut across the economic issues such as local, regional and global disparities with respect to wealth; social problems such as low standards of living and health problems in Africa (Sylvester, 2018). Africa communities have the lowest economic standards, health and living conditions. With the challenges of POA on SDGs attainment, it would not be a gainsaying to state that such problems may increase geometrically with the use of POA in the research community. Hence, the elastic disparity within the local, regional and global economies would be elusive. The main fact that POA journals provide fake and unrealized impact factors of their journals (Beall, 2015) shows the presence of moral and cultural decadence which could wipe away the good moral culture and hence affecting the attainment of the SDGs in Africa.

Prospects of POA on Educational SDG It is not that the open access initiative and practice is bad, but POA has given the OA initiative a bad name (Suber, 2013) hence, there is need to curtail or upgrade the operation of POA in the OA system. Having articulated the problems of POA, there is need to present its prospects. i.

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First, Zuccala (2010) and the European Commission (2012) affirmed that the increase access to scholarly and research outputs might help foster greater scientific education and literacy culture especially in Africa, where such literacy is very low. This could in turn have direct impact on public policy with respect to its effect on SDGs in Africa, particularly in the domains of the major challenges confronting the development of Africa nations such as climate change, global health,

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ICT access and use (Stodden, 2010). Furthermore, it would also increase public engagement in scientific research through use and reuse of scientific publications. ii. OA provides a more closer to home or office services as users could log on at any time to access needed and useful information. iii. predatory open access journals are an indication that there is a future for open access journal publishing and that it is in high demand both among scholars and users. iv. Despite their low quality review, a wide range of OA materials and resources especially those from POA are made available through the internet search engine for most authors and users.

STRATEGIES TO CUSHION POA TOWARDS THE ATTAINMENT OF EDUCATIONAL SDG IN AFRICA Karimov (2017) noted that World scientific community needs to undertake measures to increase the quality of publications towards cushioning the POA practices. One of these strategies to cushion the operation of the POA in the academia towards enhancing the attainment of SDGs in Africa is to increase the level of awareness and awareness strategy among educational and academic institutions by blacklisting suspected POA journals so that young and mid-career researchers could have the knowledge (Onyango, 2017). Also, Sylvester (2018) noted that to cushion the challenges that predatory open access could pose on the attainment of SDGs, there is need for scientific, engineering, technological, sociological, economic and political approaches. From scientific perspective, scientists and researchers in Africa should breakout from their ignorance and rise up against the POA journals by introducing policies that could address the banning and cushioning of publishing and use of POA journals within the academia except such journals have upgraded themselves in their editorial quality and other POA characteristics that have taint the image of OA in the academia. With respect to the engineering factor, there is need to deploy resources that could help to build software and application that could assist in the quality of journals articles used like those deployed for test of plagiarism. For example, most journals could be wrongly listed as predatory. However, with such software and applications, journals test for predatory cannot be argued because such test would at least raise the precision of result. From the technological perspective, various technologies should be adopted to enhance and propagate the need to fight against the POA in the academia towards cushioning their practices. This could include the use of different technologies such as the mobile phones, the web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, Watsapp, Tweeter, among others. This could help raise the awareness of the POA and their harvoc in the academia and education system thus reducing their effect and enhancing the attainment of the SDGs in Africa. From the economic perspective, governments, NGOs, and other stakeholders of development could also collaborate together in the fight against the POA through the harnessing of resources such as economic resources. This resources could also be in the form of providing financial support like grants for the faculties and academia in the education system towards effective and quality research and scientific output and in extension towards quality education in Africa. From a sociology perspective, Tennant et al. (2016) noted that the societal impact of Open Access is strong, in particular for advancing citizen science initiatives and innovation, and could also increase the level at which researchers from every field in developing countries such as Africa leverage on its transformation power on the community. From political perspective, government as well as the scientific community in Africa should breakout from

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their ignorance to rise up against the POA journals. To this end, it is important to provide policy towards the cushioning of the POA and its negative effect on the attainment of SDGs in Africa. Also, there is need for stakeholders from across universities in the globe to establish local, regional and global bodies and NGOs that can monitor and modulate the activities of OA hence, all OA journals would be subjected to scrutiny and well labeled as predatory if they don’t meet the necessary criteria of OA. In these established bodies, leaders with local, regional and global high reputation in the academia with high profile would be selected to man the affairs and work with others to ensure that the objectives and policies of OA are dully followed and maintained by OA journals. Furthermore, hiring of highly experienced scientists and professionals in the evaluation process, who have the potential to provide reliable evaluation is important to redeem the image of OA (Karimov, 2017). Also, Olijhoek and Tennant (2019) noted that the best way to help resolve the problem of POA in the OA environment so as to enjoy the benefits of OA is to include learning and teaching programmes or courses on open access as a mandatory part of undergraduate, Masters and PhD degrees in the university. Also, various trainings should be provided for faculties in universities by their respective management in Africa. Introducing such simple educational measures could drive into extinction the “problem” of predatory publishing, leaving ample choice of the good open access journals for the academia. Consequently, this could have positive impetus on the attainment of SDGs in Africa. However, Olijhoek and Tennant (2019) advised that when the POA journals have been done away with, certain problem of everincreasing costs of subscription of publishing and access to published scientific outputs may arise and this could affect the African continent hence, there is need to circumvent future issues that could hamper the free use of research knowledge and outputs in the future towards the attainment of SDGs in Africa.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, the philosophy behind OA is very good and enriching development efforts and strategies however, POA journals have posed elastic challenges to OA leading to its demise and could create havocs to the education system and also setback to the attainment of SDGs, and sectoral and national economy. The MDGs failed woefully in Africa and if proper precautions are not taken and measures are not put in place to circumvent the POA journals, it is certain that the same failure that the African continent experienced in the attainment of MDGs would repeat itself in the attainment of SDGs in Africa. Hence, there is need for scientific, educational, engineering, technological, sociological, economic and political approaches to cushion and fight against the existence of POA in the academic society towards the attainment of SDGs in Africa.

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Sudeep, C. B. (2017). Predatory open access publishing journals and their impact on research, researchers and scientific literature? in the project An Open Forum for Expert Opinions and Discussion. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/post/Predatory_open_access_publishing_journals_and_their_impact_on_research_researchers_and_scientific_literature Sylvester, B. (2018). Open Access for Sustainable Development. Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) AG, Basel, Switzerland. https://blog.mdpi.com/2018/01/15/open-access-for-sustainabledevelopment/ Tarkang, E. E., & Bain, L. E. (2019). The bane of publishing a research article in international journals by African researchers, the peer-review process and the contentious issue of predatory journals: A commentary. The Pan African Medical Journal, 32, 119. doi:10.11604/pamj.2019.32.119.18351 PMID:31223409 Tennant, J. P., Waldner, F., Jacques, D. C., Masuzzo, P., Collister, L. B., & Hartgerink, C. H. J. (2016). The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: An evidence-based review. F1000 Research, 5(3), 632. doi:10.12688/f1000research.8460.3 PMID:27158456 The European Commission. (2012). European Commission: Communication from the commission to the European parliament, the council, the European economic and social committee, and the committee of the regions. Towards better access to scientific information: Boosting the benefits of public investments in research. https://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/era-communicationtowards-better-access-to-scientific-information_en.pdf The World Bank Group. (2019). Improving the Quality and Quantity of Scientific Research in Africa. The World Bank Group. https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/afr/publication/improving-the-qualityand-quantity-of-scientific-research-in-africa United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2015). Introduction to Open Access. Open Access for Library Schools. https://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/images/e/ed/L1.pdf United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2017). Education for Sustainable Development Goals: Learning Objectives. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002474/247444e. pdf United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2018). Education for Sustainable Development. https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-sustainable-development Veletsianos, G., & Kimmons, R. (2012). Assumptions and challenges of open scholarship. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning., 13(4), 166–189. doi:10.19173/irrodl. v13i4.1313 Zuccala, A. (2010). Open access and civic scientific information literacy. Information Research, 15(1). http://individual.utoronto.ca/azuccala_web/OA-ScientificLiteracy-Zuccala.pdf

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Gold Open Access model: In the gold OA model, the publisher makes all articles and related content available for free immediately on the journal’s website, usually by requiring the author rather than the reader to bear the costs of publication. In such publications, articles are licensed for sharing and reuse via creative commons licenses or similar. Green Open Access model: Self-archiving by authors is permitted under green OA. Independently from publication by a publisher, the author also posts the work to a website controlled by the author, the research institution that funded or hosted the work, or to an independent central open repository, where people can download the work without paying. Hybrid Open Access model: Hybrid open access journals contain a mixture of open access articles and closed access articles. A publisher following this model is partially funded by subscriptions, and only provide open access for those individual articles for which the authors pay a publication fee. Open access: This is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers. Predatory Open Access Journals: Predatory journals are journals often accused of applying poor academic standards and practices in their editorial and peer-review processes. They apply poor ethical procedures by claiming to live-up to the established quality control standards in peer-review, but do so only on a superficial level. Predatory Publishing: Predatory publishing, sometimes called write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitive academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy and without providing the other editorial and publishing services that legitimate academic journals provide, whether open access or not. Quality education: It refers to the type of education which enables people to develop all of their attributes and skills to achieve their potential as human beings and members of society. Sustainable Development Goals: The Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.

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Chapter 5

The Role of Information Institutions in Promoting Information Literacy and Access to Information for Sustainable Development in the Post-Truth Era: The Case of Sweden

Proscovia Svärd Department of Information Systems and Technology, Mid Sweden University, Sweden & Department of Information Science, University of South Africa, South Africa

ABSTRACT The right to access government information has been a key element of sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Declaration. It is further recognized in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, governments are through open government initiatives making information available to the citizens. This is based on a supposition that everyone is information literate and yet this is not the case. Information literacy is defined as the ability to be able to act on the information that is provided to us citizens. Being able to locate, evaluate, and ethically use information is an ability that is crucial to the citizens’ participation in society. It requires individuals to be in possession of a set of skills that can enable them to recognize when information is needed to be able to locate, evaluate, and use it effectively. Information institutions have been the gateways to knowledge, and hence, their resources and services have been crucial to the development of information literate, creative, and innovative societies. This study sought to establish how the information institutions in Sweden were promoting information literacy in accordance with Sustainable Development Goal 16 amidst the post-truth era. The author has applied a qualitative research methodology where interviews have been used as a data collecting technique.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch005

Copyright © 2021, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

 The Role of Information Institutions in Promoting Information Literacy and Access to Information

INTRODUCTION According to Article 19’s report of 2017, the right to access government information has been a key element of sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Declaration. It is further recognized in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS). The UN’s SDGs adopted in 2015 aim to promote peace and prosperity for all people in the world. The SDGs involve both the developed and developing world. Information access is at the core of all the UN goals and especially SDG 16. It is stated in the UNESCO’s report (2019) that despite an increase in disinformation, the public enjoys access to official information, which has evident provenance. People need to have the necessary skills to be able to access information in order to act on their rights. This article explores the role of Swedish information institutions in promoting information literacy in the Post-Truth Era. Information institutions such as libraries and archival institutions are the navigators and evaluators of information. They are the gateways to knowledge and hence their resources and services are crucial to the development of information literate, creative and innovative societies. Information institutions preserve culture and heritage and hence foster continuity, promote information access, stimulate the search for knowledge and support literacy. They are important key players in the fight against disinformation since they are uniquely placed to teach critical thinking (St Lifer and Rogers 1996, White 2012). Avery (2014) who looked at the role of a small school library in a diverse urban neighborhoods in Sweden argued that libraries are critical learning spaces that could promote intercultural education if the resources they hold are leveraged. Eckerdal (2017) postulated that libraries shape their collections and activities in a manner that should promote the community and that information literacy programs are designed to strengthen information literacy and to promote people’s abilities to engage in learning. Yakel (2004) was of the view that the use of primary sources promotes critical thinking and that an archive can promote the creation of a generation equipped with skills that can enable its users to identify, select and use the information it contains. She encouraged an open discussion between archivists and researchers on what constitutes information literacy in archives both in the analogue and digital realms. Henninger (2017) however argued that suppositions about the citizens’ access to information are fraught with complexities, since they are underpinned by an understanding that citizens are information literate. She defined information literacy as the capacity to find and retrieve information, to interpret and critically evaluate it. Bruce (2004) was also of the view that information literacy is the overarching literacy essential for the twenty-first century living. It is associated with information practices and critical thinking in an information and communication technologies’ environment. She further contended that promoting information literacy does not only enable people to make use of information communication infrastructures, but it also brings about information practices that are effective in professional, civic and personal life. Therefore, information literacy is the capacity to use information while information technology literacy is the capacity to effectively use the technologies that deliver the information. Information literacy constitutes the following dimensions: • • •

Defining information needs: a dimension which represents an awareness of the features of the required information. Access to information: a dimension which defines the knowledge of how to acquire the required information in the most efficient way possible. Use of information: a dimension which includes strategies to utilise and present information effectively. 79

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•

Ethical and legal use of information: a dimension which covers the knowledge and awareness of copyright and intellectual property laws regulating use and sharing of information (Ahmet, Yaman et al. 2017).

The ability to be able to locate information and understand it promotes economic independence and quality of existence (Carini 2016). Additionally, citizens need to be digitally literate to meaningfully explore the information availed to them. Oliver and Foscarini (2014) contended that digital literacy is blurred with information literacy and hence interchangeably used. Bulger, Mayer and Metzger (2014: 1529) defined digital literacy as “the ability to read and write using online sources and includes the ability to select sources relevant to the task, synthesize information into a coherent message, and communicate the message with an audience.” Meyers, Erickson, and Small (2013) also confirmed that digital literacy ranges from being technology fluent to the ability to apply information literacy skills. Metz (2017) lamented that even though current students are seen as the most digitally literate in the history of the world because of the way they engage with social media such as; blogs, Snap Chat, Instagram and Facebook, research shows that they lack the most important literacy skill namely, the ability to distinguish facts from fiction. He concluded that the proliferation of fake news on the Internet and social media makes it imperative for students to learn critical thinking. Citizens therefore need requisite skills that can turn the accessed information into useful knowledge or product/service and must be able to use it to their own advantage. These skills are critical in the post-truth era and further require trusted and reliable public information systems to ensure that the information that is made available for public consumption is authentic, complete, reliable and trustworthy. Hellström (2016) however lamented that Western societies are entering a so-called post-truth era which means a move away from seeking the truth (truthfulness) to a truth-like information (that is, something people “intuitively” know as the right thing regardless of whether it is evidence based). Posttruth is defined as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief (Tsipursky 2017). This is attributed to disregard for facts to mass media developments where their role as information gatekeepers has been lost. Information technologies have empowered individual citizens to publish whatever content they want in pursuit of their own agendas. Hellström (2016) confirmed that on-line applications provide their users with viewpoints that are in line with their own preferences. As a result, individuals are less likely to seek information, which counteracts their own worldviews. Suiter (2016) was also of the view, that in post-truth era, appeals to emotion are dominant and factual rebuttals or fact checks are dismissed as mere assertions. In the era of post-truth politics, information overload and alternative facts, information institutions have a key role to play since they are expected to promote access to trustworthy information and assist in the verification of authentic information sources. Governments have a moral and ethical obligation to maintain trustworthy public information systems and hence promote information literacy. This equips the citizens with the skills required to effectively use and critically assess the information that is made availed to them to counter post-truth developments. The article presents a research problem, method, a literature review and discussion and conclusion.

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MAIN FOCUS OF THE CHAPTER1 Research Problem Access to government information is recognized in several international and national policy documents. The importance of managing, accessing, using and sharing of information for sustainable development is emphasized by Chowdhury and Koya (2017). Access to information is reflected in most of the UN Sustainable development Goals especially goal 16 (United Nations, n.d). The effective use of information however requires the citizens to be information literate and yet this is not the case (Henninger, 2017). In the current post-truth era where facts are not respected, it is of paramount importance for information institutions to promote information literacy (Hellström, 2016). Research conducted in the UK for example demonstrated that the digital natives lacked the most critical information literacy skill of distinguishing facts from fiction (Metz, 2017). A lot of information is being put in the public domain for citizens’ consumption. However, the line between what is credible and less credible information is blurred. The information landscape is crowded with many information producers and equally many channels used to disseminate information. This kind of information environment requires citizens to be in possession of information literacy skills that can enable them to critically and ethically use the availed information. Therefore, public information institutions that are the gatekeepers of knowledge, have a critical role to play in equipping citizens with information literacy skills. All citizens are not information literate and are therefore not in possession of the prerequisite skills that should facilitate the effective use of information by judging its quality and authenticity. This compelled the author to investigate what the Swedish government institutions were doing to promote information literacy.

THE LITERATURE REVIEW The author does not claim to have exhausted all the literature on the major themes of the article that is the role of information institutions, information literacy and the post-truth era but has prioritized discourses pursued by archivists and librarians. While there is emerging literature by librarians that addresses the role of libraries in the post-truth era, articles written by archivists are limited.

THE ROLE OF INFORMATION TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS Chowdhury and Koya (2017) analysed key UN policy documents related to sustainable development and also reviewed research on information and sustainability undertaken at the ischools and computer and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) communities. The authors posited that being able to access and appropriately use information was equally as important as the financial and other resources. Through the missions of the ischools, people and the society at large are connected to information through technology. The ischools train a work force that should manage and facilitate access to information resources in specific domains and contexts. Since data and information play a crucial role in today’s society, the iSchools’ education and research which focuses on information is of key importance to the attainment of the UN sustainable development goals. The work of information professionals is informed by information practices of the societies they operate in. Quoting Dourish and Anderson (2006) and Nathan (2012), the

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two researchers defined sustainable information practices as “the socially negotiated behaviour through which we, create, change, share and store information” Chowdhury and Koya (2017, p. 2132). Sustainable information practices should use appropriate technologies, tools, standards, methods, policies and practices if the lifecycle of data and information is to be managed. Therefore, sustainable information practices should be based on appropriate ICT infrastructure and digital information tools, regulations and policies and human and social institutional behaviour that can ensure that data and information is sustainably managed. The authors hence encouraged co-operation and collaboration among ischools to promote sustainable information practices.

THE ROLE OF INFORMATION INSTITUTIONS Information institutions such as libraries and archives have traditionally worked to uphold the delivery of reliable information to the public. Hence, they have a key role to play in counteracting post-truth era developments. Åström (2003) however argued that there are differences between them because while libraries are used by people as soon as they acquire reading skills, archives require users to be in possession of pre-knowledge about their creators and their administrative routines. Additionally, while the classification system of the books found in libraries is easier to understand by the users, the finding aids of an archival institution need an information intermediator to make it usable for the person searching for information. Furthermore, while the books in the libraries can be accessed in different versions, archives contain only one version of a record. These differences could clarify why despite the resourceful nature of archival institutions, they are not as well-known and used by the general public. Åström (2003) was therefore of the view that modern technologies should solve some of these information barriers through the creation of user-friendly guides and tools that could enable the users to understand the information contained in the archives. Through exhibitions, lectures and tours, archival holdings could be used in a manner that puts them in their social and historical context. Archival institutions in Sweden have for example created what is referred to as “school bags” with archival materials targeting gymnasium students. Efforts have also been invested the promotion of archival pedagogy. The author argues that despite these differences, both information systems endeavour to capture, manage, preserve, disseminate knowledge and to stimulate critical thinking. It is also these differences that make them complimentary. Johnson (2017) argued that libraries were established under the assumption that the information they harness is a social good and that it is a cornerstone of democracy. Information institutions are currently operating in a world where facts have proven to be obsolete tools. The author wondered what happens when information is weaponized, not trusted and if those in leading positions do not care about facts. Johnson (2017) concluded that this implicitly gives the citizens permission to do same. Though many people know how to use information to accomplish a task, evaluating information and its provenance is not something that information users critically think about. Librarians review and evaluate the materials that are made available to the public, select and purchase materials, write collection development policies and weed out materials that perpetuate misinformation. Additionally, they provide diverse viewpoints and offer curated collections that include different social areas and political perspectives. Libraries work to promote knowledge sharing. Johnson (2017) concluded that despite the post-truth era developments, libraries are still respected, trusted and are looked upon as guardians of facts and knowledge. This is amidst the distrust that has developed towards media outlets and social media.

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Public libraries play a key role in society since they facilitate information access and promote lifelong learning (Krolak 2005). At a national symposium on “Libraries and the search for Academic Excellence” that was jointly organized by Columbia University and the University of Colorado in 1987, life-long learning was identified as a necessity for students (Behrens, 1994) that would require students to: • • • •

understand processes for acquiring information, including systems for information identification and delivery. to evaluate the effectiveness of various information channels, including libraries, for different kinds of needs. master basic skills in acquiring and storing their own information, e.g., database skills, spreadsheet and word processing skills, and book, journal, and report literature. to be articulate, responsible citizens in considering public policy issues relating to information, e.g., copyright, privacy, privatization of government information, and issues yet to emerge (Behrens 1994).

Librarianship builds on values of diversity, privacy and social responsibility. The library profession has been linked to information literacy and it was assumed that many problems could be solved through the use of information (Behrens 1994). Lor (2018) who examined the role of libraries in the time of post-truth discourse and fake news however argued that the traditional assumptions about the role of libraries, information and democracy are outdated. Lor (2018) argued that the susceptibility of people to false beliefs despite corrective information was due to the evolving media ecosystem and psychosocial processes and not information or knowledge deficit. The author contended that libraries therefore needed to rethink their responses to this development. Additionally, Batchelor (2017) emphasized critical thinking as a crucial skill in an environment of misinformation. She further argued that libraries have a critical role to play in promoting critical thinking and listed the following factors as critical to determining the trustworthiness of a facts checking resource: • • •

Non-partisan: An effective resource for checking facts does not have a partisan agenda or bias. Documentation: The resource must have enough references and original documents to support analysis. Track record: A history of reliability, recognition, awards, etc.

Batchelor (2017) postulated that there are ways of increasing critical thinking skills, which include; information literacy instruction sessions and the promotion of fact checking. The author listed FactCheck, Politifact, Washington Post Fact Checker and Snopes as examples of non-partisan websites that could be used by information seekers to verify facts. Batchelor (2017) further warned that even where fact-checking outlets are concerned, users need to apply critical thinking because some of them are partisan and lack in thoroughness. Critical thinking is a key requirement, because being able to evaluate the credibility of sources has become more difficult, due to the sophisticated approaches that blur the line between credible and less credible sources (Marsh and Yang, 2017). Jarosz and Kutay (2017) studied university students and confirmed that they could not undertake critical inquiry due to lack of skills in locating and analyzing primary sources. The above authors piloted a guided resource inquiry tool to enable teachers and librarians to create course work that integrated on-line primary sources. This improved the students understanding of the nature of primary sources and how to critically analyze them. Carini (2016) argued

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that even though librarians have been working on information literacy for a period of 25 years, that there are no standards designed to help users to find, evaluate and interpret primary source materials. In addition to the work that libraries carry out on behalf of the society at large, public archival institutions protect and preserve knowledge and are hence places of power (Jimerson n.d.). Archival institutions preserve a nation’s history and are a bulwark that protects the citizens’ rights. Public archival institutions undertake the following tasks to ensure that information is maintained for long-term accountability: • • • •

Collect the records that make transparent government possible; Preserve evidence of civil and property rights; Ensure that rapidly changing technologies do not create a new “Information Dark Age”; And, Protect the nation’s most essential records from natural and man-made disasters (The Council of State Archivists n.d.).

Yakel and Torres (2003) carried out a study that was built on interviews. The authors postulated that there are three primary forms of knowledge required if users are to effectively exploit primary sources and these included: • • •

Domain (subject) knowledge – an understanding of the topic being researched Artefactual literacy – the practice of criticism, analysis and pedagogy that reads texts as objects and objects as texts. Archival intelligence – a researcher’s knowledge of archival principles, practices and institutions.

Yakel and Torres (2003) further argued that the acquisition of archival intelligence should be embraced by archivists as a unique role to educate users. They cited on-line tutorials as the first opportunity archivists have had to view the content of archival user education in detail. Their findings indicated that for users to become experts in primary sources use, basic conceptual knowledge and the development of a general framework of archival management, representation and descriptive practices and search query formulation are a necessity. The authors further concluded that developing information literacy for primary sources was not an easy task and they attributed this to the three primary forms of knowledge listed above. Yakel and Torres argued that archivists cannot help users in all areas but could incorporate archival intelligence in all aspects of user-education. The authors also noted that archival literature on archival user education was pale compared to the library and information science literature. Hawker (2013) argued that archival institutions more than libraries need to engage in information literacy because of the complex nature of their finding aids, archival databases and terminology which are barriers to information access. Archival institutions should engage in the education of their audiences on how to access and use archival materials. Using state and local history as a point of departure and Barbara Stripling’s Inquiry Model (Stripling) which constitutes the following elements she engaged her class in the discovery of archival materials: • • • • •

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Connect: awaken prior knowledge Wonder: generate questions Investigate: seek and discover information Construct: discover patterns and draw conclusions Express: create product

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•

Reflect: consider effectiveness of process/product

Hawker (2013) was surprised to see how foreign history was to a class she was teaching and the excitement the class showed in the historical materials. She concluded that archivists need to think more creatively about their archival audiences to engage them in the untapped potential of their institutional holdings. She also emphasized the need for collaboration among archivists, librarians and museum professionals. Archives are an essential part of a nation’s information resources and are an important part of the national information system (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization 1983). In order to preserve the authenticity of the information that is kept in the archives, the discipline of Archives and Information Science emphasizes the need to capture and maintain the context, provenance, authenticity and integrity of information. In the world of information overload, it is of importance for public information systems to uphold the characteristics of information as evidence. Provenance enables users to trace the accessed information to original sources. Archival institutions should preserve primary source materials that are trustworthy and reliable information (Iacovino 2010). Iacovino (2010: 183) quoted (Eastwood 1993:36), who argued that archives are “arsenals of democratic accountability and continuity into society and into its very corporate and social fabric.” Primary source materials however pose challenges that users must overcome before they can access them. These materials for example require an understanding of the archival repositories, systems and structures. The materials support critical thinking since the user has to be able to interpret them to create one’s own narrative (Carini 2016).

INFORMATION LITERACY Webber and Johnston (2000) and Behrens (1994) argued that the term information literacy is accredited to Paul Zurkowski, who used it in the early 1970s. Zurkowski considered an information literate person better suited to use the information resources. Being literate means that a person can locate, evaluate and effectively use the required information. According to Behren (1994) Zurkowski presented information literate citizens as people who were trained in the application of information resources to their work and who had learned techniques and skills for utilizing a wide range of information tools as well as primary sources in finding solutions to their problems. Behren (1994) further argued that information literacy goes beyond work effectiveness and efficiency since it also guarantees the survival of democratic institutions. It is citizens that can effectively access and make use of information that enables them to make intelligent decisions and question the way they are governed, compared with those who are information illiterate. Therefore, an information literate person should have the following attributes: • • • • • • • • •

recognises the need for information; recognises that accurate and complete information is the basis for intelligent decision-making; identifies potential sources of information; develops successful search strategies; accesses sources of information, including computer-based and other technologies; evaluates information; organises information for practical application; integrates new information into an existing body of knowledge; and uses information in critical thinking and problem solving (Webber and Johnston 2000).

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Weiner (2012) argued that librarians have worked with the integration of information literacy since its conception by Zurkowski in the 70s. She proposed an understanding of the organizational functioning of institutions of higher learning if information literacy is to be institutionalized. Weiner (2012) presented various ways of integrating a new concept in an organization which included; adoption – a decision to use an innovation, diffusion – the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among members of a social system and institutionalization which involves processes by which social processes, obligations or activities take on a rule like status in social thought and action. The above author concluded that institutionalization is preferred because it is deep and more desirable for information literacy since it implies permanence and acceptance by an organization. The author listed information literacy, media and digital literacy, critical thinking, the ability to engage in lifelong learning, problem solving as competencies that are essential for individual and community empowerment, workplace readiness and global competitiveness. Weiner (2012) further argued that advocacy for information literacy should be at both the national and international level. The Alexandria Proclamation that was for example developed by a group of international leaders in 2005 stated that information literacy is crucial to; lifelong learning, empowerment of people in all aspects of life, is a basic human right and that it promotes social inclusion of all nations. The author informed that UNESCO has sponsored workshops that were held in different parts of the world to train the train in information literacy. It also developed international information literacy indicators. Weiner (2012) concluded that information literacy should be progressively developed throughout formal education. Sundin (2015) explored ways in which abilities to search for information, to evaluate sources and the critical understanding of such activities were addressed in the Swedish curriculum for a compulsory school, pre-school classes and recreation centres. The above author argued that being able to find and evaluate information on-line today is something that is taken for granted. The two skills are a must have if one is to participate in society today. Yet, new technologies for information search and communication are not integrated in the education system. Sundin) postulated that how search and source evaluation are treated in the Swedish curriculum for a compulsory school was a good example. His findings revealed that search engines and other information infrastructures for information provision in society, are treated as neutral infrastructures in the curriculum. In his opinion, this was problematic to the achievement of critical media and information literacies. Information literacy is key to a society that wants to be open, accessible and inclusive. Through it, people in all walks of life are empowered to seek, evaluate, use and create information to achieve their personal, occupational, education and social goals. Information literacy is therefore important in a world where a large proportion of the population feel disenfranchised and popularism and demagoguery are undermining rational discourse (Goldstein, 2017). Wilkinson (2016) stated that librarians believe information literacy is the answer to the post-truth world of misinformation. The author however countered that information literacy is not truth or facts and further argued that scholarship is about negotiating meaning. This is because the world of information is a negotiated commodity where powerful forces marginalize voices. Wilkinson (2016) quoted (Tewell, 2015) who stated that critical information literacy is about knowing that they are multiple ways of knowing and that all facts are contested, since information is a social construct and knowledge production is a political act. She suggested a move away from objective truth and facts to increased awareness that the so-called facts cannot be separated from the social processes that construct them. She concluded that in the post-truth world, we need to defend the truth and call-out falsity and hence talk about the role of truth and facts in information literacy.

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According to Catts and Lau (2008), information literacy, information preservation and information ethics are areas that are of crucial importance to the development of knowledge societies. To promote information literacy, information mediators such as archivists, librarians and teachers need to be supported since they promote information literate societies. Skills in selecting, organizing and managing information are currently of concern to all people. Making information available also requires that those who are to access it have the knowledge, skills to engage with it productively. Lack of information literacy condemns people to lack of information and means that they must depend on others to access knowledge and information. Therefore, making information and information technologies available to the people is not enough. According to Fister (2017) information literacy should be much more than being able to evaluate and recognize false news. She asserted that it requires an understanding of how information systems shape our world and the realization that we can shape it in a better way. Carini (Carini 2016) was of the view that to be fully information literate one needs to be able to find, access, interpret, and utilize all forms of information. Therefore, information institutions have a critical role to play in equipping citizens with information literacy skills. Not all citizens are information literate, nor possess analytical skills that would facilitate the effective use of information by judging its quality and authenticity.

THE POST-TRUTH ERA The term post-truth was first used in 1992 in an essay written by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich. He lamented the fact that as a free people we had decided to live in some post-truth world (The Guardian, 2016). Butler (2017:1) stated that “post-truth” was in 2016, the English Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year and was defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Post-truth developments are attributed to trends such as a decline in social capital, growing economic inequality, increased polarisation, declining trust in science and changes in the media infrastructure (Lewandowsky, Ecker et al. 2017). Taniguchi (2017) contended that access to cable television and the Internet has made it possible for people to selectively embrace discourses that match their beliefs and ideologies. He was of the view that post-truth politics requires increased information literacy and fact-checking efforts and applauded the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) that was founded in 2015. He was however of the view that fact-checking necessitates speed and presents a cost burden and concluded that individuals who filter information to fit their own attitudes than its authenticity do not necessarily accept the results of fact-checking. Taniguchi (2017) believed that information literacy was a preventive measure that should be combined with fact-checking and that information providers should be required to quickly respond to inaccurate information. Harding (2017) contended that a combination of politicians who embrace misinformation and uninformed citizens, is likely to falter democracy. Where there are no facts, it will be hard to criticize those in power or to call them to account for the decisions they make on behalf of the citizens. Cook and Lewandowsky (2011) posited that refuting misinformation is a complex cognitive process that requires understanding how people process information, modify their existing knowledge and how world views affect their ability to think rationally. Brazil (2017) stated that in the post-truth world, the truth is what people want it to be, facts compete with alternatives and leaders are informed by fake news. He warned that this is a very dangerous development to humanity and recommended that we need a common consensus on what is real and what is not if we are to solve the most crucial problems facing humanity.

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Brazil (2017) further asserted that the post-truth world is an extension of humanity’s natural tendency towards confirmation bias where individuals seek evidence that confirms their own beliefs. This phenomenon is further facilitated by technological advances such as; Google, Facebook and Twitter that expose individuals only to the information that suits their beliefs. According to Enfield (2017), lies, propaganda and conspiracy theories are omnipresent and show no sign of going away. This means that the post-truth era, amidst information overload, will continue to pose challenges since the line between what is credible or not credible information is blurred. An environment with many information producers and an equally abundant channels of information dissemination, requires citizens to be in possession of skills that will enable them to critically examine and ethically use information. The literature review presents the role that information institutions are playing in society in promoting but also the challenges of accessing primary source materials. Based on the above reviewed authors’ conclusions, it is of paramount importance that citizens access authentic information and that they are possession of information processing skills which can be acquired through information literacy to be able to critically access and use the information resources availed to them. It is the information institutions that have a crucial role to play amidst post-truth era developments.

RESEARCH METHOD The author applied qualitative research methodology because it is appropriate when studying a complex problem that requires a deep understanding. Qualitative data analysis is concerned with transforming raw data by searching, evaluating, recognising, coding, mapping, exploring and escribing patterns, trends, themes and categories in the raw data in order to interpret them and provide the underlying meanings (Ngulube, 2015). It therefore entails an inductive exploration of the data to identify recurring themes, patterns, concepts and describing and interpreting of categories (Nassaji, 2015). The strength of qualitative data analyis rests on the competence with which the analysis is carried out (Ngulube, 2015). Some of the essential components of a qualitative research design as listed by Pickard (2007) include; literature review, fieldwork in a natural setting, using a human instrument, purposive sampling, appropriate data collection techniques and inductive analysis. The case study method which is a type of design in qualitative research was used to study the four institutions that were the objects of this study. Creswell (2007) argued the case study method can be applied to one or more cases within a bounded system through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple soures of information such as interviews, observations, audiovisual material and documents or reports. The researcher thereafter reports a case description and case-based themes. The four institutitions included; a public achive institution, a private archival institution, a public library and a university library. The researcher chose the four institutions because they were suitable to the phenomenon being studied and since they have the same mission of disseminating information. Different information institutions were chosen to get a broader understanding of how they were individually working to address the phenomenone under study. The choice of the different institutions was purposive and was meant to get an idea of what the different institutions were doing to promote information literacy.The researcher used an interview guide as a data collecting tool and due to time constraints emailed it to the four institutions. The interview guide covered questions regarding the themes of information access, information literacy, challnges of promoting information literacy and how the institutions were addressing post-truth era challenges. All the four institutions sent back their written responses via email and the researcher synthesized them in the research findings sec-

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tion according to the themes of the study; the role of information institutions in promoting information literacy and post-truth era. Two of the responses were group responses. It is the respondent that received the interview guide that identified fellow colleagues that could help to respond to the questions and hence the group responses. The researcher has used scientific databases such as; ScienceDirect, Scopus and Emerald to access scientific articles relevant to the subject being researched. Terms such as; public information systems, information literacy and post-truth have been employed in the search for articles.

THE RESEARCH FINDINGS The section below presents the findings from the Swedish information institutions. The institutions are referred to as Case A – a Public Library, Case B – a Private Archival Institution, Case C – a Public Archive Institution and Case D - a University Library. The choice of the different institutions was purposive and was meant to get an idea of what the different institutions were doing to promote information literacy.

PROMOTION OF INFORMATION ACCESS AND INFORMATION LITERACY In Case A, a Public Library, the public was provided with computers that could be booked and used for a certain period using credit cards. Through a credit card, books, e-books, audio/speech books, databases and some streaming media could be accessed. There were plans to also enable visitors to borrow iPads for use in the library. The respondents emphasized that libraries and librarians exist to promote information access. The library organizes conferences, theme days; on a variety of topics related to “information literacy” and study visits. They gave a specific example of an e-citizen week which focused on the theme of digital footprints where the library collaborated with another library and organized an exhibition called “Digital Detox.” This meant setting up “digital detox bars” where visitors could get help in managing their digital footprints. The library participated in the “Pan-European All Digital Week”, an annual digital empowerment campaign run at the digital competence center, libraries, schools, community centers and non-profits across Europe. The event is meant to tackle issues related to digital transformation and its effects. The library collaborated in various ways with schools; the schools visited the library, or the library staff visited the schools and they held sessions on source criticism/fact-checking, fake news and disinformation. Case B’s respondent was from a Private Archival Institution and informed that most of the information the institution had was primarily on paper. Access to the materials was promoted through the traditional archivists’ work of arrangement and description that is, the artefacts/materials were arranged and described to promote access. About 95-96% of the materials were arranged and described. This did not however make access easy because the information seekers nevertheless needed to physically visit the institution during open hours. If one was not experienced in using archival descriptions, an introduction was offered by an archivist. The archival descriptions were also available on the institution’s website. There were a few digitized archival materials on the website too, but they were to be regarded as samples compared with the entire collection at the institution. The institute offered workshops and lectures to pupils from 5 years of age up to high school students (18-19 year of age) and this was done in collaboration with the municipality in which it is located. Source criticism was mostly a theme for the older pupils, but also the youngest were encouraged to acquaint themselves with the archival materials and the notion that facts

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are stored and available in the archives. University students were also introduced to the archives, often when they started writing essays. Case C was a Public Archival Institution and it had two main strategies to promote information access. In the institute’s reading room, both analogue and digital information was made accessible according the Freedom of Information Act. The institute had highly educated staff that helped visitors to find archival information. It was in the process of establishing a new reading room to improve access to information on the buildings and infrastructures of the capital city and other archival institutions. The activities in the reading rooms were often arranged in cooperation with other institutions and the intent was to increase the primary user groups. The second strategy was to develop new ways to access digital data and information. In this area the institute used internet-channels, social media platforms and other technologies that promoted access. The institute had the ambition of being a learning institution (meaning being able to learn from on-going developments and to embrace technology to facilitate information access) as well as an educating institution. It had a strong tradition of in-house learning schemes for staff and public programmes that are based on fact-based lectures, seminars and shows. Members of its staff presented lectures that were educational, unbiased and pedagogical. The educational programs for schools included; visits to the archives for teachers and students and digital materials (documents and teachers’ guides) were on the website. Case D was a University Library (UL) that provided and made information/literature that is adapted to the research and education of the university it was serving. The UL also actively participated in open science, which aimed to enable more people to gain access to current research. At present, however, much of the information in its custody was only available to those who studied or were employed at the University. Based on an assignment from the Library Council in 2013, the UL had collaborated with the Academy on updating and developing progression in information literacy in the education programs. Based on this work, a common definition of the concept “information literacy” was formulated and it became the starting point for the library together with course and program managers to engage in the progression work for some programs. The purpose of the project was to enable the library council to get an overview on how the students obtained education in information skills. UL taught and supervised students in information retrieval, source criticism, plagiarism, reference management and academic writing. It sometimes also taught high school students who visited it. It guided teachers/researchers in reference management programs and information search where systematic literature reviews were conducted. The support of the students’ information literacy activities was on the list of its overall target areas for 2019-2023 Business Plan. UL makes films, guides and collects useful links that relate to various aspects, for example, information search, source criticism, reference management and academic writing and makes them available via Moodle which is the teaching platform of the university. These materials are appreciated by both campus and distance students as well as international students. The staff at UL participated in courses and conferences to follow the developments regarding information literacy, pedagogy and didactics.

CHALLENGES IN PROMOTING INFORMATION LITERACY In Case A the identified challenge which was based on the respondent’s personal experience was information overload and the difficulty in identifying the most relevant information in this fast-changing environment. In Case B besides financial challenges, which were stated to be a constant issue, the respondent could

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not think of any serious challenge because the financiers were often benign to pedagogical efforts. The respondent argued that once the archivists freed themselves from the habit of regarding the pedagogical role to be equal to showing as much old archival stuff as possible and adapted workshops to the schools’ educational plans and the teachers’ advice, it had worked out well. The pupils were very interested, and the teachers were satisfied. The respondent speculated that perhaps promoting information literacy could collide with the interests of some of the information depositors who might be keen to present a biased view of their history. He however confirmed that there was very little of such behavior but that most depositors usually wanted to classify information due to respect of the integrity of individuals. The respondent for Case C informed that archives are stored according to structures which were developed and often changed quite dramatically over many hundreds of years. Information literacy today is quite different from what it was in the 18th century. It was not possible for the institution to change all the old structures which were evident in the archives today. The main challenge was therefore to educate different user groups and to help them navigate archival information from different historical periods. It was possible to use modern technologies and make it easier for the public to access archival information. The respondent however argued that easy-access-platforms never contain all information from one or more archival institutions but only selected examples. Case D, the University library (UL) informed that when it came to education in the search of literature for students, it was the teachers that conducted it. The extent to which this ¨was done differed from subject to subject and over time. To achieve better results, the library preferred continuous training sessions during the term. The students found it easier to learn if the library session was booked in connection with an actual task that required them to seek information. The university library also identified distance students as a challenge because they were not included in the planning for library information search sessions by their teachers. Yet, the libraries have the means to teach them too and it planned to try and reach out with this information to all departments. Another challenge regarding the support towards the students’ information literacy was that the students did not always choose to participate in the teaching. The UL attributed the students’ behaviour to the general perception that existed about libraries and that does not correspond with the reality. Students saw the information search lessons as “Library Knowledge” and that if they participated once, that sufficed. Reaching out with the type of help the UL could offer and a room with books that are amiable to the users were among the identified challenges. The university had no follow-up instrument to establish how the students acquired knowledge that strengthened their information literacy. The UL examined the reference lists of some of the Bachelor’s theses based on random samples every year, and they saw that in some cases the students lacked knowledge in searching for in-depth scientific sources.

ADDRESSING THE POST-TRUTH CHALLENGES A respondent from Case A informed that to his knowledge, his institution had not specifically discussed post-truth challenges. Case B respondent informed that the institute’s role in society was to maintain the authenticity and integrity of the archival materials and considered it an important measure to address some of the post-truth challenges. The respondent from Case B stressed the importance of training source criticism in workshops. Source criticism was an important generic skill where archival institutions could give the schools a helping hand. Respondent B considered it a challenge because they were a small institution and constrained in their ability to promote the holding in their custody and to disseminate them

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effectively. Respondent B argued that archives were surprisingly not considered as the most obvious contributors to the maintenance of a facts infrastructure like the libraries were. Yet, both institutions observed the same societal phenomena. To use the respondent’s words, “inferior, but easily accessible information is more likely to be used than superior but hard-to-get archival information.” The respondent argued that the solution was to make archival information easier to access by digitizing it en masse and constructing finding aids that were not complicated to use and to make it searchable. This was however, out of reach due to lack of resources. The interviewee argued that what made the archival materials unique was the archival context – archival information required effort if one was interested in exploring it. The interviewee argued that when the postal service was established in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was applauded by the customers because it provided faster and reliable information than the rumours. However, the technological shift has changed this and now rumours travel faster and are cheaper than fact-based and reliable news. The respondent referred to this as a game-changer and further argued that the people of the mentioned centuries above were often aware of the unreliability of rumours and he hoped this was the case today. When it is worth the effort, people will seek more reliable sources. Case C – The public Archival Institution - The respondent argued that the question regarding the challenges that the institute had identified regarding the post-truth era was hard to answer because it presupposes the acknowledgement of the “Post-Truth Era” concept. The institution had not taken any steps to address the challenges of the Post-Truth Era because it was not a concept that the archival institution used. The respondent argued that the basis of the Swedish archival system was that information should be open and accessible to anyone and that the archival institution should not wield power regarding how the information was used by the third parties. The only option to counter “post-truth politics, information overload and alternative facts” was to promote fact-based and unbiased information to the user-groups. Case D – University library – It was argued by the respondents that as society changes, access to information was becoming increasingly important and so was the necessity to talk about “fake news” and various filter bubbles. UL sought to teach appropriate approaches that included; source-critical thinking during information retrieval and the utilization literature. It offered workshops for the university employees about “carnivorous journals”, that is, magazines that offered publication of scientific articles for payment and gave false promises of seriousness, peer review and great impact factors.The university library collected statistics every year regarding the number of questions it received during a particular period. The numbers had decreased in recent years, which could be attributed to the fact that students had access to more information from home and that more people do search for information on their own. The librarians expressed that it was important for the teachers to continue booking information search sessions and to utilize their expertise. As far as the teaching sessions that the library offers, it was expressed that it happens only sometimes. They argued that there was lack of holistic thinking within the educational programs even though students needed to acquire broad information literacy. The university library also stated that access to scientifically reviewed literature decreased significantly when students finished their studies at the University. However, this was improving in the long term since more research was being published in open access journals.

DISCUSION AND CONCLUSION This article explored the role of Swedish information institutions in promoting information literacy to combat the so-called post-truth challenges. The post-truth era has turned facts into obsolete tools

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and according to the reviewed literature, this is attributed to factors such as; a decline in social capital, growing economic inequality, declining trust in science, polarisation and a changed media ecosystem. Access to government information is one of the key elements to the attainment of the UN sustainable development goals, especially where inclusive institutions are concerned. Currently governments are opening their information resources through freedom of information legislation and Open Government initiatives because it is believed, that access to information promotes a country’s social and economic status and enables citizens to make informed choices and to participate in governance issues. Information institutions are part of a government information system that delivers information to the citizens. For citizens to be able to make use of the information that is availed to them, they need to be information literate. Information literacy means being able to locate, retrieve and to critically interpret information to use it in an ethical manner. However, scholars such as Bruce (2004) and Henninger (2017) argued that access to information is a multi-dimensional issue and entails much more than availing information to the citizens. Citizens need to be in position of the skills required to use the availed information to their own advantage. In today’ Lor (2018) argued that the traditional assumptions about the role of libraries, information and democracy are outdated and that people’s susceptibility to false beliefs was not due to information deficit but because of the evolving media ecosystem and psychosocial processes. For example, (Adorno and Cardia 2013, Hellström 2016) contended that information technology companies such as Google and Facebook align information with the individual citizens’ profiles and hence only interface them with information that confirms their beliefs. This is where information institutions have a critical role to play by promoting information literacy sessions. The aim would be to stimulate critical thinking to enable citizens to think beyond the media companies’ algorithms and to know that they should corroborate the information they access. Libraries have for over two decades engaged in the promotion of information literacy. What is currently needed is increased efforts to counter post-truth developments. Archival institutions on the other hand need to work harder to remove the barriers that hinder an understanding of and access to the information in their custodianship. Yakel (2004) argued 16 years ago that the literature emphasizing the use of primary sources held by archival institutions and the promotion of information literacy is only emerging. Harding (2017) warned that a combination of politicians who embrace misinformation and uninformed citizens, is likely to falter democracy. It also means that citizens cannot hold those they vote into power accountable for the decisions they make on their behalf. Information literacy, information preservation and information ethics were identified by Catts and Lau (2008), as critical to the development of knowledge societies. To promote information literacy, information mediators such as librarians and archivists need support. Lack of information literacy condemns people to lack of meaningful information. Citizens need to develop skills in information literacy, media and digital literacy, critical thinking, the ability to engage in life-long learning, problem solving if they and their communities are to be empowered. The challenges of the post-truth era are not easy to solve because despite the fact that a lot of information is being availed to the citizens not all of them are in possession of information literacy skills such as the ability to critically assess the accessed information. Very few articles discussed the role of information institutions in the post-truth era which is indicative of the fact that more research needs to be pursued and that my article is a contribution towards this gap. The focus of most of the reviewed research is on schools and institutions of higher learning. The author has not been able to identify studies that have been inclusive of citizens that are not in education institutions. The interviews however revealed that the Swedish information institutions worked with education institutions and the public. 93

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SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS • • • • •

Information institutions need increased collaboration with schools and institutions of higher learning and the local communities to promote the use of primary sources. Libraries have for a long time engaged in information literacy, but archival institutions need to do more work especially given the difficulties posed by the complexities surrounding access to their holdings. Information technology should be effectively used to promote on-line tutorials in a manner that stimulates critical thinking and the creation of archival guides and tools that can direct users to the primary sources. Stimulation of interest in state and local history since it is a good starting point to create awareness on one’s own surroundings. The public should be offered fact-checking sessions and made aware of the existing fact-checking networks.

REFERENCES Adorno, S., & Cardia, N. (2013). The Importance of Access to Information, Past and Present: Human Rights in Contemporary Brazil. American International Journal of Social Science, 2(8), 20–29. Ahmet, N. Ç., Yaman, D. N., & Yurdakul, K. I. (2017). Information literacy and digital nativity as determinants of online information search strategies. Computers in Human Behavior, 70, 1–9. doi:10.1016/j. chb.2016.12.050 Article 19. (2017). Open Development: Access to Information and the Sustainable Development Goals. Retrieved January 29, 2020 from https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Open-Development-Access-to-Information-and-the-SDGs-2017.pdf Åström I. K. (2003). I allmänhetens tjänst: Arkivverket, tillgängliggörandet och brukarna. Arkiv, samhälle och forskning, 1, 18-37. Avery, H. (2014). The role of the school library: Reflections from Sweden. Intercultural Education, 25(6), 497–507. doi:10.1080/14675986.2014.990279 Batchelor, O. (2017). Getting out the truth: The role of libraries in the fight against fake news. RSR. Reference Services Review, 45(2), 143–148. doi:10.1108/RSR-03-2017-0006 Behrens, J. S. (1994). A Conceptual Analysis and Historical. Overview of Information Literacy. Retrieved January 1, 2018, from https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/41773/crl_55_04_309_opt. pdf?s Brasil, L. (2017) The Post-Truth World. Retrieved July 14, 2017 from, https://search-proquest-com.till. biblextern.sh.se/docview/1879349085?rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

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Bruce, C. S. (2004). Information Literacy as a Catalyst for Educational Change A Background Paper Queensland University of Technology Lifelong Learning: Whose responsibility and what is your contribution? The 3rd International Lifelong Learning Conference, Yeppoon, Queensland. Retrieved July 10, 2016 from, http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UNPAN/UNPAN011842.pdf Bulger, E.M., Mayer, E. R. & Metzger, J.M. (2014). They hence play a key role in promoting information access and stimulating the search for knowledge and support literacy. Dordrecht, 27(9), 1529-1545. Butler-Adam, J. (2017). What could scientists do about ‘post-truth’? South African Journal of Science, 113(1/2), 1. doi:10.17159ajs.2017/a0195 Carini, P. (2016). Information Literacy for Archives and Special Collections: Defining Outcomes, Libraries and the Academy, 16(1), 191-206. Catts, R., & Lau, J. (2008). Towards Information Literacy Indicators. Conceptual Framework Paper. Retrieved December 8 from, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001587/158723e.pdf Chowdhury, G., & Koya, K. (2017). Information Practices for Sustainability: Role of iSchoolsin Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68(9), 2128–2138. doi:10.1002/asi.23825 Cook, J., & Lewandowsky, S. (2011). The Debunking Handbook. Retrieved July 27 from, https://www. skepticalscience.com/docs/Debunking_Handbook.pdf Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods (3rd ed.). London: Sage Publications. Eastin, S. M., Cicchirillo, V., & Mabry, A. (2015). Extending the Digital Divide Conversation: Examining the Knowledge Gap Through Media Expectancies. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59(3), 416–437. doi:10.1080/08838151.2015.1054994 Eckerdal, J. R. (2017). Libraries, democracy, information literacy, and citizenship. An agonistic reading of central library and information studies’ concepts. The Journal of Documentation, 73(5), 1010–1033. doi:10.1108/JD-12-2016-0152 Enfield, N. (2017). Navigating the post-truth debate: some key co-ordinates. Retrieved February 1, 2018 from, https://theconversation.com/navigating-the-post-truth-debate-some-key-co-ordinates-77000 Fister, B. (2017). Practicing Freedom for the Post-Truth Era. Retrieved July3, 2017 from https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:11559/ Goldstein, S. (2016). Preface. In The Fourth European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL). Retrieved May 5, 2019 from, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sonja_Spiranec/publication/309180132_The_Fourth_European_Conference_on_Information_Literacy_ECIL_Abstracts/ links/58033cc608ae6c2449f805d4.pdf Harding, P. (2017). Remember that facts are sacred. British Journalism Review, 28(1), 17–22. doi:10.1177/0956474817697581

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Hawker, E. E. (2013). Archival Information Literacy: An Opportunity to Appreciate Archives. Retrieved December 4, 2018 from, https://miarchivists.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/hawkermaa_presentation.pdf Hellström, E. (2016). How do we communicate in a post-truth world? Who can – and should – we trust in today’s changing media environment? Retrieved July 25, 2017 from, https://www.sitra.fi/en/blogs/ how-do-we-communicate-post-truth-world/ Henninger, M. (2013). The Value and Challenges of Public Sector Information. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, 5(3), 75–95. doi:10.5130/ccs.v5i3.3429 Henninger, M. (2017). Government information: Literacies, behaviours and practices. Government Information Quarterly, 34(1), 8–15. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2016.12.003 Iacovino, L. (2010). Archives as Arsenals of Accountability. In T. Eastwood & H. MacNeil (Eds.), Currents of Archival Thinking (pp. 181–212). Libraries Unlimited. Iron Mountain. (2015). The Public Sector Managing Information Through the Challenge of Change. Retrieved September 25, 2016 from, https://www.ironmountain.co.uk/Knowledge-Center/Reference-Library/View-by-Document-Type/White-Papers-Briefs/I/Information-and-the-Public-Sector. aspx?TempAuth=True Jarosz, E. E., & Kutay, S. (2017). Guided Resource Inquiries: Integrating Archives into Course Learning and Information Literacy Objectives. Communications in Information Literacy, 11(1), 204–220. doi:10.15760/comminfolit.2017.11.1.42 Jimerson, R. C. (n.d.) Archives for All: The Importance of Archives in Society. Retrieved July 17, 2016 from https://www.aag.org.br/anaisxvcba/conteudo/resumos/plenaria1/randalljimerson.pdf Johnson, B. (2017). Information Literacy is Dead: The Role of Libraries in a Post-Truth World. Computers in Libraries, 37(2), 12–15. Johnston, M. P. (2014). Secondary Data Analysis: A Method of which the Time Has Come. Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries, 3, 619–626. Krolak, L. (2005) The Role of Libraries in the Creation of Literate Environment. Retrieved July 24, 2017 from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ebc6/24d7a5c351ed51c7cad0e416eb548a64a99b.pdf Larson, A. (2010). The Changing Information Environment and Civic Literacy, Public Manager. Alexandria (Aldershot), 39(I3), 5–8. Lemieux, L. V., Gormly, B., & Rowledge, L. (2014). Meeting Big Data challenges with visual analytics. The role of records management. Records Management Journal, 24(2), 122–141. doi:10.1108/RMJ-012014-0009 Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., & Cook, J. (2017). Beyond Misinformation: Understanding and Coping with the “Post-Truth” Era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 353–369. doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.07.008

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Lor, J. P. (2018). Democracy, information, and libraries in a time of post-truth discourse. Library Management, 39(5), 307–321. doi:10.1108/LM-06-2017-0061 Marsh, E. J., & Yang, B. W. (2017). A Call to Think Broadly about Information Literacy. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 401–404. doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.09.012 Metz, S. (2017). Digital Literacy—Is It Real? Retrieved June 27, 2017 from https://search-proquest-com. till.biblextern.sh.se/docview/1855296606?rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo Meyers, M., Erickson, I., & Small, V. R. (2013). Digital literacy and informal learning environments: An introduction. Learning, Media and Technology, 38(4), 355–367. doi:10.1080/17439884.2013.783597 Mogalakwe, M. (2006). The Use of Documentary Research Methods in Social Research. African Sociological Review, 10(1), 221–230. Nassaji, H. (2015). Qualitative and descriptive research: Data type versus data analysis. Language Teaching Research, 19(2), 129–132. doi:10.1177/1362168815572747 Oliver, G., & Foscarini, F. (2014). Records Management and Information Culture. Tackling the people problem. Facet Publishing. Pickard, J. A. (2007). Research methods in information. Facet Publishing. Rickinson, M., & May, H. (Eds.). (2009). A comparative study of methodological approaches to reviewing literature. Retrieved June 17, 2016 from, https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/resources/ comparativestudy_0.pdf St Lifer, E., & Rogers, M. (1996). Libraries “summit” confirms role in information society. Library Journal, 121(5), 14. Suiter, J. (2016). Post-Truth Politics. Political Insight, 7(3), 25–27. doi:10.1177/2041905816680417 Svärd, P. (2017). e-Government Development and Challenge of Freeing Public Sector Information. In The Governance of Local Communities. Global Perspecties and Challenges (pp. 146-161). Nova Science Publisher, Inc. Taniguchi, M. (2017). Examining Tension between Politics and the Media. Retrieved December 14, 2018 from https://www.nira.or.jp/pdf/e_myvision31.pdf The Council of Europe. (2009). Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents. Retrieved April 27 2009 from, http://www.conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/205.htm The Council of State Archivists. (n.d.). The Importance of State Archives. Retrieved July 10, 2017 from, https://www.statearchivists.org/files/7114/4071/0454/Importance_of_State_Archives.pdf The Guardian. (2016). “Post-truth’ named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved February 1 2018 from, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/15/post-truth-named-word-of-the-year-byoxford-dictionaries

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Tsipursky, G. (2017). Towards a Post-Lies Future Fighting “Alternative Facts” and “Post-Truth” Politics. Retrieved from July 10, 2017 from, https://thehumanist.com/magazine/march-april-2017/features/ towards-post-lies-future UNESCO. (2019). Access to Information: A New Promise for Sustainable Development. Retrieved January 29, 2020 from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000371485 UNESCO. (2016). 50th Anniversary of International Literacy Day: Literacy rates are on the rise but millions remain illiterate. Retrieved July 28, 2017 from, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002458/245830E. pdf UNICEF. (2016). Literacy among youth is rising, but young women lag behind. Retrieved July 28, 2017 from, https://data.unicef.org/topic/education/literacy/ United Nations. (n.d.). UN Sustainable development goals. Knowledge Platform. Retrieved January 29, 2020 from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300 United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. (1983). The Role of archives and records management in national information systems: a RAMP study. Retrieved July 12, 2017 from, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0005/000566/056689eo.pdf Webber, S., & Johnston, B. (2000). Conceptions of information literacy: New perspectives and implications. Journal of Information Science, 6(6), 381–397. doi:10.1177/016555150002600602 White, B. (2012). Guaranteeing Access to Knowledge: The Role of Libraries. Retrieved December 2, 2018 from, https://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2012/04/article_0004.html Wilkinson, L. (2016). Post-truth and information literacy. Retrieved July 12, 2017 from, https://senseandreference.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/post-truth-and-information-literacy/ Yakel, E. (2004). Information literacy for primary sources: creating a new paradigm for archival researcher education. OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives, 20(2), 61-64. Yakel, E., & Torres, A. D. (2003). AI: Archival Intelligence and User Expertise. The American Archivist, 66(1), 51–78. doi:10.17723/aarc.66.1.q022h85pn51n5800

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Critical Information Literacy: Critical information literacy is about knowing that they are multiple ways of knowing and that all facts are contested, since information is a social construct and knowledge production is a political act. Information Access: Is the freedom or ability to identify, obtain and make use of database or information effectively for one’s own development. Information Institutions: For the purpose of this study, information institutions are organizations that are charged with the responsibility to provide information resources and services to meet the educational, informational, cultural and/or recreational needs of the citizens.

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Information Literacy: Entails a set of skills and abilities which individuals need to undertake information-related tasks; for instance, how to discover, access, interpret, analyze, manage, create, communicate, store and share information. Post-Truth: The Oxford Dictionaries web page defines post-truth as an adjective relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotional and personal belief. Sustainable Information Practices: The socially negotiated behaviour through which we, create, change, share, and store information. UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS): The sustainable development goals are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice.

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Chapter 6

Preserving Endangered Archives Through Open Access: The Role of the Endangered Archive Programme in Africa Nathan Mnjama University of Botswana, Botswana

ABSTRACT Archives and manuscript collections, when well preserved, play a pivotal role in the preservation of corporate memory as well as the transmission of culture, building of national identity, and in providing valuable information sources on a variety of issues. However, in many parts of the world, the preservation and accessibility of archives and manuscripts, particularly those privately held, remains a neglected area requiring innovative ways to enhance their long-term preservation and accessibility. This chapter examines how endangered archival collections can be preserved through open access and digitization programmes funded locally or jointly with donor agencies. Specifically, the chapter examines the contribution made by the Endangered Archives Programme, a UK-based programme supported by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, to preserve endangered archives in Africa. The chapter shows that over the past 16 years, the Endangered Archives Programme has made a significant contribution in the preservation of endangered archives held privately and in public archival institutions. The chapter argues that the approach followed by the Endangered Archives Programme clearly demonstrates that collaborative effort in the preservation of endangered archives results in mutual benefits to the local communities as well the research community via the British Library. The chapter concludes by suggesting future directions that may be considered when undertaking similar copying projects.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch006

Copyright © 2021, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

 Preserving Endangered Archives Through Open Access

INTRODUCTION The preservation and accessibility of endangered archival collections and manuscripts through open access constitutes one of the most innovative ways in recent times. Without digitization and the placement of these collections under open access, valuable archives and manuscript collections will be lost, forgotten, or left to deteriorate and decay through the ravages of nature. This is particularly so for archives and manuscript collections held in private hands or in small archival institutions in developing and emerging nations where funding for their preservation is rather limited or is non-existent. However, the introduction of modern information communication technologies has ushered in new ways of preserving and making accessible valuable archival collections via the internet. This chapter examines how open access has made it possible for endangered archives across the globe and especially in Africa to be digitized and made accessible for public inspection through digitization projects undertaken through donor funding provided such as the Endangered Archive Programme, a digitization funding programme based at the British Library in the United Kingdom. The chapter commences with a discussion on general issues surrounding open access and digitization as applied to the area of archives and manuscripts. This is followed by a discussion on the role played by the Endangered Archives Programme in the preservation and accessibility of endangered archival materials in Africa, explaining the objectives of the programme, the types of digitization projects so far undertaken as well the benefits derived from these projects. The chapter concludes by proposing various ways through which African archival institutions may pursue in future in order to effectively reap maximum benefits from the digitization projects and in placing their archival collection on open access.

OPEN ACCESS AND DIGITIZATION AS STRATEGIES FOR PRESERVING AND ACCESSING ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS The concept of open access is alien to the archival world. In the past, archivists have been concerned much more with the protection and preservation of archives and manuscripts under their care and in ensuring that the collections are made available for public inspection within the strict boundaries established in archival legislation that respects privacy and donor restrictions. However, this trend is gradually being replaced by more flexible approaches that advocate greater disclosure of archives and the information contained therein. This is particularly so in those countries which have adopted Freedom of Information legislation. The Archives and Records Terminology compiled by Pearce-Moses (2005, p.2) defines access as “the ability to locate relevant information through the use of catalogues, indexes, findings aids or other tools. Pearce-Moses (2005) further explains that access is the “permission to locate and retrieve information for use (consultation or reference) within legally established restrictions of privacy, confidentiality and security clearance”. McCauseland (1993, p.274) on the other hand defines access as “the terms and conditions of availability of records or information maintained by archives for examination and consultation by researchers”. Clearly, the major goal of acquiring and preserving archives and manuscript collections is to make them widely accessible to all bona fide users irrespective of their nationality, colour, gender or belief. The term Open Access has been in use among librarians for a much longer period in comparison to archivists. The term open access was defined by Suber (2004, p.1) who stressed that:

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By open access … we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. The Bethesda and Berlin statements on Open Access publishing (2003, p.1) indicate that Open access implies that “users must be able to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship”. UNESCO (2015, p.1) stated that for a publication to be considered open it should meet the following criteria: • • •

its content is universally and freely accessible, at no cost to the reader, via the Internet or otherwise; the author or copyright owner irrevocably grants to all users, for an unlimited period, the right to use, copy, or distribute the article, on condition that proper attribution is given; it is deposited, immediately, in full and in a suitable electronic form, in at least one widely and internationally recognized open access repository committed to open access

The Bethesda and Berlin statements on open access (2003, p.1) emphasized that a key feature of open access is that “users must be able to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship”. Today, open access is closely associated with institutional repositories. The University of Colorado Libraries (2020, p.1) defined an open access repository as “an online database used by institutions and organizations to capture, preserve, and provide access to the intellectual output of a scholarly community”. Public libraries, academic institutions libraries, as well as archival institutions are now offering open access to some of the collections under their care. The British Library is one such library with an institutional repository that currently provides open access to its collections. Harnad (2003, p,1) argued that “the open-access archive is the most cost-effective and immediate route to providing maximal access to the results of publicly funded research, thereby maximizing the potential research impact of these publications”. The major benefits of open access was perhaps best summarized by Suber (2004, p.1) when he posited that open access ensures free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself . Traditionally, archival collections and manuscripts have been in analogue format and could only be available for public inspection within the archival repositories where they were held. However, with the advent of information communication technologies, great opportunities have arisen enabling such collections to be made available through open access. Users are now able to access information without having to travel to archival institutions in order to meet their information needs. Initially, it was archival repositories in the West that embraced open access. However, over the last two decades this trend seems to be changing quickly as more and more African countries have increasingly become aware of

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the benefits brought about by open access, consequently many of them are now allowing some of their archives and manuscript collections to be digitised and placed on the internet. Sander Dekker, the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science, the Government of Netherlands argues that: The principle of open access involves offering readers worldwide access to research publications, journals and books free of charge. My contention is that access to the results of publicly and publicly-privately funded research should always be unrestricted. Because such research is paid for from the public purse and technical impediments are essentially non-existent, I believe open access should be rolled out in the near future. Open access promotes knowledge sharing and knowledge circulation, which in turn contribute to the Netherlands’ innovative capacity. (Dekker 2014, p.1) The benefits of utilizing open access as a means of promoting the use of archives were perhaps best summarized by Abraham (1997, p.3) the then Head of Special Collections and Archives at the University of Idaho Library when he wrote saying: Establishing an archival presence on the World Wide Web is an effective and economical form of outreach. Unlike printed materials there are no production costs and no left over inventory. Unlike lectures there is no scheduling, no prima donna speaker, no invitations, and no caterers. And unlike exhibits, there is no physical presence to monitor and protect. In addition, a web site is available, to those with the equipment, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at no additional cost. Plus, it is infinitely and immediately updatable, upgradable, and enhanceable. Writing in support of using the internet in the promotion of accessing archives collections, Ruller (1997, p.161) argued that “Archives can successfully use the Internet to enhance the level of access to information about their holdings, programmes and services. The Internet can be used to improve the efficiency of traditional reference services and enable the institution to expand the level of use, without an increased burden on existing resources”. African archival institutions were reluctant to adopt open access as a strategy for making their rich archival resources accessible via the Internet arguing that open access is one of the ways of introducing digital colonization in the continent. Gradually, Africa is adopting digitization as a means of not only preserving its rich documentary heritage, but also as a way of sharing this resource with the rest of the world. The term digitization has attracted different definitions from various scholars and information technology practitioners. According to Eke-Okpala (2011, p.1), digitization is “the art of converting the contents of a document from hard copy into machine-readable format”. Mckay (2003, p.1) asserted that “Digitization in an archival environment includes taking a physical object or analogue item, such as an art object, a tape recording, a map, or correspondence, from a collection that is rare or unique, often extremely fragile, and taking photographs of the item, and transferring the photographs to a digital medium.” The end result of digitization is the production of digital images which can be accessed electronically. Cornell University Library (2008, p.1) defines digital images as: Electronic snapshots taken of a scene or scanned from documents, such as photographs, manuscripts, printed texts, and artwork. The digital image is sampled and mapped as a grid of dots or picture elements (pixels). Each pixel is assigned a tonal value (black, white, shades of grey or and ones). The binary

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digits (“bits”) for each pixel are stored in a sequence by a computer and often reduced to a mathematical representation (compressed). The bits are then interpreted and read by the computer to produce an analog version for display or printing. The main reason for digitizing materials is to enhance access and ensure long term preservation of information. The advantages of digitization were stated by Fabunmi, Paris and Fabunmi (2009, p.30) when they wrote saying: Digitization improves access to library resources. By digitizing library collections, information will be accessible to all instead of a group of researchers. Digital projects allow users to search for collections rapidly and comprehensively from anywhere at any time. Digitization makes the invisible to be visible. Several users can access the same material the same time without hindrance. It also removes the problem of distance, as users do not have to travel to libraries that possess the hard copies of library materials before they can access and use such materials There is general consensus that the goals of digitization and especially digitization of archives materials are the preservation of endangered documentary collections and the increased access to them. Hamooya and Njobvu (2010, p.240) opine that digitizing archival collections may result in some of the following benefits: increased access to archival collections, improved services to an expanding group of users by providing enhanced access to the institution’s resources, reduction in the handling and use of fragile and heavily used original materials, giving the institution opportunities for the development of its technical infrastructure and staff skills capacity and taking advantage of financial opportunities, for example the likelihood of securing funding to implement a program, or of a particular project being able to generate a significant income. The section below discusses some of the issues that require consideration prior to embarking digitization projects particularly those sponsored by organizations based outside Africa. Despite the numerous benefits that are likely to be gained through digitization and the placement of archival collections on open access, there are several challenges that are likely to be encountered by archival institutions seeking to digitize their collections. Some of these challenges include inadequate financial resources, lack of expertise in digitization projects, fear of losing control over the archival collections once digitized and placed on open access, loss of revenue from entry fees by users consulting the archives and lack of confidence in digital images that many become obsolete as technology changes. Similar challenges were reported by Akter and Begun (201, p.105) in their study on “Open Access Initiatives of the National Archives of Bangladesh (NAB” when they wrote saying: It is evident from the South Asian perspective that the process of comprehensive online exposure of archival materials of this region is yet to walk a long way. Because inadequate funding and indifference of the government for the development of non-profit organizations like archives and libraries are long lasting issues here. Moreover, due to political and socio-economic perspective some archival materials are kept secured from public access. However, the National Archives of Bangladesh started its journey in 2012 with a development project to extend its services to the doorsteps of its worldwide audience as well as ensure sustainability and quality of its resources. But the study reveals some drawbacks of NAB that hindered the success of the digitization project:

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Another challenge relating to digitization of archives and manuscript collections in Africa is that of genuine fear that by placing archival materials on the Internet, only the urban communities with Internet access facilities will be reached, leaving the vast majority of the rural folks unreached thus perpetuating the digital divide between the information urban rich and the rural information poor. Digital divide itself has been defined by Bridges (2000) as “the division between those who have access to ICT and are using it effectively, and those who do not.” Bridges further observed that “more often than not, the information “have-nots” are in developing countries, and in disadvantaged groups within countries. To Bridges (2001), the digital divide is thus a lost opportunity -- the opportunity for the information “have-nots” to use ICT to improve their lives.” The section that follows examines the role played by the Endangered Archives Programme in the preservation and accessibility via open access of endangered archival collections in Africa.

THE ENDANGERED ARCHIVES PROGRAMME The Endangered Archives Programme is a programme funded by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, and managed by the British Library. One of the key goals of Arcadia is to contribute to the preservation of archival material that is in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration world-wide (Endangered Archives Program, 2018). Since 2001, the Foundation has assisted several institutions in their efforts to preserve “records manuscript and archives, archaeological sites and artefacts, and cultural and religious traditions at risk and being lost” (Arcadia, 2020). The work of the Endangered Archives Programme was documented by Kominko (2015) in her work From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme. This task is accomplished through Endangered Archives Programme based at Library in London in collaboration with other institutions. . The broad objective of the Programme is “to contribute to the preservation of archival material that is in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration world-wide (Price 2015). Price further reported that, this broad objective is achieved through the award of grants that “enable successful applicants to locate relevant endangered archival collections, to arrange their transfer to a suitable local archival home where possible, to create digital copies of the material and to deposit the copies with local institutions and the British Library” (Price, 2015). The specific objectives of the Endangered Archives Programme are to: 1. Facilitate scholarship and research by identifying and preserving important material at risk of neglect, physical deterioration, destruction, or irresponsible care. 2. Copy and relocate existing archival material that would generate material to supplement existing archives, provided the focus is not on the general nature of oral history recordings. 3. Safeguard archival material relating to societies usually at an early stage of development. EAP however, does consider applications for digitization of collections covering the period to the end of the 19th Century with some through the mid-20th . 4. Where possible, to relocate endangered collections into established local archives i.e. archives in the country in which they are currently located. However, it must be stated EAP in principle does not support the relocation of endangered materials from their countries of origin. The only exception to this is where the material is being temporarily removed from the country of origin for the purposes of copying). There is no evidence known to the author that this provision has ever been applied. 105

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5. Only material that can be made available online is in scope for the programme. It does not support digitisation where there are copyright, privacy, or ethical reasons preventing this. 6. Training and building local capacity through copying and digitization of endangered archives (Endangered Archives Programme, 2017). Since its inception in 2004, several projects aimed at locating and digitizing endangered archives in Africa and other continents have been funded where it is obvious that inability to support such interventions may result in the total loss of valuable documentary and cultural heritage. The funded projects can be grouped into two broad categories, namely Pilot Projects and Major projects. Pilot Projects aim at discovering and identifying endangered archives and manuscript collections, assessing the environment under which they are held as well as determining the informational value of the materials (Pearson, 2018). Pilot Projects normally result in the production of end of a project report and an inventory of the discovered endangered materials. In some instances Pilot Projects are funded to digitize small collections of endangered materials. However, there are several instances where pilot projects have led to the funding of major Project to digitise the discovered endangered collections. As Case (2015, p.1) observed, projects funded under this category have in many instances resulted in the discovery of rare and valuable endangered archival collections across the globe including manuscript collections, rare books, sound recording, photographic collections and other cultural heritage collections. Based on the findings of the surveys, some of these minor projects have ended up as major digitization projects while those which did not yield any meaningful findings end as minor projects. The second categories of projects are Major Projects that were conceived as digitization projects from the very beginning. The end product of major projects is the placement of digital images online at the British Library website in London and in a local archival partner in the country where the original archival materials are held. Table 1 provides a summary of completed projects undertaken in each of the African countries with Endangered Archives Programme funding and where the digitised collections have been placed on open access at the British Library website. The table excludes on-going projects which are yet to be completed. Table 1. Projects Undertaken in East, West, North and Southern Africa with support from EAP COUNTRY

PROJECT NO. AND PROJECT TITLE

Algeria

EAP141: Ibadi private libraries in the Mzab Heptapolis, Algeria 2007

Benin

EAP1055:Slow Death for Slavery in the National Archives of Benin

Botswana

EAP429: A survey of church archives in Botswana, 2011

Burundi

EAP684: Inventory of the National Archives of Burundi 2013

Burkina Faso

EAP462: Preservation of Kaya district colonial archives and assessment of the potential and feasibility of recovering other former district capitals’ collections, Burkina Faso 2011

Cameroon

EAP051: Bamum script and archives project: saving Africa’s written heritage 2005 EAP054: Archiving a Cameroonian photographic studio 2006 EAP506: A pilot project to survey the Buea Archives and other potentially endangered archives in western Cameroon 2011 EAP542: Cameroon Photo Press Archives. Protection, conservation, access 2012

Chad

EAP472: A survey of the libraries of Abéché, former capital of the Sultanate of Waday (Eastern Chad) 2014

Comoros

EAP433: Digitisation of the national sound archives of the Union of Comoros 2011

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Table 1. Continued COUNTRY

PROJECT NO. AND PROJECT TITLE

Congo, Democratic Republic of

EAP844: Recovering the Middle Congo archives at Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo: new steps towards the social history of the Congo 2015

Egypt

EAP025: Transfer of Mosseri Genizah Archive from Paris to Cambridge University Library and its digitisation (with metadata), storage and accessibility: Stage 1

Ethiopia

EAP254: Preservation of the historical literary heritage of Tigray, Ethiopia: the library of Romanat Qeddus Mika’el 2010 EAP286: Digitising and conserving Ethiopian manuscripts at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies 2009 EAP336: Preserving the lay bet andemta: the Ethiopian intellectual legacy on the verge of extinction 2010 EAP340: Photographic preservation of the manuscript collection in the monastic church of Ewostatewos at Däbrä Särabi (Tigray, Ethiopia) 2010 EAP401: Safeguarding the Ethiopian Islamic heritage 2010 EAP526: Digitisation of the endangered monastic archive at May Wäyni (Tigray, Ethiopia) 2012 EAP602: Preservation of the audio recording collection in the Sherif Harar City Museum, Ethiopia 2012 EAP704: Digitisation of the monastic archives of Marawe Krestos and Däbrä Abbay (Shire region, Tigray Province, Ethiopia 2014

Gambia

EAP231: Social history of the Gambia: rescuing an endangered archive, police and court records 2010 EAP536: Safeguarding Gambia, Casamance and Guinea-Bissau’s oral histories: the Oral History Archive at Fajara, The Gambia 2012

Ghana

EAP078: Ritual narratives of Bagr Secret Society 2006 EAP256: Preservation of endangered historical records in the Public Records and Archives Administration (PRAAD) in Tamale, Northern Ghana 2009 EAP474: Regional Archive at Cape Coast, Ghana: pre-colonial and colonial documents preservation project 2011 EAP540: Shrines of Accra: Witchcraft trial records at Nai, Korle and Sakumo We, Accra, Ghana 2012 EAP541: Digitisation and preservation of historical archives in the Public Records and Archives Administration (PRAAD) in Tamale, Northern Ghana 2012 EAP569: Safeguarding Nzema history: documents on Nzema land in Ghanaian national and local archives 2012 EAP 266: History of Bolama, the first capital of Portuguese Guinea (1879-1941), as reflected in the Guinean National Historical Archives 2009 EAP722: Safeguarding Nzema history. Towards an archive of Chieftaincy in south-west Ghana 2014 EAP935: Safeguarding the British Colonial and Regional Administrative Archive in Northern Ghana 2016

Guinea

EAP187: Syliphone - an early African recording label 2008 EAP327: Guinea’s Syliphone archives 2009 EAP430: History of Bolama, the first capital of Portuguese Guinea (1879-1941), as reflected in the Guinean National Historical Archives - major project 2011 EAP608: Guinea’s Syliphone archives - II 2012

Guinea-Bissau

EAP266: History of Bolama, the first capital of Portuguese Guinea (1879-1941), as reflected in the Guinean National Historical Archives 2009 EAP430: History of Bolama, the first capital of Portuguese Guinea (1879-1941), as reflected in the Guinean National Historical Archives - major project 2011

Ivory Coast

EAP915: Pilot project for endangered Arabic manuscript in Ivory Coast 2016

Kenya

EAP466: The manuscripts of the Riyadh Mosque of Lamu, Kenya 2011 EAP847: Protecting the Archive of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa 2015 EAP923: Digital preservation of historical botanical collections at East African Herbarium (EA) Library, National Museums of Kenya 2016 EAP1143: The Birth of a Nation: preserving records on the Kenya-Uganda railway line 2019

Lesotho

EAP279: A rescue programme for the Matsieng Royal Archives, Lesotho 2009 EAP845: Endangered ethnohistories: preserving and digitising the DF Ellenberger ethnohistorical archive 2015

Liberia

EAP139: Rescuing Liberian history - preserving the photographs of William VS Tubman, Liberia’s longest serving President 2007 EAP026: Rescuing Liberian history: a pilot study to preserve and enable access to Liberia’s Presidential and National Archives 2005 EAP027: Rescuing Liberian history: preserving the personal papers of William V. S. Tubman, Liberia’s longest serving President 2005

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Table 1. Continued COUNTRY

PROJECT NO. AND PROJECT TITLE

Libya

EAP265: The Tifinagh rock inscriptions in the Tadrart Acacus mountains (SW Libya): an unknown endangered heritage 2009.

Madagascar

EAP856: Safeguarding the political history of precolonial Madagascar: the archives of Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony (1864-1895) 2015 EAP 938: The diplomatic connections of Madagascar between 1861 and 1897 2016.

Malawi

EAP427: Identify, relocate and digitise Native Administration records (1891-1964) 2011. EAP607: Identify, relocate and digitise Native Administration records (1891-1964) Malawi - major project 2012 EAP714: Safeguarding the country’s ecclesiastical archives: survey of Church archives in Malawi 2014. EAP793: Safeguarding the country’s ecclesiastical archives: digitisation and relocation of Church archives in Malawi 2015. EAP797: Preserving Malawi’s endangered historical District Notebooks, 1891-1964 2015. EAP920: Preserving Malawi’s Endangered Historical District Books 2016. EAP942: Preserving Nyasaland African Congress historical records 2016. EAP1040: Safeguarding the Endangered Court Records of Malawi, 2017. EAP1167: Safeguarding Colonial Plantation Records of Malawi.

Mali

EAP269: Preliminary survey of Arabic manuscripts in Djenné, Mali, with a view to a major project of preservation, digitisation and cataloguing. 2009 EAP449: Social history and cultural heritage of Mali: preserving the archives of professional photographers 2011. EAP488: Major project to digitise and preserve the manuscripts of Djenné, Mali 2011. EAP820: Documenting Slavery and Emancipation in Kita, Western Mali. 2015. EAP764: Preserving the memory of the colonial past in Dogon country. A survey of historical collections of the endangered archives of Bandiagara 2014. EAP913: Documenting the Arabic Manuscript Collection at Yattara Family Library, Timbuktu, Mali. EAP1085: Recovering the rich local history of Kita (Mali) through the salvaging of its archival heritage . EAP1094: Digitisation of the Ben Essayouti, the Fondo Kati and the Mohammed Tahar Manuscript Libraries of Timbuktu 2017.

Mauritius

EAP 863: Preserving a unique archive of Diaspora and disease in the Indian Ocean from 1868 to 1930: a test case from Mauritius 2015

Nigeria

EAP050: Making Professor Ade Obayemi’s life work available to the world 2005. EAP052: Rescuing Eastern Nigerian history: preserving the holdings of Enugu and Calabar regional archives 2006. EAP087: Northern Nigeria: pre-colonial documents preservation scheme 2006. EAP387: Safeguarding Fulfulde ajami manuscripts of Nigerian Jihad poetry by Usman dan Fodio (1754-1817) and contemporaries 2010. EAP485: World War II and the origins of Hausa newspapers: the early years of ‘Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo’EAP532. Recovering the endangered archives of the Benue Valley, central Nigeria 2012. EAP535: Northern Nigeria: Precolonial documents preservation scheme - major project 2012. EAP1068:Digitisation and Preservation of Customary Court Records of the Old Western Region of Nigeria (1900 – 1920s).

Tristan da Cunha

EAP951: All hands’ things*: the endangered archives of Tristan da Cunha (*Tristanian English: things belonging to the whole community

Senegal

EAP334: Digital preservation of Wolof Ajami manuscripts of Senegal 2010. EAP1245: Digitising Pulaar Islamic Texts: Six Archives of the Taal Families in Senegal and Mali 2019.

Sierra Leone

EAP284: Before the war, after the war: preserving history in Sierra Leone 2009. EAP443: Nineteenth century documents of the Sierra Leone Public Archives 2011. EA 626: Tracking the past - the preservation of the railway archives of Sierra Leone 2013. EAP782: Preserving nineteenth-century records in the Sierra Leone Public Archives 2015.

Saint Hellena

EAP524: To survey the East India Company and Colonial archives of Jamestown, St Helena, South Atlantic).

South Africa

EAP204:Digitising the photographic archive of Zenzo Nkobi .EAP1190: Boyden observatory: celebrating an African astronomical archive with international roots .

Sudan

EAP156: The Endangered archives of Sudanese trade unions (1899-2005) 2007. EAP218: The endangered archives of Sudanese trade unions (1899-2005) - major project 2008.

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Table 1. Continued COUNTRY

PROJECT NO. AND PROJECT TITLE

Tanzania

EAP099: Collecting and Preserving the records of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania in Moshi, Tanzania 2006 EAP402: PEACH’ - preserving East African co-operative heritage 2010

Tunisia

EAP993: Conserving Endangered Family Manuscript Libraries on the island of Jerba, Tunisia 2017. EAP1216: The Jerba Libraries Project: Preserving Endangered Manuscripts and Early Arabic Print Materials in Private Libraries in Jerba, Tunisia

Uganda

EAP617: Preservation of rare medical records at Albert Cook Library, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University 2015. EAP656: History in progress Uganda, Part 1: the Ham Mukasa archive 2013.

Zanzibar

EAP 1114: Preserving Pious Print: digitising early Islamic print in the Maalim Muhammad Idris Collection, Zanzibar, Tanzania

Zambia

EAP121: Preserving the archives of the United National Independence Party of Zambia 2007.

Zimbabwe

EAP056: Locating, listing and protecting the archives of Independent (or African Instituted) Churches in Zimbabwe 2006.

Source: Compilation by Author.

DISCUSSION ON THE ROLE OF ENDANGERED ARCHIVES PROGRAMME IN AFRICA A few decades back, African archives and library institutions were not very receptive in allowing donor funded digitization projects which included aspects placing their digitized collections on open access. They argued that open access denies the researchers the opportunity to consult original source material held by the local archival institutions. Most of the archival institutions in Africa that have made efforts to create their own websites only provided on-line information relating to collection descriptions and inventories rather than placing the actual documents on-line. Issues of copyright have also remained problematic among African archivists. However, an examination of the completed EAP funded projects in Africa clearly demonstrates that there is a wind of change blowing in African archival institutions. The collaboration between participation of national archival institutions as well as private institutions with the British Library in ensuring that all collections digitized are placed on open access demonstrates that there are many benefits to be derived from such collaboration. It must also be stated that not all digital images deposited with the British Library are freely accessible since “material that has either data protection or certain copyright issues may only be viewed by visiting the British Library reading rooms in person” (Endangered Archives Programme, 2016). This has greatly improved the perception that placing archive collections on open access prevents scholars from visiting archival institution to consult original source material. Contrary to this view, it has been observed that the placing of archives materials on open access has resulted in more researchers seeking to view the original materials after seeing them in open access libraries and repositories. Secondly, a review of the projects sponsored by the programme indicates that out of over 1000 Projects that the programme has supported, approximately 100 of the completed pilot and major projects are from the East, Central, South and West and North Africa countries. Other endangered archives funded projects in several parts of Africa are at various stages of completion.

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Bearing in mind that Arcadia is a charitable organization, its contribution to the preservation of endeared archives in Africa is commendable. No other funding agency has supported directly or indirectly the preservation of archives and manuscripts in Africa than the Endangered Archives Programme. Further, as can be seen from the Table 1, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Malawi are leading in the number of completed EAP projects in Africa. Table 1 also indicates that to date the Endangered Archives Programme has not funded projects in the following countries within East and Southern African countries of Mozambique, Angola, Swaziland, Rwanda, Seychelles and South Africa. There is the possibility that some applications from these countries might have been unsuccessful, but this does not in any way suggest that the programme is unwilling to fund projects from these countries. Thirdly, the findings indicate that, while the programme does not discriminate between applications emanating from the African region and those emanating from the rest of the world, a higher percentage of the completed projects were undertaken by scholars based outside Africa. However, despite this observation, African countries have benefited immensely through the transfer of skills in the use of digital technology and as Case (2015, p.1) aptly observed: In fulfilling its aim, the EAP builds the capacity for local communities to continue to care for archival sources beyond the life of a project. It does this by preferring to train local people to help deliver projects rather than employ experts from overseas. The equipment is deposited with the archival partner for further use after the project has ended. And the EAP, through the British Library, offers outstanding technical and general support, which is highly valued by those leading projects. Fourthly, the findings indicate that, apart from projects carried out in Ghana, Malawi, Mali and Sierra Leone, a high number of the projects funded by the programme relate to endangered collections held in non-public archival institutions in Africa. This observation is not a surprise at all as many National Archives in Africa are yet to be fully persuaded of benefits of digitizing and placing their collections under open access. To some African archivists, the digitization projects funded from the west is viewed as part of the “digital colonization process” or a means of transferring valuable archives and manuscript collections indirectly from Africa to the West. There is also fear that African countries may not be in a position to preserve digital collections due to limited financial resources and the ever changing information technologies. As a result, African countries will eventually have to rely on digital images that were created in Africa but now held in Western Libraries and cultural heritage institutions. When this happens, Africa will have no choice but to turn to digital images held in the West. Lastly but not least, it cannot be overstated that the success that the Endangered Archives Programme has had, not only in Africa but also in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Latin American, stems from the approach the British Library has adopted. The British Library has stepped in as a partner in promoting the preservation and accessibility of endangered archival collections in Africa and for each project that it has supported, a local partner in the host country has been identified. The local archival partner whether a national archival institution or a library is involved in ensuring that the grant holder complies with the conditions of the grant including the depositing of digitised copies in the host country. The British Library has also made provision in the grant for cleaning and carrying out of basic restoration work and where possible the relocation of endangered collections to a safer or suitable facility. Also, the prgramme has avoided any engagement relating to the purchase or relocation of endangered archival collections to European cities except for digitized images. In comparison to other projects, some of which have been shrouded with secrecy and have failed to declare fully all the collections under their 110

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custody, the Endangered Archive Programme has ensured that all digitized collections are available on open access at the British Library. Moreover, under normal circumstances, EAP does not fund projects where the participating local institution is unwilling to place the digitized material under open access. Case (2015, p.1) attributes the huge success of the Endangered Archives programme to several factors arguing that: Much of this success reflects two key decisions taken at the start of the programme: to administer it through a world-class institution — the British Library — with a global reach in terms of skills and networks; and to recruit an international panel of experts to guide its decisions on policy and on individual grants. The contributions of the library and the panel have been significant in steering the EAP through the two main challenges we have faced since 2004. To the local communities, digitization projects undertaken by EAP has had profound impact to the local communities who appreciate the role the programme has played in promoting and publicising their archival collections. As Case (201, p.1) rightly observed: Overall, the EAP is generally seen to be working in the interests of local people rather than that of the British Library, which has not often been their historical experience of contact with outside groups. The involvement of the EAP has also raised the esteem of local cultures and their history, and those who have been employed in projects clearly take great pride in being involved. The excitement felt by local people, which emanates from the reports, is both rewarding and humbling. One wonders how the Endangered Archives Programme managed by the British Library has been successful in contributing to the preservation and making accessible Africa’s endangered collections while similar programmes seem to have encountered some challenges. In my view their success, may be attributed to several factors. Butterworth (2018) observed that no two projects are alike. She went further to show that: The most important thing we have learnt from reading the final reports from the many project holders is the need to be flexible and resourceful. The types of grants awarded have been so varied that we cannot adopt a ‘one size fits all’ attitude. Some projects are based in one location and have the luxury of a dedicated space within an institution to digitise, while others are peripatetic, searching for material held in private family collections. Some projects have had regular and reliable electricity supplies, whilst others have not. EAP has an extremely broad view of the term ‘archive’ and this will also impact on how to digitise — a tightly bound manuscript, a glass plate negative, a map or a brittle publication will all need different approaches (Butterworths, 2018, p.1). Firstly, this is a well-conceived project with clear aims and objectives. The programme was not established with a view to building the collections at the British Library only. As much as possible the programme exists to locate and digitize the endangered collections wherever they are located. A training component aimed at building capacity in the use of digital technology in the local institution is a key feature of the programme. Wherever possible, the Programme in consultation with local partners are able to fund efforts aimed at arranging, describing and where possible arrange for the rehousing or transfer of the endangered archives to a secure environment in the host country. In this way, the British 111

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Library is not perceived as an institution that only seeks to build its archival holding in London only. Secondly, the Endangered Archives Programme undertakes a digitization following a formal agreement with the local institution. In order to avoid unnecessary complications, the programme only digitizes collections that are already in the public domain whereby copyright clearance is not required from the creators of the collections. Thirdly, the Programme has engaged a team of internationally recognised professionals in the field of history, archives, librarianship and Information Technology who serve as Expert Members who offer advice to the Programme. The programme also relies on reviewers familiar with local environments who provide valuable input in determining the suitability and value of projects to be funded. Fourthly, in order to guarantee that the digitized images conform to the British Library standards, the project team based at the British Library provides online support to the project holders on a regular basis. Finally and of major significance is that the programme has addressed the issue of copyright in a manner that seems to have the confidence of manuscript holders. To avoid any problems, the programme only digitizes collections which are in public domain and where no copyright subsists and the digitised collections can be placed under open access both at the British Library and in local partner institution. By doing so, the programme has ensured that it is not entangled with or all manner of accusations relating the digitized collections.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS The above discussion has shown that several African countries have embraced open access as one of the strategies for preserving and ensuring the continued accessibility of rich archival heritage especially non-public records. This is indeed a step in the right direction and efforts to digitise other collections especially public archives need to be pursued with vigour especially archives which are in dire need of restoration due to the many years of neglect, poor storage conditions, excessive use of some the collections or were created on poor quality paper and inks. Digitization and restoration of these archives, however, is a mammoth task for which no single institution has the resources nor the capacity to undertake alone. Projects undertaken by the Endangered Archive programme working in partnership with local archival partners have revealed there are immense benefits to be gained from joint collaborative efforts where original source materials is organised and digitised, leaving the original collections in the countries of origin while copies of digitised collections are deposited at the British Library and in the local institutions. This guarantees that a copy of the endangered collection remains accessible in the event of a disaster or calamity occurring to the original source material. There are still many valuable archival collections that are still held under unsuitable climatic environments while others are exposed to all manner of disasters and constant threat from years of neglect. The involvement of Endangered Archives Programme in Africa has also demonstrated that collaboration with other stakeholders is the way forward in preserving documentary heritage. This is in line with ICA Code of Ethics that was adopted by the General Assembly in its XIIIth session in Beijing (China) on 6 September 1996 which recommends that “Archivists should promote the preservation and use of the world’s documentary heritage, through working co-operatively with the members of their own and other professions” (ICA, 1996, p.3). As stated elsewhere in this chapter, there is fear that by placing archival collections under open access, the number of users visiting archival institutions is bound to fall drastically. Contrary to this belief, available evidence indicates that those institutions which have placed their collection on open access have witnessed an increase in the number of users visiting archival institutions seeking to refer to the 112

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original source materials. Moreover, by placing archives on open access is one clear way of meeting Principle Number 1 of the International Council on Archives which states that “The public has the right of access to archives of public bodies. Both public and private entities should open their archives to the greatest extent possible” (ICA, 2012). Is there any better way of achieving this noble desire other than the open access route? I do not think so. The International Council on Archives Principles further encourage archival institutions to adopt a proactive approach to access. ICA (2012, p.8) further explains that in taking a proactive approach to access, archival institutions are expected to: Communicate information about archives through various means such as Internet and web-based publications, printed materials, public programs, commercial media and educational and outreach activities. They are continually alert to changing technologies of communication and use those that are available and practical to promote the knowledge of archives. Archivists cooperate with other archives and institutions in preparing location registers, guides, archival portals and gateways to assist users in locating archives. They proactively provide access to the parts of their holdings that are of wide interest to the public through print publication According to Yakel (2005, p.19) ICTs provide one of the innovative ways of promoting the use of archives through open access platforms. Yakel came to the conclusion that: Ours should be the age of accessibility in archives. We have the technology and wonderful archival content to distribute internationally. The question is whether we have the will to make this happen and whether this is a priority for archivists. Use of collections is of central importance to the archival community. I would argue that this is the most important archival function. Yet, increasing accessibility is necessary for increasing use.... The age of accessibility is upon us, let us not lose the opportunities this provides and let us face the challenges together (Yakel, 2005, p.19) On the factors that hinder access to public records, Kemoni, Wamukoya and Kiplang’at (2003, p.40) identified out-dated archival legislation to be one of them. These observations points to the need to revisit archival legislation in developing countries and especially in Africa so that the continent can freely benefit from providing access to archival collections via open access. A similar observation was made by Ndayisaba, (2011, p.2) who argued that in the case of Burundi, archival underutilization is “partly due to professional problems like lack of recognition of archives by governments, obsolete legislation, lack of professional training and advocacy, inadequate service, and inadequate or non-existent access tools.” Ndayisaba, 2011, p.2 went on to argue that other factors that may hinder access to archives especially in developing countries may include “lack of appropriate hardware and software, unavailability of user-friendly systems, lack of knowledge using information technology, costs, and the vulnerability of digital information”. While there are numerous benefits to gained from donor funding projects aprticualrly in the preservation of endagred archival collections in Africa, there is need to critically address the various concerns. Highlighting some of the concerns from developing counties, Durrant (2004:1) noted that “The vast majority of archives in open access schemes are based in the North. Holding data in the North will potentially perpetuate access and use problems in the South. For example, the Botswana HIV Institution, which partners with Harvard, is concerned that because the data are principally housed in Harvard the Institution lacks control over those data and cannot guarantee their own access in the future.” As stated 113

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elsewhere in this chapter, this remains a major challenge to the digitization of archival collections funded by donor agencies from outside Africa. Similar concerns were raised which Pickover (2009, p.7) raised while presented a paper on Contestations, ownership, access and ideology: Policy and development challenges at the First International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-1), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, In his paper Pickover (2009:7) raised the following questions? 1. How do we share knowledge without being exploited? 2. How do we enter into partnerships with countries in the North in ways that address but do not reinforce the digital divide? 3. How do we ensure that such partnerships do not merely reformulate issues of heritage plundering and cultural asset-stripping? 4. How do we take into consideration issues of connectivity and context, use and power? 5. How do we ensure that these digital projects do not serve to replace the repatriation of actual heritage items with digital replicas, which would still ensure ownership and control by the North and would not address the problems and issues of cultural pillaging? 6. Are these projects adding to pressures already being exerted on the states from which these objects originate, a pressure that it is difficult to resist? 7. Is the temptation of financial aid producing a new form of imperialism that reinforces the digital divide? In my view, it is time for African governments to engage with donor agencies and openly address the questions raised by Pickover, Such a forum will ensure result in greater appreciation of the need to preserve African’s rich documentary heritage through open access. However, this does not suggest that the interests of the wider international community should be ignored completely since technology has brought us together into one global village which demands the sharing of our information and knowledge resources online.

CONCLUSIONS This chapter has shown the benefits to be derived from adoption of utilizing open access repositories as a way of preserving and making accessible endangered archives. The Endangered Archives Programmes through its grants has demonstrated that donor funding channelled and managed appropriately can make a significant contribution to an aspect that has often been neglected by successive governments in the continent which is the preservation of our endangered archival collections. However, much still needs to be done in order to preserve and make accessible endangered archival collections which are held in national archival institutions, many of which are held under deplorable conditions. While the benefits of this programme is evident, African countries must rise to the challenge of now ensuring that the digitised collections remain available and accessible for many years to come. The need to address problems associated with technological obsolesce, inadequate funding, formulation of policies and regulations relating to the management of digital records, regular training of staff must be given special attention. Failure to do so will result to the loss of endangered collections which the funded programmes sought to rescue.

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REFERENCES Abraham, T. (1997). The Next Step: Outreach on the World Wide Web. A paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists, Cheyenne, WY. Retrieved 2 July 2020 from: https://www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/papers/outreach.htm Akter, R., & Begum, B. (2016). Open Access Initiatives of the National Archives of Bangladesh (NAB). Retrieved on 26 June 20202 from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331074056_Open_Access_Initiatives_of_the_National_Archives_of_Bangladesh_NAB Arcadia. (2020). Culture. Retrieved on 7 July 2020 from https://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/grants/culture/ Bailey, C. W. (2006). What Is Open Access? Preprint. Retrieved on 5 July 2020 from: http://digitalscholarship.org/cwb/WhatIsOA.pdf Butterworth, J. (2018). Introduction. In Remote Capture: Digitizing Documentary Heritage in Challenging Locations. London: Open Book Publishers. Retrieved on 7 July 2020 from: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/reader/747#page/4/mode/2up Case, A. (2015). The Endangered Archives Programme after ten years. Retrieved on 30 June 20202 from: https://books.openedition.org/obp/2213?lang=en Eke-Okpala, H. N. (2011). Digitizing resources for University of Nigeria repository: Process and challenges. Retrieved 8 February 20202 from: https://www.webology.org/2011/v8n1/a85.html Endangered Archives Programme. (2017). Endangered Archives Programme. Retrieved 10 July 20202 from: https://eap.bl.uk/pages/about.html Fabunmi, B. A., Paris, M., & Fabunmi, M. (2009). Digitization of Library Resources: Challenges and Implications For Policy and Planning. Retrieved on16 July 2020 from: https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/228521970_Digitization_of_Library_Resources_Challenges_and_Implications_For_Policy_and_Planning Hamooya, C., & Njobvu, B. (2010). Digitization of archival materials: The case of National archives of Zambia. ESARBICA Journal, 29, 234–247. Harnad, S. (2003). Encyclopaedia of Library and Information Science. Retrieved on 5 July 2020 from: http://cogprints.org/3020/ International Council on Archives. (1996). Code of Ethics [Adopted by the General Assembly in its XIIIth session in Beijing (China) on 6 September 1996]. Retrieved 12 July 2020 from https://www.ica. org/sites/default/files/ICA_1996-09-06_code%20of%20ethics_EN.pdf International Council on Archives (ICA). (2012). Principles of Access to Archives. Retrieved 2 July 2020 from: https://www.ica.org/sites/default/files/ICA_Access-principles_EN.pdf Kemoni, H., Wamukoya, J., & Kiplanga’t, J. (2003). Obstacles to Utilization of Information held by Archival Institutions: A Review of Literature. Records Management Journal, 13(1), 38–42. doi:10.1108/09565690310465722

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Kominko, M. (2015). From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme. Retrieved 10 July 20202 from: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product.php/283?283 McCausland, S. (1993). Access and Reference Services. In J. Ellis (Ed.), Keeping Archives, Port of Melbourne (pp. 273–305). The Australian Society of Archivists. Mckay, S. (2003). Digitization in an Archival Environment. Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, 4(1). Retrieved 28June 2020 from: http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v04n01/ Mckay_s01.htm Ndayasiba, J. P. (2011). Burundi Archives: Policy and Legislative Framework. Paper Presented at the 2nd International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-2), University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Retrieved 5 February 20202 from: http://www.google.co. bw/#q=archival+legislation+kenya&hl=en&tbo=d&ei=jxIRUdG7E6qa0QWawoCQBQ&start=30&s a=N&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=551e8e6abc7cd586&biw=1280&bih=822 Ogunsola, L. A. (2005). Information and Communication Technologies and the Effects of Globalization: Twenty-First Century “Digital Slavery” for Developing Countries--Myth or Reality? Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, 6(1-2). Retrieved 7 July 2020 from: http://southernlibrarianship. icaap.org/content/v06n01/ogunsola_l01.htm Pearce-Moses, R. (2005). A Glossary of Archives and Records Terminology. Chicago: Society of American Archivists. Retrieved 2 July 2020 from: http://files.archivists.org/pubs/free/SAA-Glossary-2005.pdf Pearson, A. (2018). Planning the Project. In Remote Capture: Digitizing Documentary Heritage in Challenging Locations. London: Open Book Publishers. Retrieved 7 July from: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/reader/747#page/4/mode/2up Pickover, M. (2009). Policy development challenges for the digitization of African Heritage and Liberation Archives. Retrieved 27 July 2020 from: http://www.archivalplatform.org/blog/entry/policy_development_challenges_for_the_digitisation_of_african_heritage_and_/ Price, G. (2015). The British Library’s Endangered Archives Program Releases Another 500,000+ Images Online. Retrieved 10 July 2020 from: https://www.infodocket.com/2015/02/17/the-british-librarysendangered-archives-program-releases-another-500000-images-online/ Ruller, T. J. (1997). Open All Night: Using the Internet to improve Access to Archives: A Case Study of the New York State Archives and Records Administration. In Reference Services for Archives and Manuscripts (pp. 161–170). The Howarth Press. doi:10.1300/J120v26n56_12 Ryan, D. (2010). Aluka: digitization from Maputo to Timbuktu. OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives, 26(1). 29-38. Retrieved 11 July 2020 from: http://www.emeraldinsight. com/journals.htm?issn=1065-075X&volume=26&issue=1&articleid=1840396&show=html&view= printarticle&nolog=596768&PHPSESSID=ovrc8qhj7efrdq4e46qvi9lls6 Suber, P. (2004). Praising progress, preserving precision. SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 77. Retrieved 13 July 2020 from: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4736612/suber_praising. htm?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

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The Bethesda Statement on Open-Access Publishing. (2003). Retrieved on 7 July 2020 from A: https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/48547523_The_Bethesda_Statement_on_Open-Access_Publishing UNESCO. (2015). UNESCO Open Access Publications. Retrieved 7 July 2020 from: https://en.unesco. org/open-access/what-open-access University of Colorado Libraries. (2020). Open Access Repositories and Self-Archiving. Retrieved 7 July 2020 from: https://www.colorado.edu/libraries/research-assistance/open-access/open-accessrepositories-self-archiving Yakel E (2005). Archives in the Era of Accessibility. Retrieved 2 July 2020 from:: file:///C:/Users/mnjamanm/Downloads/339610-Text%20de%20l’article-489571-1-10-20180721%20(1).pdf

ADDITIONAL READING Butterworth, J., Pearson, A., Sutherland, P., & Farquhar, A. (2018). Remote Capture: Digitizing Documentary Heritage in Challenging Locations. Open Book Publishers. doi:10.11647/OBP.0138

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Access: The availability of records for consultation as a result both of legal authorization and existence of finding aids (International Council on Archives, 2012, p.3). Archives: The documents created or received and accumulated by a person or organization in the course of the conduct of affairs, and preserved because of their continuing value. (International Council on Archives, 1997). Endangered Archives: These are archives that “are vulnerable to many forces, ranging from unthinking neglect, to natural disasters such as storm or flood, to deliberate criminal acts such as burglary, arson or terrorist attack.” (The National Archives, 2004); Open Access: 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 (Suber, 2004, p.1). Preservation: Includes all the managerial and financial considerations, including storage and accommodation provisions, staffing, levels, policies, techniques, and methods involved in preserving library and archival material and the information contained therein (Adock ( n.d).2 , p.5).

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The Concoct of Digital Preservation in Open Access: A Case of the University of Botswana Research, Innovation, and Scholarship Archive Thatayaone Segaetsho https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7247-4377 University of Botswana, Botswana

ABSTRACT Research pursuit in Open Access (OA) has become a center of interest in academic institutions. Academic institutions and publishers have been energetically working hard towards achieving strategic and sustained partnerships in providing OA to information resources. While the work of strengthening these endeavours is ongoing, very little have been done on the logistics for digital preservation of OA resources in Institutional Repositories. This chapter explores digital preservation processes in OA using the University of Botswana Research, Innovation, and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA) as a case study. The chapter establishes the implementation activities, the outcomes, and challenges experienced by UBRISA. The findings reveal that the UBRISA commits to strategically capturing and preserving the intellectual output, raw data, and historic values of the institution for posterity. The UBRISA is challenged by limited budgets, logistical challenges, and limited expertise. This chapter recommends that partnerships and advocacy for legislative structures that support OA are critical.

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND The transition from the first to the fourth Industrial Revolution has resulted in enormous technical changes. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is key in the fourth Industrial Revolution. In education, academic institutions have also transformed from the traditional teaching, learning and research methods into virtual digital teaching platforms. The proliferation of web-based platforms such DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch007

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as Social Media (Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter etc.), Podcast, Blogging, and YouTube have changed the teaching and learning landscape in academic institutions. In order to be relevant, information resource institutions have also transformed ways of providing collections’ custody, access and preservation of information resources. Given the escalating prices of publishers’ information resources, Open Access (OA) has thus gained popularity. OA is one of the critical knowledge and universal access to information resources in heritage institutions. The innovation and movement for OA is critical in opening up of scholarly resources, particularly research literature, to worldwide researchers and public communities free of charge. While the work of strengthening OA endeavours is ongoing, very little has been done on the preparations required for digital preservation of OA resources such as in Institutional Repositories (IR). The proliferation of OA in academic institutions has thus increased the dire need for digital preservation for a continued access. Digital preservation remains an important part in sharing the research activities, raw data, and historical setups of different academic institutions. Digital preservation is defined as the application of various planning techniques, financing, policies, resource allocation, and application of technology to protect digital information resources for access in short, medium or long term (Beagrie & Jones, 2008; American Library Association, 2018). Digital preservation is the protection of digital information resources and their equipment for their enduring value (Das, Sharma & Gurey 2009). The use of technology to develop collections’ custody, creation of metadata, and protect both content and the storage equipment for a continued access becomes critical in digital preservation. The active activities in digital preservation include providing quality learning space, metadata, virtual conferences, addressing legal issues, storage maintenance, raising awareness, building capacity on information, communication, and continuous backup updating (Masenya & Ngulube, 2019). The processes involved in digital preservation include both digitised materials and born-digital collections. The increasing dependence on internet or web-based search engines have put museums, libraries and archives under pressure of converting analogue print information into digital based resources. Therefore, digitisation has also become critical in museums, libraries and archives. Digitisation processes involve the conversion of analogue collections into electronic formats for improved access. The activities in digitisation firstly require organisations to fully understand implications associated with funding resources, suppliers, selection process, digital imaging, surrogates and the context of collection management. Researchers concertedly agree that the processes in digitisation involve four key stages of: (1) selection of materials (proposal, evaluation, resources enhancement, copyrights condition assessment, etc.); (2) digital image capturing (quality assurance, transcription, metadata, and file management); (3) creation of database (delivery, hosting, marketing and user evaluation) and; (4) long term sustainability (Rieger, 2008; Public Records Office Victoria, 2010; Bülow & Ahmon, 2011). The stages of digitisation are critical in meeting the objectives of both preserving collections and increasing access to it. However, Bülow and Ahmon (2011, p.7) caution that, despite the increase in demand for digital world, “in the future the growing emphasis on the virtual rather than the materials may result in a loss of appreciation of the materials itself, or conversely the opposite may happen- as experiences become predominantly virtual there may be growing reverence for the material world.” Academic institutions are perturbed by various challenges of providing access to magnitudes of research outputs turned out throughout the world. The pricing associated with providing access to information resources has indefinitely made life oblique in academic institutions. Subscriptions and buying published information resources keep on increasing year after year. As a result, academic institutions are transitioning from the classical subscription way of providing access to information resources to newer sustainable and economic means. These include providing opportunities for free access to information 119

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resources. Consequently, Open Access has gained momentum in enhancing fast access to information resources in a cost effective manner. Open Access is perceived as online or electronically accessible literature that is free of charge, openly available to the public, and has minimal restrictions when it comes to copyrights, and licencing issues (Czerniewicz & Goodier, 2014). Open Access is anchored on providing free and wide access to information resources to enhance knowledge development. Such a process goes beyond free access but also re-use of both raw data and published information resources. Open Access significantly benefits nations providing a wider economic and societal transformation. Among others, the benefits of OA include providing more exposure for researchers’ work, practitioners can apply their findings and influencing higher citation rates. Research work which is accessible can influence policy development given that the public can access the findings and inform managers on their decision making. Compliant with grant rules, taxpayers get value for money and researchers in developing countries can refer to the work for planning purposes (Eysenbach, 2006). Most importantly for researchers, a highly accessed work gives greater research impact (Beall, 2012), and this is critical when it comes to academic performance management systems for professional growth and promotions. Gold and Green OA are currently the two common types of OA recognised internationally. The golden OA category deals with publication in directly open-access publishers that allow free and openly available articles to the public. In such a process, instead of the user-institution paying the subscription cost, the authors or author institutions pay peer review and publication cost (Article-Processing Charges, APC) (Harnad et al., 2004). Green OA involves self-archiving in a repository (institutional or external subject-based repository), a version of a traditional subscription published article (often a pre-print or post print), usually made available after an embargo period set by the publisher (Czerniewicz & Goodier, 2014). Publishers often select various routes such as going 100% golden (publishing free and openly available articles but at APC), hybrid route (whereby they can let some articles go golden and others use traditional subscription route) or completely non-OA route. On the side of publishers, going hybrid seems advantageous to them. Czerniewicz and Goodier (2014) argue that hybrid publishers’ double charge while for academic institutions and researchers, golden publication seems to be more transparent, consistent in pricing and allows negotiations in pricing. Academic institutions and publishers have been energetically working hard towards achieving a strategic and sustained partnership in providing preservation and OA to information resources. Czerniewicz and Goodier (2014) posit that the two paramountcy of OA are “the expense of subscriptions to bundled journal databases (known as ‘the serials crisis’), and, simultaneously, a movement arguing for publicly funded research to be made available freely to the public who had paid for it (premised on the existence of the Internet making this possible in ways previously impossible)” (p. 1). These reasons consequently advocate for sustainable development of information resources and access to all, ‘leaving no one behind’. Ultimately this allows democratic and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 4 on Education: ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ (UN, 2015). The educational goal is paramount because ultimately it interlinks with other SDGs. Thus resulting in democratic rule and achieving SDG 16 to ‘promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.’ However, researchers and academic institutions face insidious challenges in the promotion of OA. For instance, researchers often have no or little influence on the purchasing prices of articles or books and this results in less pressure on the price market put out by publishers and influence of OA (Czerniewicz & Goodier, 2014). Another challenge observed throughout the world is the lack of rigour in justifying the criticality or benefits of OA both on the part of institutions, funders and the authors 120

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themselves. Harnad et al. (2004) were of the view that journal-affordability problem is often conflicted with access/impact problem and this need to be clarified. If clarity is achieved this will result in significant evidence of research impact generated by OA and this is critical when it comes to incentives given by researchers’ employers and funders. The overarching gap in OA especially in developing countries is the limited access to research outputs especially to the public and researchers who are not affiliated to academic institutions and independent research institutions. This chapter, therefore, showcases the digital preservation processes in OA using the University of Botswana Research, Innovation and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA) as a case study. The chapter discusses the implementation of digital preservation at UBRISA. The chapter provides an opportunity to reflect on the pragmatic stance of digital preservation, opportunities and challenges experienced at UBRISA. The chapter concludes by providing a perspective for future improvement in digital preservation especially in academic IRs.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The increased application of ICTs has transformed the ways of providing access and preservation of information resources in heritage institutions such as libraries, archives, and museums. The use of ICTs have significantly leveraged the provision of access to electronic information resources in the form of Open Access. Digital preservation in OA provides the benefits of free, fast and access to information resources to many customers at the same time in different locations. However, the preservation of OA information resources is challenged by various issues. These include the lack of funding to support researches, technological obsolescence issues, poor quality assurance in OA, intellectual property and copyrights, lack of trained staff, fragility of storage media, and lack of policies and strategies for change management (Bishoff & Smith, 2015; Segaetsho & Mnjama, 2019; Masenya & Ngulube, 2019). To address some of these issues, research studies have contributed significantly to digital preservation in OA. Particularly on education, Segaetsho and Moloi (2019) suggested that academic institutions should consider revising their programmes and have standalone courses on digital preservation. They posited that “this could be achieved through establishing a thorough course audit and capacity building on the part of the lecturers, in terms of attending re-fresher courses to develop the facilitators’ practical skills on digital preservation so that they are able to do the skills transfer to their learners” (p. 16). Informed by the ISO 14721, the Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model, Dollar and Ashley (2015) developed a revised version of a Digital Preservation Capacity Maturity Model (DPCMM) that can be used to conduct a gap analysis on organization’s current capabilities and to delineate a multi-year roadmap of incremental improvements. Masenya and Ngulube (2019) examined the digital preservation practices in academic libraries and suggested that collaboration, partnership, and ‘going extra mile to address issues and challenges as they arise by assembling very specific and concrete resources such as funding’ (p. 08) were critical in digital preservation. A majority of African museums, libraries, and archives have already digitised analogue materials and established IRs and digital libraries through various digitisation projects such as the Endangered Archives Programmes (EAP) (Mnjama, 2017). Other attempts to address digital preservation issues cover the InterPARES projects as summarised by Duranti and Preston (2008). Despite the various attempts to address the compounding challenges on digital preservation, there is still little research on the processes of digital preservation in OA. This study, therefore, sought to establish the processes of digital preservation in OA using the University of Botswana Research, Innovation and Scholarship Archive as a case study. The specific objectives of the case study were to: 121

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• • •

determine the digital preservation strategies at UBRISA determine the outputs and opportunities that UBRISA benefits from preserving digital information resources in OA and, establish the challenges on digital preservation of OA experienced by the UBRISA and make recommendations for improvement.

LITERATURE REVIEW This section present the literature in relation to digital preservation and Open Access. The discussions focus on institutional repositories, Open Access and digital preservation.

Institutional Repositories and Open Access The common ground on IRs is that they are mandated with the responsibility of capturing and safeguarding digital collections for the preservation of the intellectual output of universities (Hockx-Yu, 2006). An IR is defined in literature as electronic systems that provide a set of services to allow capturing of electronic resources, preserving them, and providing access to them in an academic, private or public community environment (Barwick & Pickton, 2006; Foster & Gibbons, 2005). IRs play a crucial role in collection development, easy access and dissemination of digital information resources. Collections in IRs include research data, learning materials, image collections, institutional memoir, reports, manuscripts and many other different types of contents. IRs are all in a form of freely and unrestricted accessible information to the public hence they are classified as types of OA systems. Literature (Barwick & Pickton, 2006; Jain & Bentley, 2008) discusses a vast number of benefits of IRs both specific to universities, authors and society/community. For universities, the benefits include increased visibility and prestige, centralised storage of all types of institutional output, tracking and evaluation of the output leading to concrete supporting tools for teaching, learning and research. Regarding authors. IRs’ benefits are based on the fact that the resources make it easier for researchers to disseminate and share their research output, give authors visibility, and also extend access to their profiles (Hockx-Yu, 2006). Researchers reap the benefits of added value services such as hit counts on papers, personalised publication lists and citation analyses, prestige, prizes and grant revenue (Jain & Bentley, 2008). In addition, IRs are now used by funders to gauge the impact of researchers and research level of universities. Societal benefits from IRs include free and open readership, re-use and dissemination of research outputs to the community. Given the new ambition of United Nations regarding the Sustainable Development Goals, part of the key objectives is to have knowledge based economic societies. As a result, IRs play a crucial role through which information is accessibly freely to both academic and public society. In 2019 the International African Institute undertook to update and develop its project initiated in 2015/16 on academic institutions accessible freely online in the African continent and observed that over 48 new repositories were already available (IAI, 2019). The results revealed that on average, a significant number of the IRs in Africa are visible in the East, Southern and North Africa. During the period of writing this chapter, in Botswana, the accessible IRs were mainly in three universities of the University of Botswana, Botho University and Botswana International University of Science & Technology (BUIST).

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The field of IRs in Africa is gaining popularity given the challenges of high subscription rates by publishers. In consequence, OA is one of the tremendously increasing routes of knowledge sharing that employs various technological innovations especially in developing countries. As a result, funding institutions have increased their voice on researchers to publish funded projects in OA platforms such as IRs. To support such perspectives, the United Nations have also advocated for OA and Open Data. For instance, at its 35th session, the General Conference, by 35 C/Resolution 63, recommended that the Director-General should revise the open access initiatives and stakeholders at the regional and global level. Consequently a revised draft strategy “Revised strategy on UNESCO’S contribution to the promotion of open access to scientific information and research” was approved at the 187th session of the Executive Board (UNESCO, 2011). The report clearly states that OA should be viewed as a platform for the provision of free access to peer-reviewed, scholarly and research information to all (both scientific papers and research data). In view of UNESCO (2011) such an ambition is within their mandate to: build inclusive knowledge societies by harnessing information and communication technologies to maintain, increase and diffuse knowledge in the fields of education, the sciences, culture, and communication and information, including through open access (p. 1). In March 2019, a preliminary study of technical, financial and legal aspects on the desirability of UNESCO recommendation on Open Science was conducted leading to a 206 EX/9 report. The 206 EX/9 report emphasises that the Open Science is the movement to make scientific research and data accessible to all (UNESCO, 2019). These increasing advocacies on OA are exacerbated by the low cost technology and interoperability standards which allow great opportunities for libraries and publishers in developing nations to disseminate their respective countries’ research and bridge the knowledge gap (Chan & Costa, 2005). Open Access proliferates access to knowledge, publications have greater visibility, and researchers and students around the world gain increased readership. Consequently, this results in increased potential impact of research, hence improving funding opportunities for knowledge development. The movement of OA has thus increased the need for Open Data Open Sciences (ODOS) for the benefit of public good, extensive and more valid and reliable knowledge to the public. Despite the fact that OA initiative in Botswana has spanned over two decades of existence, it was only in 2017 that Botswana took the initiative to establish the first national Open Data and Open Science Forum (ODOS). Subsequently a workshop was conducted on Data Management and Repositories, hosted by Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) partners in Botswana, the Botswana Libraries Consortium (BLC), and the Botswana Library Association (EIFL, 2017). Going forward the significant strides in OA include yearly celebration of International Open Access Week following the initiative by EIFL. The 2019 International Open Access Week was celebrated throughout the world by sharing information through campaigns, workshops, exhibitions, seminars and sharing stories about the impact of OA on the work of researchers and scholars and marketing on Social Media. For example the Botswana International University of Science & Technology (BIUST, 2019) shared a post on Facebook indicating that: we believe that the IR will assist Botswana in achieving its dream of transforming from a resource based to a knowledge based economy. The availability and unrestricted access of BIUST intellectual output can surely be translated into solutions for pressing problems that are at national level and even internationally.

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The BUIST DSpace Repository has made strides to develop OA resources covering various broad communities including conferences, symposiums, workshops, seminar works, electronic theses and dissertations, and research articles. In South Africa, a study by Czerniewicz and Goodier (2014) revealed that the publishing pattern exhibited by University of Cape Town researchers suggest a great interest for OA with limited requirement for APC and nature of hybrid publishers. Such results advocate for green route of OA in South Africa and elsewhere.

Digital Preservation Digital Preservation is the process of acquisition or collection development, curation of digital resources and providing access both for short and long term needs. A significant number of individuals, researchers, academic and private institutions (Poole, 2017; SAA, 2019) perceive digital preservation in the context of planning for electronic resources, providing metadata, resource allocation, and the application of technologies vital in ensuring that digital information is accessible for as long as it is needed. The mandate of digital preservation is to provide access to digital information in an accurate and authentic manner. Digital preservation is thus a series of managed activities required for ensuring continued access of digital information resources (Hockx-Yu, 2006). The need to protect digital information is critical both in business and public-end’s needs. As a result, the management process of ensuring safe and access to digital resources becomes crucial even in the face of free and openly accessible information resources. Digital preservation is thus one of the critical objectives in all avenues of information dissemination including IRs and other OA resources. A significant number of projects on digital preservation conducted in Africa include projects such as those conducted by the Association of African Universities (AAU), African Digital Libraries (ADL), University of South Africa, University of Nigeria, the Coalition of South Africa Consortia (COSALC), the Botswana Open Data and Open Science Forum, and UNESCO. Despite the robust technological developments in developing information resources and dissemination avenues such as the World Wide Web, literature continues to reveal that little have been done on the paramountcy of preserving digital collections. Consequently, the operational activities involved in OA through IRs are less understood. Among others, the limitations include the lack of step by step procedures required to holistically protect and provide sustainable access of information resources for short, medium and/or long term access. It is therefore a common ground that the execution of OA in IRs equally importantly integrate digital preservation as one of its core mandates. While OA providers such as IRs are progressing well in terms of increased number of articles, eBooks, reports, thesis and dissertations, little has been done in the direction of reporting the preservation aspect of it. The next section provides a methodology for the case study at UBRISA.

METHODOLOGY The data compiled in this chapter showcases the digital preservation processes in OA using the University of Botswana Research, Innovation and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA) as a case study. The discussions presented in the chapter are mainly qualitative information collected through interviews, document analysis, and observations made by the author for a period of over 7 years since working with UBRISA. Faceto-face interviews were conducted with six staff members in the University of Botswana Library Special Collections Unit. Only staff who have the responsibilities for UBRISA were consulted for clarifications. 124

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These included the Manager (a senior librarian who coordinates operational activities of UBRISA), three Library Officers responsible for digitisation, and two Librarians responsible for uploading of materials into UBRISA. All the responses were noted in writing and if clarity was needed participants were re-consulted through emails. Anonymity is maintained when presenting comments/discussions made by participants in the study. All the participants were mainly requested to discuss their experiences and views on digital preservation, logistical processes and the policy in the context of UBRISA. Participants were requested to discuss the outputs and opportunities that UBRISA can or is benefiting from preserving digital information and the challenges experienced regarding UBRISA. Document analysis was conducted on all documents relevant to the study especially the UBRISA policy and its implementation strategy. The university website for UBRISA was also consulted for clarity on the outlook of the running platform and access statistics. The data received in the study was thematically agglomerated into three subsections relevant to the objectives: (1) digital preservation approach; (2) outcomes and opportunities and; (3) challenges experienced at UBRISA.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS This section discusses the findings of the study on digital preservation processes, opportunities, outcomes, and challenges experienced at the UBRISA. The findings in this chapter are thematically presented in response to the objectives of the study.

Digital Preservation Approach at UBRISA The need for OA in academic institutions is critical given the political, economic and social need for SDGs to be fulfilled throughout the world. As digital information resources continuously increases throughout the world, many institutions have been forced to consider coming up with long term and curation strategies so as to ensure that data generated today can survive the challenges of technology and can be accessed in the future. Therefore, the first objective of the study was to establish the digital preservation processes adopted by UBRISA especially the policies, curatorship, logistics and digitisation processes. The findings revealed that, as part of joining the world’s endeavour on OA to improve research impact and preserving valuable information resources, the University of Botswana (UB) took an initiative in 2008 to develop an institutional repository. A Digital Repository Policy was approved in 2009 under the name ‘University of Botswana Research, Innovation and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA)’. The reasons behind establishing the IRs was to enhance dissemination of research findings, institutional visibility, prestige, and being a research intensive higher education institution by the year 2021. In line with the overachieving need for OA and its implications for sustainable social, political, and economic development, the policy was crafted under the coordination of the Office of Research and Development. The next section provides details on the policy and its implementation.

Policy And Curatorship As it is common throughout the world, the starting point in establishing a project or an organisation is often to start by establishing a policy to govern the implementation process and be focussed to the mandate. Policy developers need to consider critical documents and international agreements such as the United Nations 2030 Agenda on SDGs. The SDGs require that the issues of sustainable economic and 125

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social development, and open access, be addressed especially in academic institutions. In order to case study the policy and implementation processes at UBIRISA, participants were requested to discuss their views regarding UBRISA policy, to indicate if they were aware of the policy and the processes involved. The Manager who coordinates operational activities of UBRISA indicated that the policy for UBRISA had long been approved in 2008 for implementation. The initiative was in response to the quest of the university to achieve its mandate to be a leading institution in teaching, learning and research through improved access to information resources. Similarly to this study, a study by Masenya and Ngulube (2019) also observed a significant number of academic libraries in South Africa (77.3%), also had policies in digital preservation. However, library officers were quick to indicate that the induction on implementation of the policy had not introduced them well into the policy, therefore, they were not aware of the details of the policy. They indicated that some of the activities in the policy are their key performance areas and those are the only things they know. One of the participant commented that: I think Digital Preservation Policy is a framework that is used to guide the preservation of digital content. It is supposed to outline what should be preserved, how it should be preserved and how it will be accessed. When it comes to UBRISA, the policy states that we should upload materials authored by those who are affiliated to UB only. It also mention the details that should be captured in order to describe the material/document that is being uploaded into UBRISA. Document analysis of the UBIRISA policy was conducted to get a deeper understanding of the policy and digital preservation. The introductory statement of the UBRISA policy (University of Botswana, 2008) states that the University recognises its “strategic importance in capturing, preserving the intellectual output and data and other digital assets in perpetuity, in pursuance of research excellence” (p. 2). The university believes that through OA the institution will be in a position to measure its creativity and potential which ultimately support the teaching, learning and research process. The objectives of the UBRISA policy are thus: • • • • •

“To promote and encourage the dissemination of research findings. To increase the level of African content in scholarly publications that is unduly dominated by western academic discourses. To enhance socio-economic development through research that feeds into national systems of technology transfer and innovation. To strategically increase the visibility of the University of Botswana nationally and internationally in scholarship and knowledge creation, application and exchange. To preserve the University’s intellectual heritage for future use” (p. 2).

To achieve the stated UBRISA objectives, the Office of Research and Development and the Library, with the support of IT department, were both viewed as having adequate resources in terms of human resources and technology to implement UBRISA policy. The Library (through a UBRISA digital preservation team) was given the responsibility to host and coordinate the curation aspect in terms of managing and reviewing submissions from departments/staff and students to assure quality of all materials, particularly unpublished or non-peer reviewed materials to be loaded. In the curation process the UBRISA digital preservation team have the responsivity of advocacy in terms of the principles, benefits, and operational processes in order to promote building of content. The responsibility of populating the 126

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IRs mainly lies with coordination by the UBRISA digital preservation team. As part of the curation process, the UBRISA digital preservation team act as collection administrators and metadata specialist to provide a mediated deposit service for UBRISA. In addition as part of curation process, the UBRISA digital preservation team have to train staff and students to use the IR and help them prepare their digital materials for submission. However, it is the responsibility of the authors to submit their own work for archiving and it is their responsibility to obtain permission of other authors in co-authored works hence any copyright violations are entirely their responsibility. The curation process of UBRISA aims at ultimately maintaining a collection development of resources covering peer reviewed published articles, final peer reviewed drafts (post-prints), unpublished preprints (not peer reviewed), monographs, electronic books, book chapters conference papers, electronic theses and dissertations, grey literature, computer programs, data sets (raw and processed with notes) and other research materials such as teaching materials artistic works (photographs, film/video clips, paintings, etc.) (University of Botswana, 2008). The collection development process is done through a self-archiving approach through which each researcher, students and staff have to deposit their articles themselves. The submission process is guided by a written document of ‘Guidelines for the Submission of Masters, M Phil and PhD Electronic Theses and Dissertations at the University of Botswana’ (University of Botswana, 2011). On frequent basis, training is conducted by the library throughout the university community on submission process. Regarding thesis and dissertation, the university requests that no student shall graduate before submitting their final work in an electronic copy for uploading into UBRISA. In this regards, the School of Graduate Studies has been designated as the collection point for all completed hard and soft copies of thesis and dissertations. The curation administration process for UBRISA adheres to the proposed work flow of: 1) The submitter uploading the article; 2) Review stage for unpublished material. Reviewer accepts / rejects; if rejected, the material with explanation is returned to submitter; 3) Metadata editor commits to archive 4) Digital repository available on UBRISA; and 5) Notification sent to submitter and to subscribers. To illustrate the procedures followed during uploading one of the participants who are responsible for curatorial work of acquiring and uploading materials into UBRISA commented that: • • • • •

“when I downloaded or got a journal article from a lecturer for uploading into UBRISA, I do the following procedure: Firstly I need to check the Author’s affiliation (whether it is indicated on the paper if he/she is a UB staff member); If he/she is affiliated, I need to check the UBRISA collection to find out if that article is not already uploaded/archived; If it’s not in, then I go to Sherpa website to check for the archiving/uploading status by the publisher (the publisher’s copyright terms and conditions with regard to uploading into UBRISA); If archiving is allowed, then I proceed with uploading. When uploading at the UBRISA page, I will have to describe the collection of which the article belong (i.e. the authors department as indicated on the paper); then I enter all the authors of the article (put names as they appear on the paper); then the title of the paper; date of publication; publisher and journal homepage or publisher homepage (URL address); publisher version (URL address where you can find full text of the article); citation; ISSN(s); type of publication (e.g. book, journal article, etc.); whether published or not; language of Article; keywords; abstract; then attach article’s pdf; and finally grant permission.”

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The findings in this study are in line with other studies in literature. Masenya and Ngulube (2019) observed that 95.5% of academic libraries in South Africa were committed to digital preservation activities. They observed that effective digital preservation was achieved due to the fact that information could be extracted and served to users in long term. Such a success could be attributed to the 72.7% of repository managers who were given the responsibility for digital preservation. Bishoff, and Smith, (2015) had also observed that 72% of non-Association of Research Libraries (ARL) academic libraries participants indicated that their organisations had an IR/DR, either a locally managed repository or a repository managed by a third party that hosts their collections.

Preservation Logistics Following the United Nations 2030 Agenda, officially adopted as a framework of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), both governments and non-governmental organisation are grappling with challenges of transitioning from the eight Millennium Development Goals into SDGs. Access to information and universal literacy are also critical in fulfilling the SDGs. Target 16.10, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, require academic institutions to transition from analogue to virtual digital teaching platforms in order for them to be sustainable. In order to achieve sustainable development in museums, libraries and archives institutions, digital preservation also become critical. Digital preservation is an essential political, economic and social construct of protecting materials by minimising chemical, mechanical and physical deterioration in order to provide access to materials of interest by institutions, society or individuals. Commenting on digital preservation, one of the respondents pointed out that; “I understand digital preservation as concerted efforts made to ensure that information and/or information materials are safeguarded in an electronic format for convenient access and long lasting usage.” In principle digital preservation deals with content acquisition of electronic resources, planning, providing metadata, prioritisation and resource allocation. Digital preservation requires the application of technologies such as computers, information networks and software vital in ensuring that digital information is stored and accessed. As its commitment to digital preservation, the University of Botswana (2008) states that “items will be retained in perpetuity, and efforts will be made to ensure continued readability and accessibility where resources and technology permit” (p. 4). As a matter of principle the UBRISA Policy stipulates that the following are the digital preservation commitments: • • • • • • • • 128

“Changes to deposited items are not permitted, but errata may be included with original record if required. If necessary, updated version may be deposited particularly in case of ‘works in-progress’ There is no formal limit to the size of items submitted to and stored in the UBRISA. Supported file formats are those that are of an ‘open’ nature where their longevity can be ensured. A separate list of these will be made available to potential depositors. Items will be migrated to new file formats where necessary including conversion upon deposit to more secure formats. Where necessary and possible, software emulations will be provided to access un-migrated formats where relevant software has become obsolete. File integrity will be checked periodically to avoid data corruption. Files will be backed up regularly as a matter of best practice.

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• • •

Items may not be normally removed from the UBRISA. Withdrawn items are not deleted, but merely removed from public view. Withdrawn items’ URLs are retained indefinitely to avoid broken links and to retain item histories” (p. 4).

In achieving the preservation principles, the University of Botswana uses a DSpace software. The software is a common repository software used for creating OA especially for academic IRs and other published digital contents. The DSpace software is advantaged by good specifications such as the ability to manage and preserve all formats of digital content (PDF, Word, JPEG, MPEG, TIFF files), customizable to fit user needs, and the ability to run on various systems such as Linux, Solaris, Unix, Ubuntu and Windows. The DSpace software has been coded to various parameters that reflect metadata required by UBRISA such as the interfaces for administration, deposit, ingest, search, and access. These modularisation parameters as shown in Figure 1 give a searchable web face catalogue accessible to customers. The UBRISA website is linked to the university website (www.ub.bw) and the library catalogue website. Commenting on the preservation logistics, the Manager responsible for coordinating operations on UBRISA indicated that the University of Botswana servers are critical when it comes to long term storage. Backup storage has to be safe at all times. This responsibility is placed under the IT office and it is important that they take the responsibility to make sure that nothing is lost. Similarly, to achieve the digital preservation of the collections, it is important that the software used (DSpace) should always be legitimate and operational at all times. Figure 1. UBRISA Online Platform (University of Botswana, 2008)

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Digitisation As part of the digital preservation process the library engages in a digitisation process using Zeutschel Colour Overhead Scanner (OS 14000 A0) (Figure 2). Among others, the scanner has the advantages of high scan quality resolutions of 400ppi – 6.3lp/mm, fast scan speed and Perfect Book–3D scan technology for perfect book curve correction, parallel scanning and saving process due to 64 bit technology, and multi-threading scanning in both directions. In general, discussions with the staff responsible for scanning indicated that 50 to 100 pages could be scanned in two hours by one person. If it is a thesis this implies that only one thesis can be done in a day and when it comes to PhD thesis the scanning could take few more days. Although the scanner has high productivity due to ROI-scan feature (limitation of scan area) challenges in terms of dark sports and un-straight text are often observed requiring Optical Character Recognition (OCR) corrections. The scanner allows various data display standard formats such as the TIFF uncompressed, TIFF G4, JPEG, JP2, Multipage TIFF, PDF, BMP, PCS, PNG, and PCX. In addition, the Zeutschel scanner allows colour reproduction which is true to the original with no UV/IR radiation and this is important for archival materials to minimise damage to materials. However, from the authors’ observation and discussions with staff who do digitisation, the results indicated that the frequently used file format was the TIFF. The digitisation process involves two major steps. The first step is the scanning process which is done by the digitisation/scanning personnel and saving the images in TIFF file format. The second stage is handing the scanned images to the conservator and the archivist who then do technical cleaning of the images through a process of creating highly accurate text and data processing applications of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) using ABBYY FineReader Software. The ABBYY FineReader plays a crucial role in editing black sports, dark and blear parts, straightening text, and conversion of the TIFF images into PDF file formats. As a preservation principle both the TIFF and PDF file formats are preserved. The PDF files are used as the accessible output in UBRISA platform. Figure 2. Digitisation area at University of Botswana Library Source: Picture by Author

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The digitisation process in the UB Library also extends to audio-visual materials. The UBRISA digital preservation team has also embarked on a pilot project through which guidelines on microfiche were developed to guide the digitisation process for microfiche materials. The library has a desktop digital microfilm reader/scanner 350 II, capable of scanning both negative and positive images of Silver or Diazo 16mm/35mm Film, aperture cards, and microfiche of up to 600 Dots Per Inch. The scanner has a Canon Fileprint 470 printer that allows printing scanned images when needed directly during viewing of images or after scanning. The digitisation process is enhanced by the use of standard trimming, centering, and motorized image rotation, focusing, zooming and a standard Deskew Auto Skew Correction. Despite the presence of these specifications OCR also has to be done using ABBYY FineReader Software for clear and better images. Library officers performing the scanning process of microfiches indicated that on monthly bases they can scan up to 300 pages per person depending on other engagement for that month. Given that most of the microfiches seem to be old and faint the process is often slow and require diligent focusing of the scanner. The staff indicated that the scanned documents were stored mainly in PDF file format. Despite the pilot project on microfiches having started over a year nothing was uploaded into UBRISA. This was due to the fact that a lot of materials needed to be performed OCR and then be upraised to see which documents could be uploaded to UBRISA.

OPPORTUNITIES AND OUTCOMES The current trends in academic institutions require that the daily process of teaching, learning and research be sustainable. The benefits and outcomes in academic institutions are therefore founded on access to information and knowledge in a sustainable manner. The benefits of OA and the need for digital preservation are discussed elaborately in various literature. Consequently it is important for institutions to gauge their individual benefits and impact on OA especially on research output. The second objective of the study was, therefore, to establish the opportunities and outcomes experienced in UBRISA. The findings of the study indicate that the UB is one of the leading universities in the country when it comes to OA. Commenting on the importance of UBRISA one of the librarians lamented that: UBRISA is important because it enables UB’s research output to be collected and stored in one platform. Unlike when the publications by UB personnel is accessed from various journals and databases of which some are not freely accessible nor online, UBRISA ultimately promotes free and easy of access to UB’s research publications. It can also help to improve the image/reputation of the University because the research output would be able to be seen clearly worldwide. It can also improve collaborative research. One of the participants during discussions indicated that the benefits of digitisation in UB were important given the shortage of storage space in the library. Digital collections have many advantages of access by many various customers at the same time including the public all over the world. Such access will help in minimising direct handling of materials. Participants also emphasized the fact that websites/ online resources of the university enable the university to be visible all over the world hence showcasing the research impact of the university. Since the establishment of UBRISA the UB is benchmarked by other universities in the country seeking to establish their own IRs and advocating for OA. As a result a total of over 1512 research outputs in November 2019 were observed in UBRISA and this has resulted in increased opportunities for OA. 131

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As of November 2019, the website indicated that in Botswana there were over 124,357 file downloads, 69,539 item views, and 193,896 summary of articles covering the spectrum of peer reviewed published articles and electronic theses and dissertations grouped according to faculties/departments. In total, there were over 1512 articles covering 17 Communities with Faculty of Science being the most populated collection with 353 materials. This has given the university the opportunity to effectively achieve the transformative agenda of United Nations of ‘leaving no one behind’ in terms of access to information. Given the increased population of the IRs the dream for Open Science, Open Data is thus being achieved. The University of Botswana is reaping the benefits of the UBRISA through the Learning and Teaching Policy, 2008 policy, which recognizes the changing environment and requires the institution to “provide relevant academic programmes of high quality that are based on innovative educational processes and the application of appropriate technologies” (Nfila, 2010). Through such policies the endevour of the university to be the leading centre for academic excellences is achieved. Masenya and Ngulube (2019) observed that 100% of participants in academic libraries in South Africa were of the view that the output of digital preservation was critical for the long term protection of enduring valued resources for access in present and future.

CHALLENGES IN DIGITAL PRESERVATION AT UBRISA The third objective of the study sort to establish the challenges associated with digital preservation of OA information resources. The findings indicate that the UBRISA is faced by various insidious challenges. These challenges are also a threat to the country’s development given the need to fulfil SDGs. Technology obsolescence in the form of storage areas, hardware and software is a great drawback in digital preservation. One of the participants observed that “the machine purchased for scanning is not compatible for scanning small books. It is for large things like Maps.” The UBRISA digital preservation team is suffocated by various challenges of power cuts which often result in crushing of computers storing digitised materials. Despite the fact that external hard-drives are used for backups, a lot of materials get lost if computers are crushed before data is transferred to the hard-drives for backups. One of the interviewees indicated that the digitisation process was daunting and materials often have to be scanned many times for large bound materials which could not open easily. Participants indicated that despite the expensiveness of the digitisation equipment the scanning process was very slow; “It is very slow, a book of 70pages takes about 2 hours to complete”. Similarly, the external drives used for backup often also freeze requiring to be formatted and this also resulting in loss of materials. One participant was of the view that when the digitisation project started it was a pilot project, but over 8 years have passed but the pilot is still not over. This, therefore, implies that the real project is not yet started. The participant indicated that not even a quarter of materials were digitised and this could be due to limited consultation that was made during the kick-starting of the project. In view of one of the librarians the main issue during acquisition of materials and uploading is the copy rights. The librarian emphasised that: the main challenge is that sometimes the publishers don’t allow for the use/uploading of their pdf version of a publication (e.g. an article), and when we ask for the permission some of them don’t respond or flatly refuse. In this case, we will have to look for pre-print or post-print versions (i.e. final manuscripts before publication) from the authors (i.e. usually lecturers) but they will fail to provide them, some saying they don’t keep them while others say they can’t find them.

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Technical challenges are also observed including the dark pages which often appear during the scanning process. The library officers responsible for scanning microfiches indicated that often the text was very blare and in some cases the scanner could not even read the text. Tightly bound volumes when scanned the text become skewed and difficult to straighten even when using the ABBYY FineReader software. Another concern is the subscription charges which are relatively high in purchasing of ABBYY FineReader software which as per the contract is installed to only three computers. Despite installation to three computers only one person can work in the software at a time. In view of the participants in the study, especially by librarians who are responsible for uploading materials, technical issues include: there is sometimes problems with UBRISA when it comes to displaying some scientific formulas from the articles. Due to this problem, some articles were not uploaded because the database cannot pick some scientific formulas used in the article. There was also a problem with accessing links for sources of the uploaded materials while in the UBRISA database. This subsequently led to the delay in the approval and archiving of some articles. The digital preservation process at UBRISA is also challenged by various administrative issues of lack of skilled labour, technology, accountability, and lack of rigor in conducting the projects. For instance, a position for a specialist in digital preservation programme was advertised since 2010 but was never filled. Jain and Bentley (2008) highlighted that the cost, generation of content, sustaining support, working culture, policy issues, and lack of incentives, commitment, and rights management issues are some of the critical limitations in IRs. Despite an insightful emphasise by Jain and Bentley (2008) on challenges associated to IRs, the UBRISA is still challenged by poor promotion on benefits of IR to all its stakeholders. The low interest to submit research output demonstrated by authors have significantly affected the overall output statistics for UBRISA. Despite the fact that a clear policy on IRs has been developed by the University of Botswana, implementation challenges are observed. These could be in part due to lack of prioritisation by management. Lack of accountability by general UB staff, especially during clearing process of students who graduate, result in some students graduating before submitting their electronic copies of their thesis/dissertations and other published research outputs. One participant emphasised that during the establishment of policies, often junior staff is left behind and this leads to a challenge during implementation process. Consequently, induction processes become very minimal. Another issue was that when training opportunities come for training in technical work, often senior staff are given the opportunity even though they are not the ones doing hands-on. The justification given is that, when they come back, they will train junior staff. Participants also observed that “staff assigned to do the project have other assignments which slow down the progress of the project and they are only 2 who scan thesis.” Jain and Bentley (2008) posited that it is paramount to instil cultural change in the activities and normal behavioural patterns of the authors and students in order to improve the low rate of content submission to IRs. Other issues that UBRISA have to struggle with are the quality of the work, copyrights and patenting issues. Masenya and Ngulube (2019) also observed similar challenges in academic libraries in South Africa indicating that 81.8% of participants observed inadequate staff as a challenge. The participants in the study of Masenya and Ngulube (2019) also indicated that 77.3% and 72.7% were challenges associated with funding and human resources respectfully.

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CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS This chapter has shared the prospects of Open Access in Institutional Repositories and the logistical processes required to achieve digital preservation. The starting point in establishing an IRs is through the development of a policy with clear guidelines on how the policy is going to be achieved. As revealed in the case study of UBRISA, during policy development, one such critical aspect is engaging technical staff who will be responsible for implementation process, especially if it is the staff who are already working in the institution. In that way, the staff will fully understand the mandate of the policy for institutional implementation. In realising the paramountcy of OA the University of Botswana through UBRISA is enjoying good opportunities and outcomes of OA. This is achieved through systematic collection administration, provision of metadata, training, providing preservation services such as digitisation, performing Optical Character Recognition, file format conversions, and backup services. Administration process of digital preservation in IRs is however challenged by various issues including constrained budgets, expertise, prioritisation and accountability. Given these challenges in OA, it is critical that IRs should also strive for establishing Open Courseware and Metadata Harvesting Services to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and sharing of resources. Strategic partnership in developing OA resources is critical. Academic institutions need to voice out the need for governments to initiate legislative environments that advocate for OA. While the business prospect becomes crucial in economic development, equality especially in access to skills, and knowledge becomes crucial. In line with the pillar 4 of SDGs, ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,’ OA becomes crucial in every aspect. It is crucial that institutions should strive to maintain highly accessible information resources for Botswana and its neighbours in achieving knowledge based economies. Although a significant progress in the establishment of IRs in Botswana is observed, little if not nothing, is observed when it comes to Open Courseware and Metadata Harvesting Services. For instance in 2007 in India a significant number of ‘harvesters’ were already booming including the Cross Archive Search Services for Indian Repositories (CASSIR), Search Digital Libraries (SDL), Open J-Gate, SEED, MetaMED and Open Index Initiative (Ghosh & Kumar Das, 2007). The projects on Open Courseware and Metadata Harvesting are aimed at harnessing dissemination of information to support distance education and allow cross-searching of IRs. These systems allow capturing of records relevant to specific subjects and easy cross-sharing of information resources by various universities. At the same time India is also developing its own software to host OA resources. For future improvement, it is critical that African countries should also consider investing in research and development of software at cost effective strategies and suitable for their needs to host OA information resources. The Botswana Library Consortia is the national body that represents the interests and helps to shape the dissemination of information resources to a wide range of scholarly e-resources through partnership. Similarly, the Botswana Library Association (BLA) is also leading in the endevour for long life access to information, professional development, networking opportunities, professional advancement and OA to all its members. As part of its core subthemes the BLA 11th Annual Conference invited papers on IRs as a platform for Open Access and long term digital preservation during its conference held on 5 - 9 August 2019 in Gaborone. The need for OA dialogues is also observed during the World Science Day for Peace and Development through the keynote speech, by the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology, under the theme “Open Sciences- Leaving No One Behind”. The keynote emphasised that celebrations of Open Access offer an opportunity to “reaffirm collective values and aspirations, and interrogate the 134

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on-going discourse on Open Science and its envisaged impact as we endeavour to transform Botswana’s incipient research, science, technology and innovation landscape”(Mooko, 2019). The paramountcy of data sharing have long been advocated for by various researchers arguing that information sharing brings the advantages of easy access to information, research output sharing, enabling data to be independently mined and reanalysed by others and informing policy planning decisions (Borgman, 2012; Hanson, Sugden, & Alberts, 2011). The future for Open Data is oblige in Botswana and most Eastern and South African region. This case study conducted on UBRISA only focused on the internal operational procedures on digital preservation. Further studies still need to be conducted to full understand the views from end-user customers on the impact, value, accessibility and other perspectives on digital preservation of OA materials in IRs.

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Poole, A. H. (2017). “A greatly unexplored area”: Digital curation and innovation in digital humanities. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68(7), 1772–1781. doi:10.1002/ asi.23743 Public Record Office Victoria. (2010). Digitisation Requirements, Capture Standard- Digitisation, Requirements Guide to Digitisation Requirements. PROS11/07G1. Retrieved from https://prov.vic.gov. au/sites/default/files/2016-05/1107g1v1.41.pdf Rieger, O. Y. (2008). Preservation in the age of large-scale digitization: a white paper. Council on Library and Information Resources. Retrieved from http://www.clir.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/pub141.pdf SAA. (2019). Preservation. Retrieved from https://www2.archivists.org/glossary/terms/p/preservation Segaetsho, T., & Mnjama, N. (2019). Information and communication technology use in the preservation of paper-based materials in the Eastern and African Region. In Research on contemporary issues in media resources and in- formation and communication technology use. Department of Library, Archival and information studies, University of Ibadan. Segaetsho, T., & Moloi, J. (2019). Integration of Digital Preservation Knowledge, Skills and Competencies in the Teaching Curricula of Library and Information Studies at the University of Botswana. Mousaion, 37(01). Advance online publication. doi:10.25159/2663-659X/6436 UNESCO. (2011). Revised strategy on UNESCO’S contribution to the promotion of open access to scientific information and research. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/ HQ/CI/CI/images/GOAP/OAF2011/213342e.pdf UNESCO. (2019). Preliminary study of the technical, financial and legal aspects on the desirability of a UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. Retrieved from Paris: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ ark:/48223/pf0000367018 University of Botswana. (2008). University of Botswana Research, Innovation and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA). Retrieved from Gaborone: https://kitsiso.ub.bw/system/files/documents/Digital%20Repository%20Policy%20Approved%20by%20Senate%2018%20Feb%2009.pdf University of Botswana. (2011). Guidelines for the Submission of Masters, MPhil and PhD Electronic Theses and Dissertations at the University of Botswana. Retrieved from Gaborone: UN. UNSDS. (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Digital Archive: Is a ‘bank’ or storage of valuable electronic information resources that serve as evidence of the past, sources of information for research, and are therefore preserved for posterity. Digital Curation: Professional principle of providing collection development, management, preservation, archiving digital asserts, and providing access to electronic information resources. It is generally

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the process of strategically establishing and developing electronic repositories and adding value for long term access. Digital Preservation: Planning, decision making, and allocation of resources to protect information resources for as long as they are needed. It is the application of strategic management skills, and the use of scientific techniques such as metadata capturing, emulation, reformatting, and digitisation in order to maintain the integrity of digital collections for posterity. Digital preservation emphasises on the principle of providing long term protection and access to digital information resources. Institutional Repository: An electronic library system of digital information resources showcasing the intellectual output of academic institutions with the ultimate goals of capturing electronic resources, showcasing their research output, impact, allow open access, and dissemination of knowledge information to the community. Open Access: The principle of disseminating information resources, at no cost, through the use of different information platforms. It is the principle of increasing knowledge development to everyone, through published information and raw-data without restrictions from copyrights, patents, legislations, or other mechanisms of control. Preservation: All managerial activities of minimising deterioration and providing protection to valuable information resources through application of different strategies such as storage management, housekeeping, care and handing, environmental considerations, pest management, security, and disaster preparedness.

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Chapter 8

Challenges for Establishment of Institutional Repositories: The Case of Zimbabwe’s University Libraries Mass Masona Tapfuma https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7830-1503 University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa Ruth G. Hoskins University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South Africa

ABSTRACT Concern has been raised over low research output from universities in Southern Africa and its poor visibility on the global sphere. However, public universities in Zimbabwe adopted open access (OA) institutional repositories (IR) to increase publication output, access, visibility, and reach to a wide audience. This chapter reports on a study that explored the challenges faced by academics and librarians in Zimbabwe’s public universities in contributing to and managing the IRs. A mixed methods approach was adopted with eight participating universities where directors of research, library directors, faculty/ IR librarians, and academics were purposely selected. The study identified several impediments to the success of the IRs and these include academics’ fears and misconceptions regarding OA and IRs, libraries experienced difficulties convincing university managers about OA exacerbated by an absence of enabling conditions to promote IR development. The chapter recommends that OA education needs to be intensified OA/IR and the universities’ policies should recognise publication in OA platforms and enforce deposit mandates.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch008

Copyright © 2021, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

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INTRODUCTION Scholarly communication plays a significant role in the economic, social, political and environmental transformation of nations. Scholars engage in scholarly publishing which is vital to the scholarly communication ecosystem. The system affords individual scholars and policy makers the opportunity to establish networks and engage in conversation over their research interests, research findings, and emerging issues in their disciplines. The discourse can be promoted through conferences, workshops, scholarly journals, monographs, theses and dissertations and online blogs. Insights emanating from research are only valuable if they are shared for adoption, further probing and new knowledge development; thus, it is imperative that it be easily accessible, widely available and visible to both the scholarly community and audiences outside the scholarly communication circle for sustainable development. The aim of this chapter is to contribute to discourse on challenges faced by universities in Southern Africa in adopting open access platforms for purposes of harnessing, widely sharing and distributing research output from the region to a global readership. This is on the backdrop of academic libraries increasingly failing to make available and fully provide access to requisite scholarly literature in support of research and innovation by scholars in their institutions due to budgetary constraints. In addition, despite the occurrence of research activities in universities, studies have shown poor visibility and low research output from the African continent. Lack of indexing in major international databases such as the Arts and Humanities Citation Index adversely affects visibility of research output from developing countries. However, open access (OA) institutional repositories (IR) were established in Zimbabwe’s public universities to preserve and conserve intellectual output and potentially overcome the rising subscription journals costs. There has been realisation of increased growth in the volume of scholarly publication and increased value of knowledge to society where OA has been adopted. Amid these developments is also the growth in number of OA journals across Africa as well as awareness about institutional repositories (IRs) (Chan, Kirsop & Arunachalam, 2011). However, setting up an IR involves a huge investment in infrastructure and human resources for which institutions should get a return. Acceptance and use of a new technology come with challenges which need to be exposed to promote discourse on strategies that can be employed to overcome them. The chapter establishes challenges faced by the academics and the libraries in contributing to, developing and managing the repositories.

BACKGROUND Zimbabwe has a total of 18 universities with public universities in Zimbabwe constituting 66% (12). Given this number of universities one would expect the country to have a competitive edge in research output on the continent and in the Southern African region. On the contrary, studies (Kotecha, Wilson-Strydom & Fongwa, 2012) have shown that there is very little research going on in Zimbabwe by Kotecha & Perold, (2010); (Kotecha & Perold, 2010) due to lack of funding. The authors also allude that the little available research from Southern Africa is hardly visible in comparison to western Europe. Table 1 below provides a summary of research outputs from the Southern African as provided by the Web of Science (2019). Statistics from the Web of Science as of 2019 (Table 1) show that South Africa has the highest research output record in Southern Africa with 35,456 documents, Zimbabwe falls second with 12,472 documents while Malawi is in 3rd position with 9,019 records. The output gap between South Africa and Zimbabwe and subsequent countries attests to poor research productivity and limited visibility of research output 140

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Table 1. Research output of Southern African Countries Country

Output

Botswana

6,824

eSwatini

1,184

Lesotho

785

Malawi

9,019

Mozambique

4,350

Namibia

3,652

South Africa

325,456

Zimbabwe

12,472

Source: Web of Science (2019)

from the region. Research results are only valuable when they are readily available, easily accessible and widely shared to a global audience. Kotecha, Wilson-Strydom & Fongwa (2012) acknowledged that outside donor support, research in Zimbabwe’s universities is constrained as researchers remain uninformed of emerging trends and ideas in international scholarship and publications. A needs analysis of research needs by Kotecha and Perold (2010, p.40) found the need to increase “research output through publications, journals and collaboration” amongst three top priorities. Universities require their scholars to publish their research findings in renowned international peerreviewed journals but after doing so, despite contributing content to the journals, the scholars face the challenge of accessing the articles without a subscription. Thus, limiting accessibility of the research and visibility of the authors and the institutions. As if that is not enough punishment, the scholarly communication system, is exuding signals of stress and crisis (ACRL, 2003), to which scholars have fallen victim. Large commercial publishers, such as SAGE and Elsevier Science dominate and control the journal publishing market. Libraries and individual scholars have failed to keep pace with the spiralling journal prices as their annual budgets continue to be constrained. As a coping mechanism, libraries have survived by cancelling monograph purchases and journal subscriptions at the expense of enabling access to the much-needed scholarly literature. Hence, the move by many universities across the globe to look for and harness alternative means of enabling access to and supplying scholarly content to their university scholars for propagating research. Open Access (OA) offers third world universities an opportunity to access the once inaccessible research information as well as to showcase their research output in the global sphere. Admittedly, scholarly publishing has experienced rapid transformation instigated by the internet and open access systems which include institutional repositories (IRs) (Kennan & Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2007). IRs make information freely available and accessible to the public and increase visibility of the researchers, their works and the institution. The Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme (SCAP) explored the state of scholarly communication in Southern Africa and found that lack of funding, among others, was an obstacle to open access in Africa (Swan, Willmers & King, 2014). Hence, the chapter’s focus on unearthing challenges faced by public universities in Zimbabwe in establishing and accepting open access institutional repositories which would benefit the institutions tremendously.

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SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING The centrality of scholarly publishing to the scholarly communication ecosystem cannot be overemphasised. Scholarly communication is ‘a system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community and preserved for future use,” (Baporika, 2017, p. 75). As significant stakeholders of scholarly publishing, universities have a mandate to collect and provide access to scholarly publications to their scholars to enable them to inform and validate their research (Phillips, 2010, p. 4). Research is “a systematic process of collecting, analysing, and interpreting information (data) in order to increase our understanding of a phenomenon about which we are interested or concerned,” (Leedy & Omrod, 2010, p. 2). Scholars engage in research for several reasons, such as, promotion, tenure, professional development and for the social good. Research is primarily done in response to societal economic, social, environmental and political priorities. For example, the effects of climate change on the environment and economies of nations; Cyclone Idai swept through Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe in the first quarter of 2019 leaving a trail of destruction of towns, villages and communities were resulting in their displacement; lives were lost, economic livelihoods, settlements, houses and the environment were equally destroyed. Research into social priorities of the affected towns, communities and countries, such as, health, nutrition, education and shelter among others, is paramount in order to generate solutions to the problems created by the cyclone and map the way forward for sustainable development. Universities and research institutions contribute significantly to research as it is one of their key results areas. Knowledge arising from research done by scholars is critical to national development, therefore, it needs to be made public if the desired result is to be achieved. Scholarly communication promotes dissemination, sharing and making publishing of scholars’ research findings to a global scholarly community. Thus, distribution and circulation of research findings and innovations should go beyond geographical boundaries of the origins of the research (Ocholla, 2011). Scholarly publications are written to be read and to push for new writing; “the more influence that scholarship can produce, the better” (Fitzpatrick, 2012, p. 350). Scholarly publishing refers to published scholarship emanating from institutions of higher learning, government and science councils (De Beer, 2005). Scholarly publishing follows a life cycle the publishing cycle (see Figure 1) which involves movement of information between different players in the journal publishing process. There are three major players in the scholarly communication system, and these are; scholars, publishers and librarians (Ware & Mabe 2012, p.11). Scholars with funding from research funders and their host institutions generate; publishers have the responsibility to ensure quality control, production and distribution of the knowledge while librarians’ role is to manage, enable access, navigation and long-term preservation of knowledge. Peer-reviewed literature (books and journal articles), conferences papers, technical reports, data sets and other media within scholarly communities is distributed to a varied audience in the scholarly communities (Phillips 2010, p. 1). Journal articles are the most common, fastest and convenient traditional modes of scholarly communication since the start of 19th century with a huge growth in their number being experienced (Larivière, Haustein & Mongeon, 2015). These are regarded highly due to their impact factor, trustworthiness due to peer review rigour and to some extent, their accessibility and reach. However, their distribution has now been affected by access tolls imposed by commercial publishers who have dominated and control the market.

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Figure 1. Scholarly publishing cycle Source: Ware & Mabe (2012, p. 16)

CAUSES OF LIMITED ACCESS TO SCHOLARSHIP Despite being knowledge creators, scholars and their institutions surrender ownership of the research works to commercial publishers who only allow them to access the scholarly literature after purchasing or subscribing to the publication. Publishers ignore the fact that scholars, besides being authors, they sit on editorial boards of journals and books, they voluntarily offer peer review services for quality assurance of shared scholarship in their various disciplines; thus, putting a stamp to trustworthiness of the publication venues. Scholars surrender copyright for their research in return for dissemination. The moment the author identifies a publisher for their research output, the publisher takes over and begins the production process. However, the authors do not receive direct compensation for their efforts producing articles; they receive indirect compensation through additional entry on their curriculum vitae which they would then is used to convince administrators to promote, tenure, increase salaries, and allocate them with more resources (Parks, 2002). The access challenge has been worsened by the escalating subscription journal prices which has resulted in many academic libraries cancelling subscriptions to several titles and reduced monograph purchases. Such measures limit access to scholarly literature as individual scholars cannot afford to purchase or maintain subscription to journals in their respective disciplines. Mobley (1998) places the blame for the price hikes on the scholars because they sit in editorial boards, erroneously or by instruction approve price increases and design the copyright clauses which give them limited rights to their works or in some cases give total control to publishers. This exposes universities and scholars to be contributors to

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the continuation of the serials crisis. On the other hand, blame can be placed on commercial publishers who institute mandatory copyright transfer by authors to them while company mergers have seen large international conglomerates like Elsevier monopolising the journals market, thus, the giving them power to increase prices over costs (Plasmeijer, 2002) and profiteer and wallowing for universities over the high costs (Siler, 2017). According to Larivière, Haustein & Mongeon (2015) 70% of the published articles in the social sciences in 2013 were produced by five publishers, namely; Reed-Elsevier, WileyBlackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis. The budget cutbacks in university libraries in Zimbabwe, limit access to the much-needed scholarly literature. The requirement by universities for scholars publish in renowned scholarly outlets is the cause for limited access to locally generated literature as libraries are constrained to afford purchases of international publications. The research, therefore, remains visible to the global North at the expense of its intended beneficiaries of the research findings, that is, the Global South. However, there has been a significant change in the sale of journals from a tradition of individual libraries subscribing to and owning individual journal titles, which could be stored, archived and preserved for posterity and continued use in research inquiry, to journal title bundles of (50 or more) by individual libraries or library consortia. Journal bundles provide broad disciplinary coverage with disciplinary linkages to thematic repositories (Czerniewicz, 2013). Subscribing consortia libraries are offered electronic access to all the titles in the bundle at a similar price to the existing print subscriptions of the library but an additional top-up fee is charged for electronic-only access to titles not subscribed to. This is referred to as the Big Deal. In as much as consortia purchase assists libraries to increase access to a wider scope of journals, it does not entirely solve their challenge of sustaining funding to pay escalating costs of scholarly literature. Nabe & Fowler (2012) and Siler, (2017) proffer that the percentage of cost increases in “big deal” journal bundles with commercial publishers outpace inflation, inevitably resulting in subscription cuts for institutions with economically constrained budgets. In the traditional print journal model libraries retained ownership to subscribed print journals whereas the electronic model takes away that ownership; when the subscription period expires, they cannot retain soft copies of the journal. The concern of academic libraries increasingly lies with licensing and copyright issues pertaining to access to the print and electronic resources for which they would have paid a subscription. Hence, the shift to adoption of the open access IR model whose affordances should encourage universities in Southern Africa to harness their research output, preserve and showcase it locally and abroad so that they obtain returns on their investments in research.

DIGITAL PLATFORMS TRANSFORMING SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION Technological advancements, through the internet and electronic publishing have enhanced scholarly communication without disrupting the ecosystem which has remained consistent to its core principles despite profound changes (Czerniewicz, 2013). The internet tremendously contributed to the dissemination and circulation of scholarship to a wider scholarly audience on the global sphere (Clarke, 2013; Steele, 2014) further unlocking access and increasing visibility and searchability of research literature. The traditional scholarly publishing practice boundaries have, thus, been extended by virtue of the s environment turning out to be a complex combination of technological capability, economic certainties, and emergent social networking culture (Phillips, 2010). Steele (2014) proffers that many predictions of changes occurring in scholarly communication have been made with many commentators being puzzled as to why the advent of the internet has not disrupted the scholarly publishing environment. Despite the 144

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profound technological transformations over time, the nature of scholarship has remained consistent to its core values (Czerniewicz, 2013). Transformations occurring in the scholarly communication landscape are in the publishing market where new business models have been adopted and changes have also occurred in public policy. New business models include adoption of open access and new sales models such as consortia licensing; globalisation and growth of emerging regions. Research funders increasingly require that research which they have funded be made freely available online with some specifying that the research outputs should be shared in ways that facilitate mining, re-use and content adaptation. The traditional communication system did not encourage sharing of research processes within or outside the research community. It had a demarcated target audience for its content and communities outside the university could not access the content easily since they did not have access to the university libraries (Czerniewicz, 2013).

OPEN ACCESS AND INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES Open access refers to immediate free availability of scientific and scholarly research literature to all potential users upon publication through open digital repositories or open access journals (Rizor & Holley, 2014; Boissy & Schatz, 2011). It is a means by which scholars can increase availability of research outputs by removing access tolls to the readership. The OA concept operates around on open licenses with the author retaining attribution rights and the right to decide whether the work can be used and how in sharing commercially or not-for-profit (Abrahams et al., 2008). There are two types of OA, namely; ‘green’ OA and ‘gold OA’. Gold OA is publishing in an OA journal whilst ‘green’ OA involves publishing in a subscription-based journal while self-archiving a pre-print or post-print (at expiry of an embargo) article in an IR or on a personal website (Pappalardo et al., 2008:8). The green OA model has become the most desirable for OA (Bernius et al., 2009; Swan, 2007). Green OA supplements providing an article version to a disadvantaged readership. Gold OA comes in different flavours which include ‘hybrid’ OA and ‘delayed’ OA. Hybrid OA is where publishers allow authors to decide whether to make their article openly available or not (Lewis, 2012; Bernius et al., 2009). If the author prefers free access to the article, they pay and article processing fee (APC) which can be as high as $3,000 per article. The high publication fees potentially discourage authors from using the model Bernius et al. (2009). Another form of gold OA is ‘delayed OA. Delayed OA refers to journals that make their articles OA at the expiry of an embargo, which usually lasts for 6 to 24 months, after which the author retains exclusive rights to the article (Lewis, 2012; Bernius et al., 2009). Unlike gold OA, self-archiving (green OA) saves authors from paying a publication fee and they can determine whether to deposit their work in a subject-based repository or institutional repository (Bernius, 2009). An IR is described as a “digital collections capturing and preserving the intellectual output of a single or multi-university community,” (Crow, 2002). Repositories are significant contributors to transformation of the scholarly communication ecosystem as they: a. b. c. d.

broaden access to research, reaffirm scholars’ control over scholarship, increase competition and reduce dominance by journals, bring economic relief and increased relevance to the universities and their libraries.

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The existence of an institutional repository is a potential indicator of the quality of an institution and demonstrate the socio-economic and scientific relevance of its research activities; thus, visibility, status, and public value of the institution increases (Crow 2002). Therefore, institutions have the prerogative to support and nurture their faculty’s innovative explorations of how the digital medium can be utilized to enhance teaching and learning by enabling access to their works of scholarship. Academic libraries, due to conditions beyond their control, have been persuaded by the OA movement to embrace IRs to promote and disseminate their scholars’ research and ensure long-term preservation of the institutions’ scientific works (Rizor & Holley, 2014; Cullen & Chawner, 2011). The ever-rising costs of journal subscriptions and the dwindling library budgets pushed higher education institutions to embrace the new technologies by developing individual institutional repositories. Thus, making IRs a new collection development strategy for academic libraries (Gieseke, 2011). However, indexing and discoverability of existing articles in these repositories is not yet perfect; It is still a challenge finding articles in the repositories (Rizor and Holley, 2014). Many universities worldwide invested both human and technical resources in establishing infrastructure for this invaluable technology of institutional repositories (Jantz & Wilson, 2008). There is an on-going intense debate regarding which of the two models of information distribution “offers the most viable, sustainable and affordable OA dissemination mechanism going forward” (Trotter et al., 2014, p. 66). Harnad (2010) views green OA self-archiving to be the fastest and surest route to OA, therefore, prefers that it comes first before gold OA, Harnad proposes that globally, institutions and funders should mandate self-archiving because ‘green’ OA is entirely driven by, and is in the interests of the providers of the research itself and the global research community, and that it can be mandated. Whereas, commercial publishers control ‘gold OA and it cannot be mandated (Harnad, 2010). Libraries’ capacity to provide access to scientific literature has been curtailed by budgetary constraints; where they have managed to subscribe to electronic journals, they have been hamstrung by the licensing restrictions and software locks. According to Suber (2004) OA removes price barriers erected by subscription tolls, pay per view and licensing fees and, copyright and licensing restrictions. Harnad perceives that adoption of mandated green OA would produce positive ripple effects. Publishers will be forced to employ costcutting measures, e.g. downsizing and adopting gold OA publishing once journal subscriptions turn out to be unsustainable. On the other hand, academic libraries, through journal cancellations, would save funds; institutions would then be left with funds to pay for gold OA article publishing costs for their scholars. “All access-provision and archiving will have been offloaded onto the distributed network of green OA IRs” (Harnad, 2010, p. 88). Critics of green OA opine that it does not solve the underlying ‘serials crisis’ issues but only presents an imperfect temporary and flawed entrance to OA (Rizor & Holley, 2014). As suggested by Suber (2004), copyright holders can remove legal barriers to scholarly content by using Creative Commons. OA provides an opportunity for South-South exchange of research since their socioeconomic conditions are similar. Therefore, their research findings are more relevant than research from the developed countries; thus, making the research become an integral part of the global knowledge commons (Chan, Kirsop & Arunachalam 2011). It offers universities and research institutions an opportunity to retain control of their scholarship since they fund much of the research in collaboration with research funding bodies. The OA concept has shown increased acceptance in many countries and has become the order of the day (Pandita & Ramesha, 2013). A reasonable proportion of global scientific publication (20%) is freely available online (Woutersen-Windhouwer, 2013). By January 2020 the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) had more than 11,276 searchable OA journals from 131 listed countries (DOAJ, 2020) while 146

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the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) had 5308 listed repositories; 217 were from Africa and of this number Southern Africa had 50 repositories with South Africa dominating (44 IRs). Though Zimbabwe’s institutions of higher education and research institutions have repositories, these are not listed in OpenDOAR because they lack compliance with the OA principles. Pandita & Ramesha (2013) estimated the average annual growth of countries introduced to OA publishing to be 14.4% and they forecasted that if the trend continued, within five years of their predictions the world would have 100% OA. Lewis (2012) having conceded that gold OA, is a disruptive technology also anticipated that OA would become the leading model for distribution of scholarly journal output in the next decade. Therefore, Southern Africa should take advantage of this opportunity and move from its current state of “limited knowledge production to a strong body of Southern African research” (Abrahams et al., 2008, p. 15). The first institutional repository in Zimbabwe was established in 2005 by eIFL.net at the University of Zimbabwe. In the same vein, the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publication (INASP) also contributed to building electronic networks amongst libraries in Africa and promote the flow of university research information across the African region (Abrahams, Burke & Mouton (2010). Through INASP, in May 1998 the African Journals Online (AJOL) database was initiated to help the African universities and research institutes increase their online visibility, access and use of Africa’s research output and enable exchange of knowledge amongst African scholars. By January 2020 AJOL had an online collection of 524 African-published, peer-reviewed scholarly journals from 32 African countries. In a report to the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) titled Opening access to knowledge in Southern African universities, Abrahams et al., in reference to IRs, recommended that universities in the region should adopt an OA platform that would: i. ii. iii. iv.

Increase published research output volumes. Showcases research works of scholars from the region on the global scholarly network. Promote quality in scholarly publishing. Makes scholarship broadly available to the academic and postgraduate student population at low cost. v. Promote the utilisation of research output by a global scholarly community. (Abrahams et al., 2008, p. 15). The OA movement has been successful in fostering equal distribution of research knowledge across boundaries globally, thus, bridging the digital divide between the North and the South. In Pandita & Ramesha’s (2013) view, OA has broken the closed access myth as the scholarly community has embraced the concept. Adoption of OA principles to communicate Africa’s scientific research will contribute to its visibility, reach and effectiveness. Trotter et al. (2014) opine that a clear profiling of research output from Africa would most likely shape scholarly conversation because of increased visibility of scholars; the scholarship would also reach the hands of personnel in government, industry and civil society who can adopt it for development. Institutional repositories are largely manned by university libraries, hence the heavy involvement of librarians in the new publishing model. Librarians are actively involved in educating scholars on the economics of publishing and foster appreciation of changes occurring in the scholarly communication culture (Phillips, 2010). Fitzpatrick (2012) implored scholars to support OA being cognisant that they will get returns through increased visibility and goodwill towards their efforts. As for publishers and 147

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scholars in the Global South, OA provides opportunities for South–South exchange and for their research to be integrated into global knowledge pool (Chan, Kursop & Arunachalam (2011). It makes the playing field even for all scholars without regard for their experience with scholarly writing or origin. Prejudices experienced by novice scholars in the traditional scholarly publishing system which made it extremely difficult for them to be published are removed by virtue of OA being ‘free’ (Pandita & Ramesha, 2013). OA potentially assists in bridging the digital divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, “serving not only scholars’ interest in getting their work into broader circulation, but also serving the public good” (Fitzpatrick 2012, p. 350). A notable increase in literature citation and impact factors is being experienced (Pandita & Ramesha, 2013; Fitzpatrick, 2012). A lot of a lot of misconceptions and speculation have been peddled regarding OA amongst scholars, librarians and publishers either deliberately or unintentionally (Rizor & Holley, 2014; Fitzpatrick, 2012; Boissy & Schatz, 2011). Scholars opine that OA will affect the quality of scientific publications with suspicion that it will promote self-publishing bypassing quality control or undermining the peer review process (Pandita & Ramesha, 2013; Boissy & Schartz, 2011). The critics argue that the closed access nature of the traditional system of scholarly communication guards against substandard publications (Pandita and Ramesha, 2013). Scholars should rest assured that OA does not undermine the core values of scientific communication, but that it recognises and values of peer review (Fitzpatrick 2012). In addition, OA cannot be regarded as substandard “cut-print publishing route, but simply a means to make research results freely available on-line to the whole research community” (Wasike 2013; Katebere & Kate, 2008). Open access journals subject submitted articles to the peer review process as much as the subscriptionbased journals do. In as much as the scholarly community prefers the conventional system to OA, it ought to be registered that the peer review process in the traditional system is inundated with flaws; some fraudulent articles have slipped through the system unnoticed finding their way into reputable journals while others are published with errors (Pandita & Ramesha, 2013). Another speculation has been whether publishing in untested waters (OA platforms) would not tarnish the reputation of scholars who submit their works there (Boissy & Schatz, 2011). On the contrary, Pandita & Ramesha (2013), Fitzpatrick (2012) and Boissy & Schartz (2011) submit that citation of OA literature and the journal impact factor have reportedly increased because of increased discoverability of their research works. Librarians, on the other hand wondered over sustainability of the open access mode if it stood a chance to entirely replace, subscriptions or if it would relieve libraries of the high costs of scholarly literature purchases and subscriptions (Rizor & Holley, 2014). Despite all the mixed views of OA publishing which were meant to sway people’s perception and discredit it, OA triumphed in propelling the agenda of cost-free availability and dissemination of research for continued generation of knowledge. The downside of OA is seen in the two main characteristics of digital content, that is, uncontrollable infinite reproducibility and unlimited changeability without approval by any authority (Mabe, 2006). Content can be updated with new versions being created and posted online; the final published journal version will be different from the other versions (Czerniewicz, 2013; Mabe, 2006). This makes it difficult for the end-user to determine the authoritative versions from the several revisions. Citation is also a challenge, particularly for pre-print articles without page numbers.

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METHODOLOGY This chapter is drawn from a broader study on the utilisation of institutional repositories in Zimbabwe’s public universities. A mixed methods research (MMR) design was adopted for the study combining elements of quantitative and qualitative research to answer complex questions (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011; Heyvaert, Maes & Onghena, 2011; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). The approach was utilised to gain a general overview of the state of institutional repositories in Zimbabwe’s public universities by breaking down the study population into sub-groups to get a deeper understanding of the social influences and facilitating conditions influencing behavioural of individuals towards adoption and use IRs. For this chapter questionnaires, interviews and document analysis were employed. The units of analysis comprised eight library directors and 40 librarians, eight research directors (Research policy makers who are also scholars and contributors of scholarly content to repositories) selected from eight public universities. Research directors were also considered agents of change who influence adoption and use of OA IRs in scholarly communication. They formulate research policies that influence the publishing behaviours of academics towards adoption of OA. Librarians are the gatekeepers of the IRs and content. Participating universities included Bindura University of Science Education (BUSE), Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT), Great Zimbabwe University (GZU), Harare Institute of Technology (HIT), Lupane State University (LSU), Midlands State University (MSU), National University of Science and Technology (NUST) and the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU). All (100%) research and library directors were successfully interviewed while 25 (62.5%) participated in the study and only five OA/IR policy documents were accessed. A census was done for research directors, library directors and, faculty/IR librarians due to the small size of the populations.

RESEARCH FINDINGS Introduction of a new system in any organisation is often received with mixed reactions with resistance taking the lead. Obtaining university management’s support for four (50%) of the libraries was not difficult while the other four (50%) expressed facing resistance from senior staff preferring to tread carefully before embracing the IR technologies. They had to tirelessly persuade management and in one respondent’s words; ‘management were just indifferent; they didn’t care less’. Over time, having won their support the same management began to support OA IR advocacy campaigns within the universities. One library director expressed that the university research director was against OA. Two (25%) libraries had difficulty getting an information technology (IT) specialist to offer technical support required in the establishment and maintenance of the repository; this delayed progress. One (12.5%) said they lacked appropriate equipment to host the IR but managed to get a server at a later stage. Approval of OA/IR policies in two (25%) universities took a long time, thus stalling progress as well. There was lack of collaboration between the library and the office of research in one (12.5%) of the universities resulting in policy design and approval conflict. As for the persons responsible for recruiting content for the repository, 13 (52%) of the faculty/IR were responsible for the task while 12 (48%) were not; of the 48%, 20 (42%) said the IR librarian did the task while for 16(34%) systems librarians had the task bestowed upon them. In other institutions this task was shouldered by the periodicals librarian, 4 (8%), the faculty librarian, 4 (8%) and the research office, 4 (8%). Repository content included post prints, conference presentations, theses and disserta149

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tions, pre-prints, books/book chapters, unpublished articles, Datasets, reports and, innovations/designs. All the library directors expressed difficulty acquiring content from the academic community because of concerns over copyright and plagiarism issues. One of the library directors said: they did not trust the system and believed their ideas or innovation would be hijacked, abused or stolen. The absence of an enabling environment in the universities was also a stumbling block. Another director also highlighted the issue of the environment being unsupportive and one respondent expressed: ‘we must go back to the people and try to ask, drum up support and beg for the content. For us to lay our hands on those papers is hard given the environment, looking at the IR policy, other policies and the enabling environment in terms of supporting the IR. This statement was corroborated by responses from faculty/IR librarians with 12 (48%) acknowledging willingness of academics to submit content for deposit in the IR, 12 (48%) said ‘No’ and 1(4%) did not respond. Participation of academics in populating the repositories was across all levels. Greater participation (44%) came from lecturers, 10(40%) said senior lecturers, followed by professors, nine (36%), research fellows five (20%), teaching assistants four (16%) and staff development fellows two (8%). The challenge of non-OA journal articles with copyright restrictions which do not allow archiving content in the IR was also mentioned. Obtaining copyright clearance was sometimes difficult. Table 2. Research deposit policies of the public universities Type of deposit

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Mandatory

9

36.0

36.0

36.0

Voluntary

14

56.0

56.0

92.0

Both

1

4.0

4.0

96.0

No answer

1

4.0

4.0

100.0

Total

25

100.0

100.0

The study also sought to find out if the institution mandated deposit of content to the library and if library staff were aware of the policies. Corroborated data were from Library directors, research directors, IR/faculty librarians and OA/IR policy documents. From Table 2, nine librarians (36%) selected mandatory deposit, 14 (56%) selected voluntary deposit, one (4%) selected Both (4%) while one (4%) did not answer the question. All the Directors of research and Library directors in concurrence with OA/IR policies, said deposit was mandatory for research that had been funded by the university, but it was voluntary for research output funded by external funders. When faculty/IR librarians were asked if they agreed with the statement that; academic libraries should encourage faculty to deposit scholarly work, such as working papers, datasets, or multimedia presentations, into OA repositories. Nine (36%) agreed, seven (28%) strongly agreed, four (16%) strongly disagreed and five (20%) were not sure. The librarians were further asked; to what extent they agreed with the notion that; academic libraries should encourage campus administration to adopt tenure and promotion policies that support a faculty member’s decision to publish in open access sources. Twelve (48%) respondents strongly agreed, seven (28%) agreed four (16%) strongly disagree and one (4%) was not sure. Deposit of was largely done by Faculty/IR librarians, 56% (14), 28% (seven) said it was the faculty librarian while 16% (four) said both the academics and the librarian archived works. In addition, two (25%) directors said that in their

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institutions, the systems librarian uploaded content while one (12.5%) said senior library assistants did the work. Only one (12.5%) library director indicated that they had a champion amongst the academics who self-archived articles while others said there was no self-archiving by academics because they were yet to equip them with self-archiving skills. They expressed that their focus at the time was to convince the academics to give them papers to deposit in the IR, after which they would consider training them to self-archive. However, 64% (16) of faculty IR librarians said they harvest content from journals and other databases, five (20%) said they don’t while four (16%) were not sure. This was corroborated by library directors with two (25%) indicating that they harvested content online using Google Scholar and alerts from SCOPUS, one (12.5%) said it was the faculty librarians who do the harvesting and another (12.5%) said the IR librarian does it. The study also sought to find out if the libraries were involved in copyright clearance activities with publishers in order to make published faculty research available in the IR. Seventeen (68%) respondents said ‘Yes’ while 24% (6) said ‘No’. Extracts of the responses are shown below. According to faculty/IR librarians and three (37.5%) library directors the SHERPA/Romeo and SPARC platforms are used to check for publishers’ copyright requirements. They are also guided by the Copyright Act, carry out plagiarism tests, require authors to submit pre-print versions to avoid copyright infringement and a consent form be completed before uploading a work. One (12.5%) library director said that they work closely with an IP expert, a member of staff and another who was in charge of making sure that all research done in the institution is patented, whenever they had to check for copyright permissions. Another (12.5%) library director reiterated that for research funded by the institution, their policy mandates deposit in the IR regardless of embargoes; journal’s requirements are only considered for research not funded by the institution. For clarity, the institution’s OA/IR policy and states that if an embargo is placed on an item only the abstract would be made available to the public until the embargo period expired. Three (37.5%) directors said it is the responsibility of the academics to seek permission to self-archive from their publishers, four (50%) said library had the prerogative process copyright clearance. In corroboration, 14(56%) faculty/IR librarians they did copyright clearance, while 4(16%) said the author and two (8%) said both. A multiple response question required IR/faculty librarians to indicate resources or services they used to determine publisher self-archiving policies. Results in Figure 2 below show that SHERPA/RoMEO was the most popular resource, 56% (14) followed by copyright policies from publisher websites, 24% (six), Copyright clearance centre, 12% (three) while OAKlist was the least used resource, one (4%). Twenty percent (five) of the respondents indicated that they used other sources. All five OA/IR policies refer to the SHERPA/RoMEO service for verifying publisher copyright permissions. Two of the policies stated that the IR administrator/committee would check copyright permissions for papers submitted for deposit. Another multiple response question solicited answers to challenges faced by IR/faculty librarians in copyright clearance. Figure 2 below shows that ‘obtaining publisher copyright policies’ was the biggest challenge, 12 (48%), followed by ‘limited copyright expertise’ with 11 (44%) respondents. Nine (36%) respondents selected ‘interpreting publisher policies’, eight (32%) selected ‘determining the identity of the publisher’, seven (28%) selected ‘limited staffing for copyright clearance activities’, while ‘creating a scalable model for copyright clearance’ and ‘limited time for copyright clearance activities’ had five (20%) respondents each respectively. Only three (12%) selected ‘other’ challenges. A five-point Likert scale question required respondents to state the degree to which they agreed with the statement; academic libraries should educate faculty about intellectual property issues.

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Figure 2. Resources used to determine publisher IR deposit policies

Figure 3. Challenges with copyright clearance

Table 3. Need to educate academics about OA N Academic libraries should educate faculty about OA IRs

25

Valid N (listwise)

25

152

Minimum 1

Maximum 5

Mean 4.08

Std. Deviation 1.441

 Challenges for Establishment of Institutional Repositories

Twelve (48%) respondents agreed with the statement, 8 (32%) disagreed, three (12%) strongly agreed and two (8%) were not sure, hence, a mean of 4.08 (Table 3). There was a need to establish if the libraries trained academics on issues of plagiarism, creative commons, self-archiving and so on. Responses from IR/faculty librarians showed 68% (17) saying ‘Yes’ while 32% (8) said ‘No’. Three (37.5%) library directors said content of training workshops, such as e-resources training and the communication skills courses, conducted by the library included the issues. Two (25%) of the directors said their institutions had the Turnitin anti-plagiarism software. Two (25%) directors said they held anti-plagiarism workshops and one (12.5%) added that response from the academics was good.

DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS Universities in Zimbabwe have made strides in opening access to research generated by their academics and scholars but challenges inhibiting progress in development of institutional repositories have been experienced. At the onset of the IR projects, the first challenge experienced by half the institutions was hesitation by university management to embrace the OA IR concept because they mistrusted the concept, but the other half had ready support of management to develop institutional repositories. This confirms Chan & Costa’s (2005, p. 154) assertion that in most cases university administrators and policy makers in both developing and developed countries are not aware of how OA benefits their institutions and impact of their scholars’ research. Therefore, the slow acceptance and growth of IRs in Zimbabwe can in part, be attributed to the attitudes of university managers and policy makers. The libraries found it difficult getting skilled IT staff to deal with technical issues regarding repository maintenance and proper equipment for host the repositories. Two libraries had approval of their OA/IR policies delayed; thus, demonstrating lack of commitment to the development of IRs by decision-makers in some of Zimbabwe’s public universities. This “becomes a critical issue in the current period of economic crisis which has seen universities putting in place some cost cutting measures and therefore, threatens [the] IRs’ long-term sustainability” (Cassela 2010:211). Therefore, if the repositories of these universities are to succeed the libraries must engage change management skills which require collaboration among librarians, university administrators and policy makers (Lynch, 2003). They should devise innovative ways of getting increased participation from the scholars, such as, tracking citation statistics and other activities which will convince management of the worth of the repository to the institution. Jain (2011) and Pickton & Barwick (2006) acknowledge that it is often difficult to maintain continued support and commitment from these stakeholders. Recruitment of content for the repositories in all the institutions was not easy because of the held fears and misconceptions over OA and IRs held by academics, such as copyright and trustworthiness of the IR platform. The finding reflects that all the academics and scholars across all ranks in the universities, where they participate, were forthcoming. Mercer, Rosenblum & Emmett, (2007) acknowledge that it remains a challenge to persuade faculty to deposit their research in the repository even though most scholars agree on the validity of the OA principles but there are underlying factors that influence their decision to accept and use IRs. This explains why the libraries have mediated deposit of content into the repositories because they perceived that academics were not well skilled to self-archive. Ware (2004) opines that academics’ thinking processes appear radical but their behaviour expresses conservatism. As a measure to populate their repositories and ensure that they remain relevant, the university libraries harvest content from online journals and other databases to capture recent publications by their scholars. 153

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The university management and librarians should work together to shift the mindsets of their scholars towards adoption and use of the repositories so that they increase visibility, availability and accessibility of their intellectual output and obtain a return on their investment. The findings have also revealed that facilitating conditions to promote development of IRs were absent in the universities. The fact that librarians reach extents of begging scholars to submit their works to the library for deposit in the repository exposes a lack of incentive for scholars when they deposited their works. Studies suggest that compliance is higher if OA is mandated or if it is linked to a direct advantage for authors (Caruso, Nicol and Archambault, 2013). However, Jain (2011) proffers that academics have a record of responding negatively to compulsion. A study by Gargouri et al. (2012) to test the Finch hypothesis on the green OA mandate’s effectiveness found that strong mandates attract more deposits; they generate deposit rates of 70%+ within two years of adoption.” The Universite de Liege of Beligium ties deposit to research performance evaluation and mandates that deposit should be done immediately upon publication devoid of waiver. This was found to be the strongest mandate model. The institutions have mandates for research which they fund but the fact that some faculty/IR librarians demonstrated ignorance of existence of deposit mandates in the university policies is evidence of poor communication of essential information to the university community. Faculty librarians work closely with academics in the disciplines they represent and should raise awareness in faculty staff of important clauses in pertaining to research and content deposit in the repository. Universities in Zimbabwe’s should consider offering scholars incentives for deposited works. Adoption of strong OA/IR mandates is also recommended, for example, tying tenure and promotion to self-archiving and integrate funder mandates, to ensure increased article deposits by their scholars. Another challenge exposed by the results was copyright clearance and permissions processing for the libraries thereby, slowing down progress in populating the repositories. Most of the (68%) libraries participated in copyright clearance and utilised appropriate resources to verify permissions, i.e., SHERPA/ RoMEO and SPARC platforms, the copyright Act, Copyright clearance centre and the OAKlist. However, there is a skills gap in processing of copyright permissions. Potvin (2013, 69) says that, “OA work in libraries encompasses a shifting structural, technical, legal, interpretive, ethical, and political framework”. Therefore, capacity building in legal skills issues is paramount (Czerniewicz, 2013) for the libraries to be efficient and effective in their newly assumed roles and responsibilities. Curricular for training of librarians in the Library and information science schools in polytechnic colleges and universities in Zimbabwe should incorporate courses in OA and intellectual property (Little, 2012). The universities can overcome this challenge if they draft contract forms outlining the rights retained by their academics and have them attached to agreements they sign with publishers (Caruso Nicol & Archambault, 2013).

CONCLUSION This chapter explored the challenges faced by academic libraries in Zimbabwe’s public universities in establishing and maintain institutional repositories. The centrality of scholarly publishing in scholarly communication is highlighted outlining how the ecosystem of scholarly communication has been transformed by technological developments over time with the open access model bringing a new dimension to sharing and distribution of research findings at low or no cost to the user. Benefits of green OA are emphasised highlighting how IRs assist institutions to collect, preserve, archive for posterity and showcase their intellectual output to a global audience. The chapter eventually delves into exposing challenges 154

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faced by academic libraries in their endeavour to promote access to and sharing of locally generated research to a local audience for local development and further research inquiry. Though the concept of open access and institutional repositories is widely known, and its acceptance has increased, university administrators and policy makers in Zimbabwe still need education on the benefits they accrue from adopting and utilising IRs, particularly, in the present harsh economic environment. Policies in the institutions are not well communicated to the intended participants by promoters of the repository systems; hence the challenges faced getting content from scholars for deposit in IRS, while skills development of library staff is of concern. Facilitating conditions for repository development and management in the country’s universities do not subsist; thus, OA adoption and optimal utilisation in Zimbabwe leaves a lot to be desired for the institutions contribute meaningfully to sustainable development.

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Institutional Repository: An institutionally defined database for collecting storing, preserving and disseminating research out of an institution. Open Access (OA): The term open access refers “free availability on the public Internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the Internet itself” (Budapest Open Access Initiative [BOAI]). Public University: A public university is “a university that is predominantly funded by public means through a national or subnational government, as opposed to private universities” (Wikipedia, 2014). Research: A systematic way of collecting, analysing, and interpreting data to increase understanding of a phenomenon about which interest is aroused. Scholar: Is an who is either an academic or one involved in investigative or knowledge-based activities either as a learner, researcher, or teacher (Ocholla 2011, p. 2). Scholarly Communication: A system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community and preserved for future use” (Baporika, 2017, p. 75). Scholarly Publishing: Distribution research output of universities and research institutions, such as books, journal articles, conferences papers, technical reports, data sets.

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The State of Access in Open and Distance Learning in Sub-Saharan Africa Gbolagade Adekanmbi Botswana Open University, Botswana

ABSTRACT This chapter examines the state of access in open and distance learning (ODL) and discusses eight nations across sub-Saharan Africa countries. The influence of open universities and private universities in promoting the use and growth of open educational resources (OERs) is seen. Governments are actively involved in enhancing policies to promote access while most visions and agendas of the countries in the sub-continent are linked to and aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The growth of information technological platforms is seen, and their influence on the development of OERs and innovations in educational programmes are evident. For the enhancement of access, the promotion of sustainable development, and the growth of tertiary education, sub-Saharan Africa must aim for more innovative use of modern technologies.

INTRODUCTION Although the enhancement of access in education in sub-Saharan Africa has been pursued through formal education, adult literacy, extra-mural classes, workplace education and professional training, and other alternative routes, open and distance learning has served a unique purpose in expanding educational access on the sub-continent. Commenting on the growth of open and distance learning (ODL) globally, Zawacki-Richter and Qayyum (2019) have observed an increased enrolment, increased competition, and a growing involvement of companies, with some even operating as distance teaching institutions. Additionally, a general growth in online education has been observed, with at least 80% of all European universities offering some form of online education (p.134). Zawacki-Richter and Qayyum (2019) submit that a wider acceptance of distance education has been seen in conventional education contexts; that ODL DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch009

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 The State of Access in Open and Distance Learning in Sub-Saharan Africa

growth and digital education are becoming linked; and that a general move toward on-line education has become evident. Of the twelve countries in their study, ‘21.3% of higher education students were taking ODE courses’ (p.129). Paul and Tait (2019) estimate that 8 million students study globally in open universities; and, citing Contact North (2018), they suggest that over 20 million students are enrolled in open universities globally. They however note that the European open universities seem to face greater threats from their conventional university cousins due to a ‘blurring of boundaries’ in their practices. The term access is a multifaceted one. At one point, it refers to issues of openness in educational offerings, or a lack of barrier or hindrance to accessing education. At another level, and as open access, it refers to a lack of hindrance in accessing the information resources required for such education and training. In this chapter, the term ‘access’ is used as a matter of convenience to refer to both dimensions. In ODL, the removal of all forms of restrictions to accessing learning is the goal. In a submission on the use of open educational practices in Australia, Bossu (2016) alludes to the history of the open movement era, enhanced by client needs and technological variety; the emergence of open universities; and the fact that open access hints at the possibility of learning anywhere and at any time. She further highlights a number of conceptual variations, including ‘open access (research and data), open learning design, open policies, Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Educational Practices (OEP) and, more recently, Massive Open Online Courses’ (p. 14). Open access in distance education is thus a phenomenon worth examining; nearly two decades after the concept of OER became part of the educational lexicon, a point underscored in the Paris 2012 OER Declaration. It should be noted that access problems do lead to migration problems. In the Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO (2019), migration, displacement, and the need to build bridges, not walls, and to provide access for an ever-moving army of migrants is underscored. In the context of various challenges which sub-Saharan Africa faces in its educational provisions, including a dearth of books and related resources, it is necessary to examine the state of access in distance education in sub-Saharan Africa, after over a century of open and distance learning (ODL) practice on the sub-continent. Open and distance learning (ODL) refers to ‘the acquisition of knowledge and skills through information communication and technology (ICT), media and other forms of learning at a distance (Nyerere, 2016, p.52). Similarly, e-learning refers to ‘the use of Internet technologies to deliver a broad array of solutions that enhance knowledge and performance’ (Rosenburg, 2001, p.28). This chapter pitches its theme within the context of sustainable development. As a concept, sustainable development relates to the expectations that nations and their agencies would pursue development in a way that ensures change, without depleting the resources driving or resulting from such a change. Following up on its Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations has identified 17 major SDGs and specific targets to be met by 2030. This paper therefore explores the nature of access in distance education in sub-Saharan Africa with a view to promoting sustainable development and achieving related relevant goals. Notably, goal number 4 of the SDGs focuses on the promotion of quality education and lifelong learning. To address these issues, eight sub-Saharan African countries are identified. These are Ghana and Nigeria in West Africa, Botswana and South Africa in Southern Africa, and Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda in East Africa. Although Tanzania belongs to East Africa, it is also a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). All the countries are democracies, with slight variations in history, educational visions and philosophies, as well as the state of economic development. Notably, these eight countries were part of the 125 countries which participated in the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and UNESCO’s Global OER assessment (COL, 2017a). The focus of that study was not on distance education. Baseline surveys and national reports, the state of Information and Com161

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munications Technology (ICT) development and growth, the state of ODL, and the extent to which the growth of OERs is being promoted, are examined in these countries. The chapter also examines the goals of access in the field, as well as the existence of policies that promote it; the nature of programmes and projects in which access is utilised; the problems and challenges experienced in promoting access; and the prospects and possibilities which access offers in distance education on the sub-continent. In addition, the chapter proffers some solutions, aimed at mitigating identified problems. Although this chapter’s focus is on a few countries, occasional forays will be made into others. One key focus is on the promotion of initiatives that enhance the growth and use of OERs in distance education in sub-Saharan Africa. Also, greater emphasis will be placed on tertiary educational provisions. In this paper, the terms ‘distance education,’ ‘open and distance education,’ and ‘open and distance learning,’ or ‘ODL’ which have the same meaning will be interchangeably used. Finally, although occasional highlights of traditional universities and institutions are provided in this chapter, the goal is to use such highlights as background to further exploration of the access issue on the one hand, and on the other, to discuss observable ODL issues in such contexts.

BACKGROUND Sub-Saharan Africa is geographically made up of 46 countries, with a population of 943 million (UNESCO, 2015). It has very diverse language groups, but officially, three distinct official languages, which are English, French, and Portuguese. While adult literacy rates between 2005-2012, for people 15 years and older was 58.9%, the world average then was 81.2% (UNDP, 2014). Currently, 750 million people are illiterate globally (UNDP, 2019). In terms of the adult literacy figures in the region, while ‘less than 2% of the global literate population live in Central Asia, Europe and Northern America, and Oceania… 27% of all illiterate adults live in sub-Saharan Africa’ (UIS, 2017). The United Nations (UN) (2017, p.5) indicates that ‘in 2014, 2 out of 3 children worldwide participated in pre-primary or primary education in the year prior to the official entrance age for primary school, compared to only 4 in 10 children in the poorest countries’. In the same vein, ‘9 percent of primary school-aged children worldwide were out of school in 2014, with little progress since 2008’ (p.5). Based on available data during the period, ‘one quarter of schools in sub-Saharan Africa had electricity, less than half had access to drinking water…’ (p.5). Also, the sub-continent had the lowest percentages of teachers that are trained for pre-primary and primary education. It is estimated that ‘Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of exclusion’ in terms of children being out of school in primary and lower secondary school (UNDP, 2019). Youth literacy rates did increase in sub-Saharan Africa from 65% to 75%, between 1990 and 2016 (UIS, 2017). With literacy rates in the sub-continent being the lowest globally, the nature of the educational challenge and the need for access is seen. Issues at the tertiary level of education begin at the lower level, and early access problems tend to dovetail into low enrolment rates at the higher level. This development may have been a major reason why Ngware, Boukary, Wekulo, Mutisya, Zikani, Otieno and Riechi (2018) have explored alternative paths for youth who are out-of-school in sub-Saharan Africa. Citing the African Development Bank (2016), they note that ‘Africa’s share of the global youth population is expected to increase by one-fifth in 2012 to one-third by 2050’ (Ngware et al, 2018 p.2). Against the backdrop of various challenges, they have suggested the need to accelerate learning programmes, modify the current ones and pursue

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equivalency programmes. While their suggestions are notable, they did not explore Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), OERs and e-learning as mitigation options. In higher education, the sub-continent has had its growth and challenges. In the Education for All (EFA) Report for the years 2000-2015, access and related challenges were raised. (UNESCO, 2015). As of 2012, the gross enrolment ratio, that is, the percentage of those in the previous year who were enrolled in tertiary level education, for the sub-continent, was 8%, when at the global level, it was 32% (UNESCO, 2015). In the years for which specific countries availed figures, the World Bank (2020) and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics report that the world’s tertiary enrolment ratio was 38% in 2018, and that of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries was 74%. In the same period, sub-Saharan Africa had an enrolment ratio of 9%. For the countries which form the focus of this study, the tertiary enrolment ratios were 25% for Botswana in 2017, 16% for Ghana in 2018, 11% for Kenya in 2017, 10% for Nigeria in 2014, 7% for Rwanda in 2018, 5% for Uganda in 2014, 4% for Tanzania in 2015, and 22% for South Africa in 2017 (World Bank, 2020). On the Human Development Index (HDI) levels and the extent to which Information and Communication Technology (ICT) platforms can enhance technological growth, Table 1 shows that the HDI levels for Botswana and South Africa were 94 and 113 respectively, for 2017, with both countries being relatively high on the HDI scale. On the mean years of schooling, the two countries have high scores of 9.3 and 10.4, respectively. The mean years of schooling for the countries, except Rwanda, are higher than the mean for sub-Saharan Africa, but lower than the global average of 8.7. (UNDP, 2019). Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda are all on the low scale of the HDI index in their ability to provide electricity in rural areas. Strangely, Botswana with a high HDI level also scores low. Other statistical findings, based on the International Labour Organisation (ILO) reports, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) reports, and the United Nations Development (UNDP) submissions are further explored in the chapter. Table 1. Human development situation in the countries in 2017 S/N

HDI Level

Country

2018 HDI Rank

Quality of Education: Schools with access to the Internet %

Mean years of schooling

Primary 2010-2018

Rural population with access to electricity

*Gross tertiary enrolment ratios

%

Year/ % Ratio

Secondary 2010-2018

1

Botswana

High

94

9.3

-

86

24

2017/25

2

South Africa

High

113

10.2

-

-

67

2017/22

3

Nigeria

Low

158

6.5

-

-

23

2011/11

4

Ghana

Medium

142

7.2

8

20

65

2018/16

5

Tanzania

Low

159

6.0

-

-

17

2015/4

6

Kenya

Medium

147

6.6

NA

NA

58

2017/11

7

Rwanda

Low

157

4.4

25

33

24

2018/7

8

Uganda

Low

159

6.1

NA

NA

11

2014/5

9

SSA

-

-

5.7

-

-

22

2017/22

10

Global

-

-

8.7

-

-

79

2018/38

Source: UNDP: Human Development Report 2019; *Last column, World Bank Group, 2020.

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Based on the foregoing, the subject of access is germane to discussions on the development of the countries. Thus, we shall briefly focus on their attempts to pursue the SDGs, especially Goal number 4 on education and lifelong learning.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS AND EDUCATION When the United Nations launched the 2030 SDGs, one major expectation was that member nations would adopt the agendas and domesticate them. In sub-Saharan Africa, reports indicate that many of the countries are pursuing this in varying degrees. This section explores the extent to which the agendas are being pursued, especially in relation to Goal number 4 on education. Nigeria’s attempts to increase access has been noted in its SDG agenda. As part of its plan to meet its SDG targets, Nigeria has been able to increase the number of children participating in the mandatory organised learning before the official school entry age, in both public and private schools, between 20112015 (Republic of Nigeria, 2017). This increase is seen in the number of teacher qualifications, between 2013 and 2015. Like a few other African countries, Nigeria adopted the SDG Agenda 2030 in 2015 and domesticated it (Republic of Nigeria, 2017). At the tertiary level, as of 2013, the National University Commission, the body responsible for registering and accrediting tertiary institutions in Nigeria, ‘had accredited 40 federal universities, 38 state universities, 51 private universities’ (COL, 2019, p.3). Since 2013, more federal universities have been registered and accredited. Overall, there are 504 tertiary education institutions in the country, with 153 of them being universities, as of 2017 (COL, 2017b). While attempts to enhance access are made in conventional higher education institutions, they sometimes do not go far enough, leaving unaddressed the lingering problem of unsatisfied demand at the tertiary level. In the case of Ghana, opening access as part of development has involved implementing the Free Senior High School policy, to ensure that no one is left behind. Indeed, between 2013 and 2018, primary school completion rate in Ghana jumped over 100%, while those of the junior high schools and senior high schools rose by 75.9% and 44.5% respectively (Republic of Ghana, 2019). To further address the seemingly low growth rates for the secondary schools, the Government considered providing free textbooks to students. The transition from senior secondary schools to tertiary levels is generally low while unemployment rates for those with secondary education is very high, at 24.4%, against 13% for those with post-secondary or higher qualifications (p.78). Ghana’s Vision is appropriately titled ‘A Ghana Beyond Aid’ (p.4). Like Nigeria, Ghana’s SDGs are ‘mainstreamed into the ‘district medium-term development plans’ and ‘integrated into the national development agenda and the budget’ (Republic of Ghana, 2019, pxi). On Uganda’s attempt at SDG’s, the country has Vision 2040, which aims to make it a middle-income economy (Republic of Uganda, 2016). It ‘achieved 33% of the MDG targets’ (p.xv). Reportedly, ‘literacy levels rose from 54.0 to 72.2 percent…’ (p.x) and ‘access to electricity… increased from 5.6 to 20.4 percent’ (p.x). The country’s social programmes are aimed at ‘enhancing the quality of universal primary and secondary education’ (p.ix). It has integrated the SDGs into its NDP 11 Plan and hopes to ‘increase adult literacy rates from the current 73% to 80% by 2020’ (p.12). It would also ‘increase the number of scholarships for disadvantaged areas to enroll in higher education’ (p.12). Musekiwa and Mandiyanike (2017) have reported on Botswana’s growth as an economically progressive nation. Though poor at independence, Botswana now has an upper middle-class status. Between 1996 and 2008, the country had an annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 9%, very high 164

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by global standards. Citing the UNDP (2015), the authors note that Botswana was able to half those living below poverty line, ‘from 47% in 1993 to 19% by 2010’ (Musekiwa & Mandiyanike, 2017, p.136). The nation was also said to have achieved its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) targets 1, 2, 4 and 6 aimed at ‘eradicating extreme poverty/hunger, UBE [Universal Basic Education], child mortality reduction and combating HIV/AIDS, maternal deaths and others’ (p.136). Notably, Botswana’s Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETTSP), the work of its Botswana Qualifications’ Authority, the Tertiary Education Policy of 2008, the National Human Resource Development Strategy 2009-2025, the Revised National Policy on Education, the Vision 2036 and the National Development Plan 11 are considered, among others, as serving as key national policies (Tabulawa & Youngman, 2017). They all help towards opening up access to education, as well as enhancing technological innovation for learning. With a strong commitment to achieving progress and meeting its SDG demands, Botswana has domesticated the global goals. Similarly, South Africa’s implementation of its 2030 SDG agenda (Republic of South Africa, 2019) shows a literacy level which has grown almost 100% since the democratic elections of 1994, for people between the ages of 15-24. Every child outside of the official school age is involved in ‘organised learning’ (p.10). Also, in 2017, about ‘18% of people aged 15-24 participated in formal or non-formal training’ (p.10). Notably, ‘about one-third of schools have computers for pedagogical purposes’ (p.13). Like the other countries, a high level of convergence is seen between the global South African SDGs. In Tanzania, it is reported that the country ‘is doing reasonably well in addressing eight goals (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 16).’ (Republic of Tanzania, 2019). The country has a major focus on girls’ education, and this is being supported by both various private and public initiatives, with a focus on empowerment, retention and transition, and sexual reproductive health. There is also a domesticating of the SDGs, in line with the global goals. There is hope, that with local and international collaboration and partnership, four other goals should be achieved. On the implementation of its SDGs, the timeframe of Kenya’s Vision 2030 and that of the SDGs are linked, as already observed for Botswana, South Africa, Uganda and Nigeria. Major gains have been made with the lowering of the poverty level. A broadening of technical and vocational education is seen at the village level (Republic of Kenya, 2017, p.2). Through its Vision 2050, Rwanda’s plan is to become a high-income economy. The country’s ’GDP per capita more than tripled between 2000 and 2018’ (Republic of Rwanda, 2019, p.11). It increased ‘more than 100% between 1990 and 2018’ (p.11). Rwanda plans to domesticate the SDGs and integrate it into its National Strategy for Transformation (2017-204) (Republic of Rwanda, 2019). The Government aims to enhance the quality of life of its people, and to work through its various ministries to do so. In a critique of the various SDG regional agendas, Tikly (2019) notes that The Africa We Want Agenda 2063 and the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA) have both ‘set out a transformative vison for sustainable development (SD) respectively’ (p.224), and both are linked to ‘the Pan African vision of a united and prosperous Africa’ (p.224). He concludes by noting the inadequacy of the regional standards in: identifying the underlying causal mechanisms that give rise to unsustainable development that have their roots in the colonial encounter and the nature of contemporary globalization or in acknowledging the extent to which education systems have been complicit in representing the interests of colonial and post-colonial elites and in processes of unsustainable development (Tikly, 2019, p.235).

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Thus, according to Tikly (2019, p.235), ‘if education is to play a role in transformative change then it will need to be fundamentally re-oriented away from its current path of dependency which it has inherited since colonial ties and which has proved resistant to change.’ While not undermining this criticism, knowing that Africa must aim for authentic development, attempts must still be made at promoting access and enhancing a nation’s capacity, albeit, through needed participation, domestic and external. Although globalization benefits are being challenged through nationalistic fervour in some contexts, authentic partnerships must be pursued.

ODL AND OPEN UNIVERSITIES The emergence, growth and development of open and distance learning in sub-Saharan Africa has been traced to the era of foreign correspondence colleges and foreign examinations, the growth of local ODL entrepreneurs, the involvement of governments and universities, and the gradual development, growth and utilization of technology (Adekanmbi, 1992; 2004). For many sub-Saharan African countries, dwindling resources, the quest for partnerships, including those tied to franchises, have promoted ODL development and subsequently, opened up room for the emergence of open universities and MOOCs, and the exploration of OER possibilities. In the process, a gradual merger of conventional offerings and ODL culture is being seen, a situation made bigger by COVID-19, which has led many into ODL ‘in a hurry.’ Three studies have explored some aspects of these themes. They include Mishra (2017), on open universities in the Commonwealth; a 2014 special edition of The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL), entitled Open Universities, Present, Past and Future; and Tait’s exploration of the mission of open universities (Tait, 2013). Starting with South Africa, any examination of the access problem cannot be complete without a look at UNISA. Not only is UNISA the first tertiary education institution in the country, ‘in the past, it was the only university that provided people with access to higher education’ (UNISA, 2019). In addition, it is ‘the incubator from which most other universities in South Africa emerged’ (UNISA, 2019, p.2). As at 2012, the Council on Higher Education had accredited 23 public universities. Two of them are open and distance learning institutions; six are universities of technology; and 88 are private higher education institutions (COL (2019, p.107). Established in 1946, with 624 programmes on offer, and a current enrolment of over 400, 000 students, UNISA is a major access provider. In 2015 alone, 40, 046 degrees were awarded in disciplines that range from humanities to the sciences and engineering. The use of technological intervention is seen, with the use of a Learning Management System to serve as a portal for students and an international reach of 136 countries (Mishra, 2017). COL has been providing support to South Africa in open schooling initiatives, use of appropriate technologies, including mobile technology. In 2018, UNISA’s enrolment figures were put at 374, 531, with 309, 572 at the undergraduate level, 43, 703 at the post graduate level, 4668 at the masters and 2017 as doctoral students (UNISA, 2019). That ODL actually ‘accounted for almost a third of all higher education enrollments in South Africa’ (Makoe, 2015, p.8) strengthens the case for the use of open and distance learning in sub-Saharan Africa. Some of these access enhancement activities are also observed in other countries. In Botswana, the Tertiary Education Council accredits higher education institutions. education at that level. The total enrolment figure for all tertiary education students was 59, 243 in 2017/2018 (HRDC, 2019), This comprised 21,966 students in the three public universities, University of Botswana, Botswana International University of Science and Technology, and the Botswana University of Agriculture and 166

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Natural Resources (BUAN); and 11,299 students in three private universities, namely, Baisago, Botho and Limkomkwing universities (HRDC, 2019). The remaining 25, 978 students were in various forms of higher education, including the brigades (HRDC, 2019). It should be noted that total graduate figures at the University of Botswana, the nation’s flagship university, since its inception in 1971, for all its programmes, including ODL ones, are put at approximately 50,000 (Tabulawa & Youngman, 2017). In comparison, the establishment of Botswana Open University (BOU), earlier known as the Botswana College of Distance and Open Learning (BOCODOL), has made a significant impact on the promotion of access. Between 2000-2017, BOU’s open schooling enrolment figure was 122, 235, while its tertiary student enrolment was 23, 264. Also, the throughput figures for the same period were 65,099, for its open schoolers, and 8684 for its tertiary programmes, making its total throughput in 17 years 73, 787 (BOU Register, 2020). In promoting access, BOU is harnessing the use of technology for its programmes. BOU’s strategic framework is aligned to the United Nations SDGs 2030, Africa’s Agenda 2063, and the SADC Protocol on Education and Training (Tau, 2020). BOU’s academic and governance policies emphasize the use of innovative approaches, aimed at bringing teaching and learning to the people. In addition to its ICT Strategy. BOU has a Recognition for Prior Learning Policy which is aimed at further opening access, Of course, there are other role players in open and distance learning in Botswana. Apart from the University of Botswana, through its Distance Education Department within the Centre for Continuing Education, a few private universities promote ODL through their e-learning platforms. Botho University does this through the Blackboard platform, the Gaborone Institute for Professional Studies uses Google Classroom; New Era College uses Zoom and the Gaborone University College of Law and Professional Studies uses Moodle, like BOU. In these institutions, e-learning or ODL is integrated into a conventional teaching set up, unlike BOU which is a dedicated ODL, along the patterns of UNISA and the UK Open University. In Kenya, the growth of open and distance learning has been examined. In this respect, Muuro, Wagacha, Oboko & Kilhoro (2014) examined perceived challenges faced in online environments in higher education institutions in Nairobi. They observed a relatively high level of e-readiness by Kenyan higher education students, the popularity of Moodle and Blackboard as online platforms, and the fact that private institutions appear to be ahead of the public higher education institutions in the use of technology. However, the authors also add that Kenyatta University has a digital school which addresses e-learning demands, with ‘over 100 courses through blended learning’ (Mouro et al., 2014, p.132) on its register. Similarly, Nyerere (2016) carried out a baseline study for the Commonwealth of Learning where she examined 12 universities in Kenya. Between 2005-2015, university numbers had increased by a whopping 320% but ODL enrolments within the same period had been relatively low when compared with conventional traditional university offerings. Although the establishment of a National Open University had been recommended as far back as 2005 (Nyerere, 2016), it remains unclear when this would materialize. While ODL institutions appear to be many, there has not been a ‘clear and coherent policy at the national level (p.10). Yet, Government wants access to higher education increased. This notwithstanding, institutions are adopting OERs and MOOCs in Kenya, possibly, in response to Kenya’s Vision 2030 which sees e-learning as a major way of delivering ODL. The author notes that the top universities (Kenyatta, Jomo Kenyatta and the University of Nairobi) are doing better in terms of e-learning capabilities. However, ‘ODL programmes do not seem to be popular with both public and private universities in Kenya’ (p.12). From a total of 33 public universities, the implementation of ODL is seen in only a few of the universities, while only ‘5 out of 37 private universities’ are involved (Nyerere, 2016). With no 167

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national ODL policy, there is a challenge. Overall, there are 33 public universities in Kenya, according to the baseline study, 36 private, while there are 8 public universities with ODL centres, and 4 private universities with ODL centres (Nyerere, 2016). A generally low enrolment in ODL is seen when compared with conventional enrolments. In a related study, Makokha and Mutisya (2016) have noted that e-learning can be described as being in ‘its infant stage’ (p.341), as most of the universities did not have ‘senate approved e-learning policies to guide structured implementation’ (p.341). The very few e-learning courses offered online are mostly in lecture note form and a lack of ‘requisite infrastructure and skills’ (p.341) exist. A ‘low usage of elearning among lecturers’ is seen while a similar situation exists with students. Problems of bandwidth and internet accessibility also exist, as does lack of promotion of ICT skills training (Makokha & Mutisya, 2016). All this is despite the adoption by the country of the Kenyan National ICT Policy in 2006, with the expectation that the education sector should have mainstreamed ICT into the process of teaching and learning earlier (Makokha & Mutisya, 2016). Tertiary education started in Tanzania through the establishment of the University of Dar es Salaam in 1961 (Ishengoma, 2017). Although the university was involved in ODL to a degree, the establishment of the Open University of Tanzania, set up in 1992 by an Act of Parliament, created a new impetus for the promotion of access. While student enrolment at the beginning was 766, by the 2013-2014 session, this had grown to 4724 (OUT, 2015). Enrolment in 2016 was 15, 753 and 6002 degrees were awarded in 2015. The university has programmes that cut across various disciplines, coordination centres in Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana, and 458 foreign students enrolled in the 2014-2015 academic session (Mishra, 2017). Its instructional methods incorporate both traditional ODL and online dimensions. Nigeria’s involvement in ODL has been well documented in the pioneering works of Aderinoye (1992) and Adekanmbi (1992). While Adekanmbi (1992) explored the transformation of correspondence education to distance education in Nigeria, between 1927-1987, Aderinoye (1992) focused on the contribution of the National Teacher’s Institute (NTI) in Kaduna to developing and upgrading teacher education in Nigeria. It was clear that ODL in Nigeria came in through foreign examinations, foreign correspondence colleges, and citizen educational entrepreneurs. Government and university involvement was later seen, with the University of Ibadan, University of Lagos, Ahmadu Bello University and the National Teacher’s Institute playing major roles. University of Ibadan has used the programme extensively to train teachers. The University of Lagos pioneered the teaching of science through ODL and the National Teacher’s Institute has focused on teacher preparation. The goal is to expand access. With a wider growth of the tertiary education sector, there have been new developments, especially in the emergence of Nigeria’s National Open University of Nigeria in 1983. The National Open University of Nigeria was suspended in 1984 (COL, 2017b) but later reopened in 2002. It has currently a total of 93 programmes, using traditional ODL and online learning; 272, 384 students were enrolled in 2016 (COL, 2019). In 2018, NOUN graduated 14, 769 students (National Open University of Nigeria, 2018). Disciplines also cut across the humanities and the sciences (Mishra, 2017). Notably NOUN is the only open university in West Africa. NOUN has eight learning centres located in eight traditional universities (COL, 2017). Considering its student numbers and diversity of programmes, NOUN is promoting access. In a related publication, COL (2017b) notes that between 2010 and 2016, 11, 703, 709 students applied for places through the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB). Only 28% of the applicants were admitted, thus creating an unsatisfied demand as high as 70%. This situation strengthens the case for the use of ODL as an alternative to enhancing access.

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In their overview of distance education activities in Ghana, Larkai, Ankonah-Asare and NsowahNuamah (2016) note that as far back as 2013, there were 170 tertiary education institutions in the country of which nine are distance education institutions. The public institutions still wear a predominantly print gown while the private ones, mostly ‘franchised campuses of foreign universities,’ utilize technology more and are more focused on graduate programmes (Larkai, et al, 2016, p.187). Between 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 alone, about 70, 000 students were enrolled for distance education at both the public and private institutions. Unfortunately, at the time, there was no clearly defined ‘National Norms or Policy for distance education in Ghana’ (p.187). Thus, the participation rate in ODL in Ghana is said to be ‘average’, with only 5% or 9 out of 170 institutions participating. The authors however note that ‘distance education is especially important with the introduction of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in 2015’ (p.188). Thus, the call for a broad policy, in line with the submission of Owusu-Mensah, Anyan and Denteyi (2015) for staff training in ODL in Ghana, was made. Makerere University, which was established in 1922, marked the beginning of tertiary education in Uganda, and later became a University College of London in 1949 (Bisaso, 2017). With time, Makerere became a full-fledged university and others soon followed. Enrolment in the 1970s was said to be very low, but a gradual increase was seen in the 1994-1999 period. Later, with the establishment, of the National Council for Higher Education, 34 universities were accredited to provide tertiary education in the country, 5 of them public and the other 29 private universities (Bisaso, 2017). In the 2008-2015 period, enrolments rose by 92%, and in the 2010/2011 academic session, there were about 200,000 students (Bisaso, 2017). Despite these developments, the access problem was still serious, with the country’s tertiary enrolment ratio put at 5% in 2014, at a time when the global tertiary enrolment ratio was 38% (World Bank, 2020). This must have prompted Makerere University to design programmes for teachers, in an ODL environment whose beginnings have been traced to 1957 (Ouma, 2019). Many private institutions are also involved in ODL work in Uganda. Also, in Uganda, Bbuye and Mango (2005) have submitted that Makerere University and Kyambogo University offer distance education programmes, mostly for teacher training, commerce and science. With respect to modern technology, they reported the use of satellite delivery for various programmes run by the African Virtual University; the use of Internet facilities at a number of centres, and, as of 2005, a modest use of distance education in the country. However, there have been further developments in ODL in Uganda. For example, in a baseline study carried out by the Uganda Management Institute on technology enabled learning at the institute, the findings suggest a major shift in the use of distance education technologies (UMI, 2018). Used here are OERs, MIT Open Courseware, the Moodle Learning Management system, and other collaboration tools such as Adobe Connect, Google Docs, e-portfolios, e-books, educational games and a variety of social media. While UMI does not have a technology enabled learning policy, it thus has good infrastructure, a Distance Learning Department, described as being ‘basic’ (UMI, 2018). There is a very strong ODL desire at UMI, considering its partnership with COL. UMI staff not only use ICT for their operations, they are also provided with ICT facilitation. However, very few of the teachers use OER platforms (UMI, 2018). One observes from the study that many private institutions offer distance education programmes, have linkages with foreign institutions and tend to adopt new technology more than their public university counterparts. Technology-enabled ODL helps to enhance access and increase the number of students participating in the programmes. In the Commonwealth of Learning Country Reports (COL, 2019), both the country and the University of Rwanda have ODL policies, with provisions for OER. COL was part of this development as it had given support to ODL development, and even supported a baseline study. It helped to plan for projects, 169

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facilitate, among others, learner support workshops for African countries; and promote technology-enabled learning for many African nations. Furthermore, in a baseline study (Mukama, 2016) on Rwanda’s ODL status, the country has an ICT in Education Policy of which the Open and Distance e-Learning (ODeL) is a major part. The country plan is to double its higher education student intake ‘by 2017 through ODeL’ (Mukama, 2016, p.10). A look at the various enabling policies indeed show the commitment of the nation. Among these are the ICT in Education Master Plan, Rwandan National ODeL Policy, the ICT in Education Policy with its embedded OER and ODeL, and the Education Sector Strategic Plan 2013/14-207-18 (Mukama, 2016). Thus, ODL is not only identified for access, its cousin, ODeL was also identified as a vehicle for delivering education. The work of promoting ODel is a multi-departmental and institutional responsibility as the assignments are spread amongst the Ministry of Education, Rwanda Education Board, University of Rwanda and the Rwanda Development Board (Mukama, 2016). It is important to note that the University of Rwanda has an ODeL institutional framework and a strategic plan which guide its work. Tait (2013) has examined the mission of 12 open universities in Pakistan, Canada, India, Nigeria, United Kingdom, China, Tanzania, Spain, USA, South Africa, and Malaysia (two universities). He notes that the social justice and development orientation of the mission of open universities focused on the provision and promotion of equity, equality of educational opportunities, inclusive knowledge society, sustainable development, inclusion, national cohesion, socio-economic development, societal transformation, mass self-actualization and social justice. In 2015, a ‘total of 1, 368, 997 students were eligible for various degrees and diplomas’ in the 27 open universities covered in the report Open universities in the Commonwealth (Mishra, 2017), but an average of 15.26% leave the open universities (OUs) in any given year (p.11). Among the top priorities adopted by the OU’s are learner support, e-learning infrastructure, quality assurance, skills development, research, international reach and curriculum revision in the subjects of OERs (Mishra, 2017Oyo and Kalema (2014) have made the case ‘for MOOCs for Africa by Africa’ and suggested having a coordinating centre with central funding, robust coordination, readiness, high school graduate preparedness and sustainability.). It is evident that much work is being done in the promotion of open and distance learning in sub-Saharan Africa. While much work is taking place in dedicated ODL institutions such as open universities, a lot is also happening in the public traditional universities as well as the private universities and institutions. In addressing the access and related technology issues, the impact of the COL has been quite significant.

ICT PLATFORMS AND ACCESS PROMOTION Any discussion on access, open universities, or what ODL can do cannot be complete without examining the nature of ICT platforms. Governments play a major role in providing the policy environments for ICT platforms to operate and for open access institutions to carry out their activities. ICT issues are those of technology (telephone, Internet, bandwidth and computer) and the policies which guide them. So, what are the policies in the countries being examined? Are there ICT policies? What is the state of telephone and internet availability for individuals and households? The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) (2018) shows the extent to which the nations being examined are aiming to create the needed ICT platform for the promotion of ODL and the utilization of OERs. From the report (Table 2), an individual in Botswana, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria has at least more than a phone. Where mobile based learning (m-learning) is promoted, the benefits are 170

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obvious for these four countries. Also, half of all the citizens in South Africa (56.2) and about one third (37.9) of the citizens in Botswana have access to the Internet. For both countries, the same is true for households with internet access, with nearly a quarter having access. As ODL uses access to modern technology and OERs, the statistics provided in table 2 suggests that more needs to be done regarding the platform. The low ratings in fixed telephone per 100 people for each country further highlight the challenges. However, when the overall ICT picture in 2018 is compared with the statistics ten years back, a gradual enabling of an ICT platform for promoting access and ODL is noticeable. Table 2. Key Information Society Indicators for Six Sub-Saharan Countries COUNTRY S/N

a

b

c

d

e

f

Fixed telephone per 100 people

Mobile phone per 100 people

Individuals using the Internet

Households with Internet access

Households with a computer

Active mobile broadband per 100 people

1

Botswana

6.2

141.4

37.9

35.5

22.6

66.9

2

South Africa

6.4

162.0

56.2

60.7

21.9

70.0

3

Nigeria

0.1

75.9

27.7

17.8

8.1

74.4

4

Ghana

1.0

127.5

N/A

N/A

N/A

83.2

5

Kenya

0.1

86.1

17.8

33.7

7.2

19.9

6

Tanzania

0.2

69.7

16.0

14.4

4.0

8.7

7

Rwanda

0.1

72.2

21.8

9.3

2.5

35.0

8

Uganda

0.6

58.2

23.7

10.8

8.5

23.4

9

Sub-Saharan Africa

0.9

74.4

22.1

19.4

8.9

24.8

10

World

13.0

103.6

48.6

54.7

47.1

61.9

Source: (ITU, 2018). Measuring the Information Society Report.

While exploring ICT progress over the years, ITU (2018) reports on the growth of mobile phones use globally, with about every individual having a cellphone. Also, ‘almost the whole world population now lives within range of a mobile cellular network signal ‘(p.2). Thus, ‘in Africa, the population of households with access to a computer increased from 3.6 percent in 2005 to 9.2 percent in 2018’ (p.11). With respect to Internet growth for the same period, it was highest in Africa while it was 2.1% in 2005, it was 24.4% in 2018. This therefore paints a picture of hope in ICT enablement. On digital literacy, UNDP (2019) states that with about 11 different languages in South Africa, ‘the Centre for Artificial intelligence Research is working on machine translation approaches to broaden access to government services’ (p.215). Also, in the same report, on Uganda, ‘the AI Research Group at Makerere University is developing source dataset for some of the dozens of languages spoken there’ (p.215). The report thus identifies the major barrier as being ‘limited digital literacy and skills’ (p.232). South Africa has ‘the most advanced ICT network in sub-Saharan Africa’ (p.167). In 2016, 87% of households in South Africa had mobile phones while 99% of the people can receive a signal with 3G. This platform is very useful for ODL learners; UNISA, a major ODL provider, for example, has 400,000 students for whom it needs to provide educational access.

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Although the observations from the literature about South Africa give great hope, empirical studies are needed to further explore the realities on the ground, especially in relation to students’ abilities to access the required services and to have the actual devices for technology-enabled learning. In an article published by Nyerere (29 April 2020), the following quote is revealing about Kenya: Kenya has widespread internet access, attributed to the mobile phone: internet penetration stands at about 90%. But a significant number of students who live in remote areas have no internet access. They are cut off from their universities. For those who may be able to access the internet, it’s at a high cost: about US$4.90 per GB in Kenya compared to countries like Egypt where it’s about $1.20 per GB. In addition to this, even though 75% of Kenyans have access to grid or off-grid electricity, supply isn’t always reliable (para 9). In terms of ICT development and progress, Kenya has six main mobile phone providers. The country’s ‘mobile household penetration is one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa’ (p.90). In addition, the country ‘has one of the highest penetrations of mobile money in the world, at 85.2% of mobile subscriptions as of December 2016’ (p.90). An ICT policy exists and there is a Kenyan National ICT Master Plan of 2013/14-2017/18. This is within the plan of the country to move it into a knowledge economy, among other things. The existence of an ICT policy, established in 2007, has helped Botswana to pursue many innovations in education. The goals of that policy are, among others, economic diversification and universal access to information. In Botswana, the mobile providers are Mascom, Orange and BeMobile and the Botswana Telecommunications (BTC) Authority. It is reported that the BTC ‘has supported a project to provide wi-fi hotspots in more than 30 strategic locations’ (ITU, 2018, p.25). Generally, the ICT market in Botswana is advanced and a regulatory framework exists. Also, there are notable initiatives aimed at promoting the growth of e-government. Rwanda has an ICT Strategic Plan (2018-2024), aptly themed ‘Towards digital enabled economy’ (Republic of Rwanda, 2016), envisioned to take the nation in that technological direction. To this end, the ICT sector is expected ‘to be a catalyst for rapid and sustained economic growth, equitable social development and employment creation’ (Republic of Rwanda, 2016, p.4). Among the country’s notable policies driving the development of technology and access prometon are, the: • • •

ICT in Education Policy (2016) SMART Rwanda Master Plan, 2015-2020 National IC Infrastructure Plan (NICI III, 2011-2015).

The Rwandan Government has a comprehensive plan of ensuring that ODEL, MOOCs and OERs are part of the major educational movements to ensure quality education and access in Rwanda. Rwanda, which has three major mobile phone operators, is said to have ‘achieved one of the highest levels of mobile broadband coverage in sub-Saharan Africa’ (ITU, 2018, p.149). This is even though its overall ‘household penetration is relatively low, due to Rwanda’s small per capita income’ (p.147). As of 2016, ‘60% of households had mobile phones’ (p.147). However, the nation has a SMART Rwanda Master Plan 2015-2020, a National Broadband Policy established in 2013 and an ICT policy. There is a great desire to transform the country by 2020 ‘into an information society ‘(p.147).

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Tanzania’s 2016 ICT policy identifies 22 objectives aimed at transforming the nation ‘into an ICTdriven income economy and society’ (ITU, 2018, p.177). A growing access to ICTs has been observed, enhanced partly by the starting of submarine cables in 2009. While improved connectivity is observed, currently the country has a total of six mobile operators. Between 2015-2016, 78% of households had a mobile phone (ITU, 2018). Nigeria’s ICT dream is anchored on its National Information and Communication Technology Policy of 2012 which, among others, aims to increase ‘mobile broadband penetration by 80 percent by 2018’ (ITU, 2018, p.133). The thrust of the policy includes a national infrastructural development plan, a goal to connect the ‘federal and state networks to a national fibre backbone’ (p.133) and to address the limited bandwidth problem. The launching of the e-Government master plans is also expected to promote technology growth and utilization and enhance access to services at state and federal levels of government. There are six major phone operators in Nigeria. At least four-fifths of all households were said to have mobile phones in 2015 (ITU, 2018). As the largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, the chances of further growth are obvious. ITU (2018) notes that Ghana is an emerging ICT hub with at least 6 mobile telephone providers. In 2014, 85% of the households in the country had mobile telephones and prices of mobile phone services are reported to have dropped ‘since 2010’ (ITU: 2018, p.67). The nation has an ICT policy which has existed since 2012 and is reported to have ‘one of the most competitive telecommunication markets in the world’ (p.67). The number of those using the Internet has increased with an average of 98% in 2017 (Republic of Ghana, 2019). Uganda has eight mobile operators. Between 2016-2017, 68.6% of households had mobile phones. Also, a progressive ICT sector exists (ITU, 2081). As far back as 2007, Farell and Isaacs (2007) have noted that most of the 53 African countries they surveyed have ICT policies and that about half of them have education-focused policies. Without doubt, a new phase is emerging in the sub-continent’s ICT platform. While this should promote ODL growth and practice and enhance educational access on the sub-continent, it would also be interesting to know to what extent the institutions have or do effectively utilize their ODL policies.

THE STATE OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Open educational resources are ‘teaching and learning resources in any medium, digital or otherwise, that permit no-cost access, use, reuse and repurposing by others with no or limited restrictions’ (McGreal, 2016, p.1). OECD defines open educational resources as ‘digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research’ (OECD, 2007, p.10). OECD considers OER matters key to discussions around issues of information, knowledge sharing, knowledge ownership, knowledge validation, and is generally seen as a radical approach to sharing knowledge whose future possibilities while uncertain, bodes well for the promotion of lifelong learning. Its ability to expand learning access and generally ‘widen participation in higher education’ (OECD, 2007, p.9) has been noted. OECD (2007) further notes that OER ‘accelerates the blurring of formal and informal learning, and of educational and broader cultural activities’ (p.9). Included in OERs are ‘learning content, software tools to develop, use and distribute content, and implementation resources such as open licenses’ (p.10). As far back as 2007, ‘over 3000 open courseware courses available from over 300 universities worldwide’ were identified (OECD, 2007, p.10). Santos-Hermosa, Ferran-Ferrer and Abadal (2017) submit that, among other things, ‘OER could make a strong contribution to improv173

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ing education and fostering openness’ (p.85). Ngugi (2011) however does not see OERs as a one-all solution, but rather ‘an incremental step to bridge the yawning gap in access, equity, and quality that prevails in much of African education’ (p.286). While exploring OER use in South Africa, de Hart, Chetty and Archer (2015) submit that while its knowledge exists, its conversion to active participation is still lacking. The researchers explored the issues of awareness or knowledge, participation in OER, sharing of work, reuse of works of others and the barriers to usage. They noted a slow integration of OER, high level of knowledge of it, the need for training and further institutional engagement with staff. On the use and adoption of OERs in South Africa, especially by staff in various institutions, de Hart, Chetty, and Archer (2015) conducted a survey at UNISA. The survey shows that ‘while there was knowledge and understanding of OER, this had not been widely converted’ (p.7) into active usage. A study of the institutional culture of some South African universities and their OER policies is quite informative (Cox and Trotter, 2016). In part, they observe that ‘of the 25 universities in the country, only five grant the creators of the materials copyright over their work’ (p.152). While the University of Cape Town (UCT) has an open access policy, which has its own limitations, it basically ‘promotes the sharing of knowledge and the creation of open educational resources’ (p.152). UCT had also signed the Open Education and Open Access Declaration of Cape Town. Unlike UCT, the University of Fort Hare ‘claims the ownership of all intellectual property’, as does UNISA. Unlike Fort Hare, however, UNISA has an ‘ambition to contribute the institution’s course materials as OER’ (p.154). Cox and Trotter thus note that there is an absence of policy support for OER work at Fort Hare while UNISA is fully engaged in it, to the extent of having the OER office in the office of the Vice-Chancellor. Like, UCT, UNISA is also a ‘signatory to the OER Declaration and the Berlin Open Access Declaration’ (Cox & Trotter, 2016, p.155). Perhaps this development in UNISA should be expected, considering its many years of practice in open and distance learning. While some traditional universities in South Africa have had a history of open and distance learning interventions, a major push by them to embrace online learning has been enhanced by the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. In their examination of Rwandan public higher education system, the willingness to engage in OER practices, Nkuyubwatsi (2017) submits that both the country and the University of Rwanda have ODeL policies. Having examined 175 academics, the writer noted a general willingness by the academics to ‘publish their work under open licenses, design OER-based courses, [and] tutor open access courses for credit’ (p.134). The University of Rwanda (UR) ‘has subscribed to 62 online databases with a total of 33, 000 electronic journals’ (Nyerere, 2016, p.26); and has a student to computer ratio of 9:1. As noted earlier, the University of Rwanda has an ODeL institutional framework, ODL policy and strategic plan. There is also a framework for MOOCs and an Institutional Digital Framework, all geared towards enhancing OER growth and development, among other things. With international support not lacking, as seen in the partnership with USAID, DFID (UK), Mellon University, World Bank, Facebook, Solid Works, Pixel Corps, Korea EXIM bank and others, the future of OER and technology-enabled learning, both at the university and the nation appears bright. A look at the Rwandan Regional National Framework on MOOCs and OER shows that the National Strategy for Transformation (2017-24) sees education as a transformational pillar while the country’s Vision 2050 for the country also acknowledges the roles of ICT and ODL in such a transformation. In Kenya, OER adoption in Kenyan universities, based on a survey by Nyerere (2016) shows that OER adoption is generally low. The use of MOOCs is also low while ‘more than 50% of universities implementing ODL programmes in Kenya have not made adequate effort to use the technology’ (pp.17-18). 174

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As part of an OER initiative, the Elim Digital Media was supported by COL to ‘develop 117 science and 96 vocational television programmes which are available online and broadcast on Elim Digital Media’ (COL, 2019, p.40). In addition, COL had, in 2017, ‘launched impact studies of two Digital Media projects’, both ICT related. One of the projects, Digi Teacher was launched in 2016, with three universities in East Africa involved. The main goal was to address the ‘challenges arising from the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) in teaching and learning. Various programmes have evolved from the universities as a result of the project. It is noted that ‘open resources are being used to improve teaching of English in Kenya’, with 3000 students and teachers reached (COL, 2018). Over time, COL’s involvement has been notable in OER development in sub-Saharan Africa. As part of its mandate COL has reached over 370,000 learners and has 280 partners in 42 countries. With over 100 institutions which have adopted its models and materials, COL has over 2200 learning resources including ‘materials and curricula which have been developed collaboratively’ (p.2). In addressing its mandate, COL has utilized the opportunities and potentials of ICT and has promoted not only open and distance learning, but also the use of OER globally. COL’s Strategic Plan 2015-2021 aims to get more institutions to ‘develop and use OER-based courses and materials to give their citizens access for sustainable livelihoods’ (COL, 2018, p.7). As part of its initiatives, ‘COL also produced ‘OER guidelines for Botswana and Cameroun. With the guidelines, ’17 OER-based skills courses’ were developed by partners’ (COL, 2018, p.8). It should be noted that Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria have benefitted tremendously from COL, especially with the goal of achieving ‘better ICT infrastructure management’ (COL, 2018, p.15) and integrating ‘technology into teaching and learning’ as well as improving ‘the quality of technical and vocational education and training’ (p.15). In collaboration with UCT, COL has ‘developed the conceptual framework and seven audits for the Commonwealth Digital Leadership Training in Action (C-DELTA) programme to build the capacities of teachers and learners to use digital skills for lifelong learning throughout the Commonwealth’ (COL, 2018, p.16). COL (2017a) surveyed the status of OER in 102 countries. COL was interested in finding out the extent to which governments were prepared to ‘support the OER movement’ (p.15), towards meeting SDG Goal number 4 on quality education and lifelong education for all. It was a 2-part survey involving governments and stakeholders, respectively. The government survey involved 102 countries globally, of which 28 were African countries (COL, 2017a). All the eight countries identified in this chapter were involved in both surveys. On the presence of OER policies, 15 out of the African countries had OER policies, and are mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Of the African countries with OER policies, this was reflected in their ICT Education policy; South Africa reflects it in the Education and Training Sector White Paper; and Tanzania in her Education Policy in 2014. The report (COL, 2017a) shows that Botswana has ‘an institutional policy’ (p.16), while Ghana has an ‘ICT for Education policy’ (p.17). Generally, ‘most OER initiatives in Africa are done through training institutions and individuals, a pattern observed in ‘Asia, the Pacific, Europe and North Africa’ (p.18). The desire to use OER in Africa is spurred on by ‘open and flexible learning opportunities’; ‘access to quality resources’; the need to ‘increase the efficiency and quality of learning resources’; research promotion; and the creation of ‘flexible materials’ (COL, 2017a, p.18). In the second stakeholder survey, 22 African countries, with about 144 respondents were involved. Most of the findings in the government survey were replicated to some degree in the stakeholder survey. Overall, OER policies grew globally by 10% between 2012 and 2017 (COL, 2017a). In terms of distribution, the policies were 41% at the national level; 22% at the institutional level; and 9% of OERs were for projects. The universities trying to develop policies were 59% of all those surveyed (COL, 175

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2017a). Major challenges observed in OER implementation include a general ‘lack of users’ capacity to access, reuse and share OERs;’ an ‘insufficient inclusive and equitable access to quality courses’ and a ‘lack of appropriate policy solutions.’ (COL 2017a, p.2). A ‘third of the respondents had indicated that their country had ensured that OER are accessible for people with disabilities’ (COL, 2017a, p.2). Also, 57% of the countries noted ‘that their country supported the use of OER in all ICT environments’ (p.2), including those with mobile applications and technologies. Many countries surveyed, a third of such, ‘noted that there had been a national discussion on sustainable learning resource production’ (p.2). Also, ‘73% of respondents indicated that OER production had generated new business or enterprise’ (p.2). It was observed that most OER materials are written in English; Governments are usually the main funders of OER use and development; and OER is mostly used at the tertiary educational level (COL, 2017a). Furthermore, the report indicates active participation by most African countries in OER was due to the need to have access to quality resources, scientific research promotion, a lowering of educational costs and a desire to have access to disadvantaged communities (COL, 2017a). For many African countries, the problem of expensive textbooks, staff intimidation, and lack of local relevance in materials were observed. Globally, Africa is said to have 9 repositories; the Asia and the Pacific have 26 OER repositories; Europe and North America, 37; Latin America and the Caribbean, 21, and the Middle East and North Africa, one (COL, 2017a). There are global repositories such as COL’s open access repository; Directory of OER Repositories; Directory of Open access Repositories, Global Digital Library; Global Text Project, OER Knowledge Cloud and OER University (COL, 2017a, p.77). Among the OER repositories in Africa are the African storybook, African Virtual University, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology OER, OER Africa, Siyavula and the Young Africa Research Arena (COL, 2017, p.75). But there is need for a more rapid creation, growth, and utilization of repositories in sub-Saharan Africa. This will help to harness current gains in ODL practice and enable new frontiers to blossom. The other major problems of OER in Africa, according to COL (COL, 2017a), are accessibility, relevance, expensive textbooks, outdated textbooks, books without local contexts, the pains of digital divide and the fact that OERs are mostly used in teacher training contexts. Similarly, OERs are used in ODL contexts; this is borne out by the policies existing at UNISA, UCT and Botswana Open University. Libraries play a major role in OER mainstreaming. Some of the barriers to OER use in Tanzania, which are also reflected in other sub-Saharan African countries, are identified by Mtebe and Raizamo (2014) as: • • • •

Lack of access to computers and the internet Low internet bandwidth Absence of policies Lack of skills to create and/or use OER

As sub-Saharan Africa pursues its development dreams through sustainable development policies and agendas, attempts must be made to not only address identified challenges and to explore other avenues, local and international, to pursue its developmental goals.

CONCLUSION The opening up and widening of access to all forms of education, with a corresponding availing of resources for education in sub-Saharan Africa is evident, and more especially at the tertiary level. The 176

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countries examined do not have the same level of growth in terms of access widening initiatives or their promotion of OERs. Access is generally provided by ODL institutions, open universities, OER development and growth and technological platforms that enable access. Most of the countries have open access policies, as reflected in their development agendas, visions and missions, and as articulated in the universities within their domains. The economic indices of the countries reflect their achievements and prospects. Their partnerships and the involvement of the Commonwealth of Learning and other organisations have been helping the process of growth. No doubt universities appear to be driving the open access agenda, in terms of OER growth. The domestication of the SDGs in the sub-continent, is worth noting. The SDGs in many cases, are intrinsically tied to the pursuit of access provision. To what extent this translates to the ultimate use and promotion of OERs remain uncertain. However, considering the extent of ICT development, the evolution of relevant policies and the development of OER agendas in many of these countries, it is reasonable to believe that the opening up of access will continue. As this chapter has shown, access is multifaceted in sub-Saharan Africa. The fourth goal of the SDGs on education expects a response to access through educational provision, quality of education enhancement and the promotion of lifelong learning. Access is also tied to the opportunities which technology development provides. While traditional distance education is being used in many places, the coming of COVID-19, and related developments indicate that the pursuit and use of technology will continue to be paramount, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Any opportunity to mitigate the challenges of equity and equality in educational provisions is a welcome one. In conclusion, the world is moving in the direction of open access, which, like a genie out of the bottle, cannot return to its base. Society’s move towards an open society, the use of technology that enhances openness and the promotion of a learning society all find a platform in an open and distance learning vision, mission and programmes which fuel development. Beyond the institutions with a mandate to promote ODL and access to quality education, all tertiary level institutions in the sub-continent should take a cue from recent developments and promote access through appropriate teaching and learning technologies. On the special role which innovation and the utilization of ICT platforms can play in sustainable development, the submission by the World Economic Forum (2020) is very appropriate at this point. At a country level, we see a strong relationship between countries’ ability to innovate and their progress on the Global Goals. Technology adoption and economic development are inherently linked. Countries that have a strong digital readiness and innovation capacity have often made most progress on the Global Goals whereas countries with less innovation have generally fared less well (World Economic Forum, 2020, p.11). Perhaps in the same vein, one can conclude that the continuing growth and development of ODL, its innovative applications and their use for education and development cannot be overemphasized. As ICT platforms are enabled, and OERs are utilized, ODL will be able to achieve more of its expectations, in opening access and in the promotion of sustainable development.

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RECOMMENDATIONS In ensuring that access in ODL grows and thrives, and access is promoted, especially in the context of OERs, universities and other institutions in sub-Saharan Africa must embrace technology, enact OER policies, organize OER-related relevant training programmes, and encourage staff and students to utilize OERs in their teaching and learning activities. Research relating to OER utilization is also vital, especially for the growth of open and distance learning. Government bodies and agencies must invest in technology, expand bandwidth availability, and fund the enhancement of telecommunication platforms. Private providers of telecommunication networks must support ODL through public private partnership initiatives. The development in Botswana, where Mascom has teamed up with the Botswana Open University to make available zero rating for students studying at a distance should be replicated in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. And on practice, universities must aim for the continuing promotion of ODL, especially its e-learning variety. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools stumbled into ODL in a hurry. While not yearning for another pandemic of this magnitude, it is now necessary to prepare for such, by harnessing the gifts of e-learning early and investing in the right resources to ensure quality.

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COL. (2019). COL in the Commonwealth, 2015-2018. Country reports. Author. COL. (2019). Country Reports. Rwanda. Author. Contact North. (2018). Searchable directory of more than 65 Open universities worldwide. Retrieved from https://teachonline.ca/tools-trends/universities Cox, G., & Trotter, H. (2016). Institutional culture, and OER policy: How structure, culture and agency mediate OER policy potential in South African universities. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributive Learning, 17(5), 147–164. doi:10.19173/irrodl.v17i5.2523 de Hart, K. Chetty, Y. & Archer, E. (2015). Uptake of OER by staff in distance education in South Africa. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(2), 18-44. Development Goals. (n.d.). Retrieved: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/ documents/23432Rwanda_2019_VNR_Final_Draft___17_06_2019.pdf Farrell, G., & Isaacs, S. (2007). Survey of ICT and education in Africa: A summary report based on 53 country surveys (Vol. 1). Washington, DC: InfoDev/World bank. Human Resource Development Council Botswana (HRDC). (2019). Tertiary education statistics. Gaborone: HRDC. ILO. (2016). World employment and social outlook trends. Trends 2016. Author. ILO. (2019). World Employment Social Outlook: Trends 2019. Geneva: Author. Ishengoma, M. (2017). The role of African flagship universities: The case of the University of Dar es Salaam. In D. Teferra Flagship universities in Africa (pp. 373–423). Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/9783-319-49403-6_10 ITU. (2018). Measuring the Information Society (Vol. 1). ITU. ITU. (2018). Measuring the information society report (Vol. 2). ITU. Makoe, M. (2015). A fit for purpose mission for widening access through open distance learning. In M. Letseka (Ed.), Open and distance learning in South Africa (pp. 7–20). Nova Science Publishers. Makokha, G. L., & Mutisya, D. N. (2016). Status of eLearning in public universities in Kenya. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(3), 341–359. doi:10.19173/ irrodl.v17i3.2235 McGreal, R., Miao, F., & Mishra, S. (2016). Introduction, open educational resources: Policy, costs and transformation. In F. Miao, S. Mishra, & R. McGreal (Eds.), Open educational resources: policy, costs and transformation (pp. 1–11). UNESCO and Commonwealth of Learning. Mishra, S. (2017). Open universities in the Commonwealth. COL. Mtebe, J. S., & Raizamo, R. (2014). Investigating barriers to the use of Open Educational Resources in higher education in Tanzania. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 15(2), 43–65. doi:10.19173/irrodl.v15i2.1803

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Mukama, E. (2016). Baseline study on ODeL in Rwanda. COL. Musekiwa, N., & Mandiyanike, D. (2017). Botswana development vision and localization of UN sustainable development goals. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance, 20(December), 135–145. Muuro, M. E., Wagacha, W. P., Oboko, R., & Kilhoro, J. (2014). Students’ perceived challenges in an online collaborative learning environment: A case study of higher learning institutions in Nairobi, Kenya. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 15(6), 132–161. doi:10.19173/ irrodl.v15i6.1768 National Open University of Nigeria. (2018). 14769 graduates at the 7th convocation ceremony. Retrieved from: http://nouedu.net/news/14769-graduands-7th-convocation-ceremony Ngugi, C. N. (2011). OER in Africa’s higher education institutions. Distance Education, 32(2), 277–287. doi:10.1080/01587919.2011.584853 Ngware, M. W., Boukary, H., Wekulo, P., Mutisya, M., Zikani, K., Otieno, C. M. A., & Riechi, A. R. O. (2018). Alternative education and return pathways for out of school youth in sub-Saharan Africa: A background paper for the secondary education (ESA). Preparing youth for the future of work. APHRC. Nkuyubwatsi, B. (2017). Willingness to engage in open educational practices among academics in Rwandan public higher education and responsive actions. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 4(3), 322–337. Nyerere, J. (2016). Open and distance learning in Kenya. A baseline survey report commissioned by the Commonwealth of Learning. COL. Nyerere, J. (2020, April 29). Kenyan university students and lecturers face huge challenges moving online. Retrieved: https://theconversation.com/kenyas-university-students-and-lecturers-face-huge-challengesmoving-online-136682 OECD. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources. OECD Cenre for Educational Research and Innovation. Ouma, R., & Nkuyubwatsi, B. (2019). Transforming university learner support in open and distance education: Staff and students perceived challenges and prospects. Cogent Education, 6(1), 1658934. do i:10.1080/2331186X.2019.1658934 OUT. (2015, June). Facts and figures. Retrieved: https://www.out.ac.tz/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/ FACTS-AND-FIGURES-2014-2015.pdf Owusu-Mensah, F., Anyan, J. A., & Denteyi, C. (2015). Staff development practices of open and distance institutions in Ghana: The case study of the distance education programme of the University of Winneba, Ghana. Journal of Education and Practice, 16(14). Retrieved: www.iiste.org Oyo, B., & Kalema, B. M. (2014). MOOCs for Africa by Africa. Open Praxis, 15(6), 1–14. Paul, R., & Tait, A. (2019). Editorial. Special issue: Open universities: Past, present and future. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 20(4).

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Qayyum, A., & Zawacki-Richter, O. (2019). The state of open and distance education. In O. ZawackiRichter & A. Qayyum (Eds.), Open and distance education in Asia, Africa and the Middle East: National perspectives in a digital age (pp. 125–140)., doi:10.1007/978-981-13-5787-9_14 Republic of Ghana. (2019). Voluntary National Review Report on the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Author. Republic of Kenya (2017, June). Implementation of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development in Kenya. Nairobi: Ministry of Devolution and Planning. Republic of Nigeria (2017). Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Indicative Baseline Report 2016. Abuja: OSSARSDGs and National Bureau of Statistics. Republic of Rwanda. (2016). Towards digital enabled economy. Author. Republic of Rwanda. (2019). Rwanda Voluntary National Review (VNR) Report. Sustainable. Republic of South Africa (2019). South Africa’s implementation of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development: solving complex challenges together. Voluntary National Report 2019. Author. Republic of Tanzania. (2019). Voluntary national review (VNR) 2019: Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality. Retrieved: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/ documents/23429VNR_Report_Tanzania_2019_FINAL.pdf Republic of Uganda. (2016). Review report on Uganda’s readiness for implementation of the 2030 agenda. Author. Rosenburg, M. J. (2001). E-Learning: Strategies for delivering knowledge in the digital age. McGraw-Hill. Santos-Hermosa, G., Ferran-Ferrer, N., & Abadal, E. (2017). Repositories of open educational resources: An assessment of reuse and educational aspects. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(5), 84–120. doi:10.19173/irrodl.v18i5.3063 Tabulawa, R., & Youngman, F. (2017). University of Botswana: A national university in decline? In D. Teferra (Ed.), Flagship universities in Africa (pp. 17–55). Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3319-49403-6_2 Tait, A. (2013). Distance and e-learning, social justice, and development: The relevance of capability approaches to the mission of open universities. Open Praxis, 14(4), 1–13. Tau, D. (2020). Strategic orientation of BOU professors. Vice Chancellor’s address. Gaborone: Botswana Open University Boardroom. Tikly, L. (2019). Education for sustainable development in Africa: A critique of regional agendas. Asia Pacific Education Review, 20(2), 223–227. doi:10.100712564-019-09600-5 UIS. (2017). UNESCO Institute for Statistics Fact sheet No. 45. UNESCO. UMI. (2018). Report of the Baseline study on technology-enabled learning at the Uganda Management Institute. Burnaby: Commonwealth of Learning.

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UNDP. (2014). Human development report: Sustaining human progress: Reducing vulnerabilities and building resilience. Author. UNDP. (2015). United Nations Development Programme. (UNDP) (2015a) Botswana: Millennium Development Goals status report 2015 – Sustaining progress to 2015 and beyond. Author. UNDP. (2019). Human Development Report. Author. UNDP. (2019). Human development report. Author. (Original work published 2019) UNESCO. (2015). Education for all 2000-2015: Achievements and challenges. Author. UNESCO. (2018). Global Monitoring Report. Migration, displacement, and education: Building bridges, not walls. Author. UNISA. (2019). Unisa Trial Audit 2019. Author. United Nations. (2017). The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017. New York: UN. World Bank. (2020). School enrolment, tertiary (% gross) - Sub-Saharan Africa. Retrieved: https://data. worldbank.org/indicator/SE.TER.ENRR?locations=ZG World Economic Forum. (2020). Unlocking technology for the global goals. Geneva, Switzerland: Author.

ADDITIONAL READING Bates, T. (2019). Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. Vancouver: Tony Bates Associates.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Access: Openness in educational offerings or a lack of barrier or hindrance to accessing education. E-Learning: The use of Internet technologies to deliver a broad array of solutions that enhance knowledge and performance (Rosenberg, 2001). Open Access: A lack of hindrance in accessing the information resources required for education. Open and Distance Learning: The acquisition of knowledge and skills through information and communication and technology (ICT), and other forms of learning at a distance (Nyerere, 2016). Open Educational Resources: Teaching and learning resources in any medium, digital or otherwise, that permit no-cost access, use, reuse and repurposing by others with no or limited restrictions (McGreal, 2016). Open Universities: Dedicated universities set us solely for the promotion of open and distance learning and which use a wide array of technologies for that purpose. Sustainable Development: The pursuit of change in social, economic, and other spheres, in a way that ensures change, without depleting the resources driving or resulting from such a change.

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Opportunities Associated With Open Access Initiatives: Perspectives of Research Students From Selected Universities in Nigeria Adeyinka Tella https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5382-4471 University of Ilorin, Nigeria Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha University of South Africa, South Africa

ABSTRACT The chapter examines the opportunities associated with open access (OA) initiatives from the perspective of research students in selected Nigerian universities. A survey design was adopted to conduct the study, whereby the questionnaire was the instrument of data collection. The findings revealed that OA is perceived by the research students as a good idea, easy, beneficial in terms of access and use and usually makes research more interesting. OA most importantly provides opportunities such as enabling readers with the access to publish articles, the future of scholarly research, and publishes faster than the traditional outlets, along with wider dissemination of research and opportunity of free access to all. Incentives of OA include users’ accessibility, copyright retention by authors, high quality publications, among others; while the disincentives of OA include lack of reach, cost of publishing, and inadequate quality of some OA platforms. A considerable number of respondents have the continuous intention to use OA instead of traditional platforms, for study and research, as an autonomous tool for improving research and to recommend to colleagues. Significant challenges associated with OA include procrastination, inadequate ICT infrastructure, high cost of internet, and slow speed of internet, restrictions placed on using storage devices like discs or flash drive for downloading contents from OA platforms, among others. The chapter made recommendations based on the findings.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch010

Copyright © 2021, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

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INTRODUCTION The open access (OA) initiative is gaining pace worldwide and it’s now critical for all involved in scholarly publishing such as policymakers, research funders, publishers, government, learned societies, librarians and academic communities to be aware of and well informed about the genealogy, advantages and shortcoming of OA. Part of the advancement in technology is the issue of OA to scholarly communication. OA typically provides an internet-based digital platform for the publication of research output with unrestricted access to the public, while scholarly publication networks encompass interlinked information access to a database by educational institutions (Abdulhayyu, 2013). The growth of OA and scholarly communication has been remarkable in most developed countries. However, academic and research institutions in many developing countries, inclusive of Nigeria, are still struggling to deal with the challenges in an attempt to make their research outputs openly available and accessible. As postulated by Jain (2012), the digital age comes with the responsibility to explore new publishing technologies and economic models to improve access to scholarly work. Widely circulated published communication is considered an addition to knowledge. OA benefits the right to know and the right to be known (Wllingsky, 2010). It has become increasingly expedient to close the gap between the developed and less developed countries. And as Jain (2012) points out, this can only be achieved through access to information for educational, cultural, and scientific development. OA can foster information and knowledge sharing within research, educational, and scientific communities in traditionally economically disadvantaged regions (Canada, 2009). OA makes scholarly research permanently available online without restriction, which can provide benefits to all those who have a stake in the scholarly publishing process – researchers, funders, students, librarians, scholarly societies, publishers and the general public. OA plays an important role in enabling the society to fulfil the mission of furthering the advancement of learning, knowledge and research worldwide (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Some decades ago, the economic market, and technological foundations that sustained the symbolic publisher-market relationship started shifting (Benkler, 2006). This is consequent on what is called the networked information economy which is gradually replacing the industrial information economy that characterised information production from about the second half of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century (Abdulhayyu, 2013; Ola, 2015). OA initiatives facilitate the free availability and distribution of scholarly communication and it is the free, immediate online availability of peer reviewed research papers with full re-use rights. Before the inception of OA, researchers including postgraduate students had to pay a certain amount of money before access could be enabled to scholarly publications. Research findings are not disseminated freely and widely currently, thereby resulting in restrictions in readership and reduction in the overall impact. As with most universities in Africa, Nigeria in particular emphasises research (publication outputs). Now, the number of Universities in Nigeria is growing and so also is the population of the research students on doctoral and master degree programmes. These universities function as a focal point for academic research in Nigeria. Egwunyenga (2008) ascribes this as the research that is made compulsory for both lecturers and students either by job description or by prescribed academic programme of study. For lecturers and academics, the concept of ‘publish or perish’ has come to strap their subsistence and promotion within the academic environment to the volume of their research output and published works (Abdulhayyu, 2013). On the part of the students (doctoral and master students), the nature of their academic studies requires that they actively engage in research activities either in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree being sought or as part of a terminal thesis or dissertation (Egwunyenga, 184

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2008). In light of these requirements on the part of both lecturers and students, it is expected that the volume of research output originating from academic institutions and addressing local problems in Nigeria will be high. However, the reverse seems to be case. The reason being that the potential of OA seems to not be as fully annexed by these research students as their counterparts in some developing African countries, such as South Africa, and developed countries, including the UK and America. Issues such as subscription to OA databases and inadequate access skills which are lacking among the research students are worth mentioning. CODESRIA (2016:1) comments on the potential of OA. The organisation expressed that, “(OA) to scholarly publications and information is transforming global relations and means of knowledge production, dissemination and use based on the power of information technologies to enforce free scholarly content. It is facilitating direct linkages between scholars/authors and the public, and enabling a free flow of ideas vital to the process of scientific inquiry, and the ability of individuals and communities and institutions to address economic, environmental and social development issues, both regionally and globally. OA leverages the combined power of scholarly information and technology to serve the public good, but it has not been fully harnessed in Africa and the Global South”. This raises the question of the perception of opportunities of OA possessed by research students. Perhaps, Africa has not realised that OA possesses the potential or can provide opportunities that can be tapped to improve research, economic, environmental and social development issues as mentioned earlier. While the OA movement has been a topic of major debate and interest around the world; in developing countries, it has been seen as an unprecedented opportunity for providing equality of access to essential research information and for raising awareness of the national research output. In spite of this, there is a general lack of consensus regarding the potentialities/opportunities of OA particularly from the perspective of research students comprising of those in doctoral and master degree programmes. This chapter therefore aims at examining the opportunities associated with OA initiatives from the perspective of research students in selected universities in Nigeria. The chapter also focuses discussion on the perception of research students on the implications of OA for sustainable social, political and economic development.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The broad objective of the chapter was to examine the opportunities associated with OA initiatives from the perspective of research students in selected universities in Nigeria. The specific objectives were to: i. Examine the overall perception of OA by the research students in Nigerian universities. ii. Identify the opportunities/potentialities associated with OA initiatives by research students from universities in Nigeria. iii. Determine the incentives and disincentives of publishing in OA as perceived by research students in Nigeria universities. iv. Ascertain the intention of research students in Nigeria universities to publish in OA. v. Identify the challenges associated with publishing in OA by research students in Nigerian universities.

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LITERATURE REVIEW Definitions abound on OA as many experts have attempted to define the concept in one way or the another. OA is free, immediate, permanent online access to the full text of research articles for anyone. OA helps to ensure long-term access to scholarly articles. Unlike articles that are licensed in traditional article databases, libraries can create local copies and institutional repositories of these resources. Libraries, by working together to make repositories of OA literature, can ensure continued access to these scholarly publications in the distant future. OA means that electronic scholarly articles are available freely at any point of use. In general, OA publications are those made freely available online to anyone anywhere, with no charges imposed for access. As emphasised by Tennant, Waldner, Jacques, Masuzzo, Collister, and Hartgerink (2016), OA refers to the removal of major obstacles to accessing, sharing and re-using the outputs of scholarly research. The rationale is that the research process is facilitated by ensuring rapid and widespread access to research findings such that all communities have the opportunity to build upon them and participate in scholarly conversations. The impact of OA is well noticed in three major areas: academic, economic and societal. While there is clearly much scope for additional research, several key trends have been identified, including a broad citation advantage for researchers who publish openly, as well as additional benefits to the non-academic dissemination of their work. The economic impact of OA is less well-understood, although it is clear that access to the research literature is key for innovative enterprises, and a range of governmental and nongovernmental services. Furthermore, OA has the potential to save both publishers and research funders’ considerable amounts of financial resources, and can provide some economic benefits to traditional subscription-based journals. The societal impact of OA is strong, in particular for advancing citizen science initiatives, and levelling the playing field for researchers in developing countries. OA supersedes all potential alternative modes of access to the scholarly literature through enabling unrestricted re-use, and long-term stability independent of financial constraints of traditional publishers that impede knowledge sharing. However, OA has the potential to become unsustainable for research communities if high-cost options are allowed to continue to prevail in a widely unregulated scholarly publishing market. OA remains only one of the multiple challenges that the scholarly publishing system is currently facing. Yet, it provides one foundation for increasing engagement with researchers regarding ethical standards of publishing and the broader implications of ‘Open Research’.

IMPACT OF OPEN ACCESS The impact of OA abound. The academic impact of OA is frequently measured through citation counts, and these remain fundamental as the ‘currency units’ for researchers, research groups, institutes and universities. Lawrence (2001) was the first to propose that OA would have a citation advantage. The utility and consistency of the citation advantage across different research fields has been intensively debated because its magnitude substantially varies depending on the discipline, However, the general tendency identified by studies to date indicates that there is at least some association between OA publishing and increased citation counts across most disciplines (Antelman, 2004; Hajjem et al., 2006). A comprehensive and annotated bibliography of studies documenting potential citation impacts was created by Steve Hitchcock and has been managed by SPARC Europe since 2013. 186

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As indicated in the literature, the estimates for the open citation advantage range from +36% (Biology) to +600% (Agricultural Sciences) (Swan, 2010; Wagner, 2010). In a longitudinal study, Eysenbach (2006) compared the bibliometric impact of a cohort of articles from a multidisciplinary journal (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) that offers both OA and non-OA publishing options. After adjusting for potentially confounding variables, the results indicated that non-OA papers were twice as likely to remain uncited six months after publication when compared to OA articles. Additionally, the average number of citations for OA articles was more than double that of the non-OA articles. The study also differentiated the type of OA article, namely the self-archived (i.e., Green OA) and the publisher version of record that is freely available (i.e., Gold OA). Gold OA was found to have a higher overall academic impact than Green OA. Despite strong evidence for a citation advantage, the magnitude of this advantage remains variable. The substantial heterogeneity in observed citation advantages can be due to different academic cultures or could simply be spurious. For example, self-archiving prior to publication is a community standard in fields such as high energy physics or mathematics, but has yet to be widely adopted among the life sciences. Such ‘pre-prints’ have also been associated with an overall increase in the average number of citations, the total number of citations, and the speed of citation accumulation (Aman, 2014; Gentil-Beccot et al., 2010). Other studies could only replicate immense citation advantages, if relevant predictors were omitted (McCabe & Snyder, 2014), which indicates a potential spurious effect. When taking into account these relevant predictors, the citation advantage becomes much smaller. When the citation advantage is low or non-existent, this could suggest that in those research fields, there is a sufficient level of access to the literature such that OA confers no localised access advantage, or that adoption of OA has not yet reached a level where any such advantage has become statistically evident. OA pertains to documents made available via two main pathways: the Gold route and the Green route (Harnad et al., 2008). The Gold route refers to freely accessible research articles at the point of publication. This route is often, although not always, accompanied by article processing charges (APCs). The Green route refers to author self-archiving, in which peer-reviewed articles and/or not peer-reviewed pre-prints are posted online to an institutional and/or subject repository, or to a personal website. This route is often dependent on journal or publisher policies on self-archiving. Some publishers require an embargo period before deposition in public repositories is allowed. These embargoes are applied in order to avoid putative reductions in subscription income due to such self-archiving, although there is little evidence to support the existence of such embargoes (Bernius et al., 2013; Houghton & Oppenheim, 2010). The Green route is also enabled through author rights retention, in which authors pre-emptively grant non-exclusive rights to their institutions before publishing any works. The institution then has the ability to make articles by these authors OA without seeking permission from the publishers (e.g., the Dutch Taverne amendment that has declared self-archival of research after ‘a reasonable period of time’ a legal right (Visser, 2015). Through these dual pathways, almost 25% of all scholarly documents archived on the Web are now obtainable via OA somewhere on the Internet (Khabsa & Giles, 2014). OA is becoming increasingly encouraged, even mandated, in some high-income countries (HICs). For example, the European Union (EU) runs a project to encourage all EU-funded research to place results in an OA repository and publish in OA journals (Sample, 2013). At the same time, the Wellcome Trust and some countries, including the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) Research Council (RCUK Proposed Policy on Access to Research Outputs, 2012; Wellcome, Trust, 2013), Denmark and Australia (Hood, 2013), are either planning or implementing OA policies whereby the publication of publicly funded research in OA journals will be mandatory. These have been beneficial, with OA articles being cited earlier and 187

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more often than non-OA articles (Right to Research Coalition, 2013; Norris Oppenheim & Rowland, 2008; Hood, 2013) . This demonstrates potential for OA to accelerate and improve scientific advancement, research visibility, knowledge dissemination, and translation of knowledge from research into practice. These developments in HICs have the potential to impact African researchers both positively and negatively. On the one hand, scientific researchers in the African region may soon be able to access more research articles than they were previously able to. On the other hand, these same individuals may not be able to publish in Gold OA journals due to the high publishing cost and the fact that most African governments have no explicit policies mandating OA publishing. like the one in the UK (Sarah, 2013; RCUK Proposed Policy on Access to Research Outputs, 2012; Hood, 2013). Effects of OA also reflect academically in many areas. The two main ways in which OA affects academia are through association with a higher documented impact of scholarly articles, as a result of availability and re-use, and through the possibility of non-restrictively allowing researchers to use automated tools to access the scholarly literature. For the former, major arguments in favour of OA include the evidence that work that is openly available generates more academic citations, but also has more societal impact. In addition, appropriately-licensed OA works play a major role in education, including re-use in classes and for dissertations. The latter major argument involves non-restrictive access to the scholarly literature through appropriate licensing, making it possible to use automated tools to collect and analyse the entire body of scholarly literature in a legally sound framework and irrespective of copyright laws. Matheka et al. (2014) point out that despite advances made on OA, a number of constraints to equitable access to scientific research publications still exist. Like other LMICs, users lack access to expensive subscription-based scientific journals and OA policies, and researchers are burdened by high publishing fees. Therefore, it is prudent to strengthen the efforts, and potentially replicate it in other African nations. OA implementation requires multidisciplinary input and therefore needs various stakeholders (governments, researchers, institutions, journals, libraries, civil society, non-governmental organisations [NGOs], policymakers, Information and communications technology [ICT], and students) to work collaboratively to solve these challenges. To Tennant et al. (2016), there are two key challenges to equitable access to scientific research publications in Africa. The first is the lack of access to subscription-based scientific journals. Traditionally, when scientific breakthroughs relevant to Africa are made, they are published in nonOA journals whose prohibitive subscription (or access) costs are often in the order of US$30 per paper (The price per article for Elsevier journals on ScienceDirect is US$41.95 as of Jan 26, 2020) (Science Direct, 2020), which is unaffordable for most researchers. The high subscription cost inhibits the exposure of African research scientists and students to these discoveries and their ability to either use the most up-to-date research knowledge to strengthen their research or to build upon other research (Dulle, Minishi-Majanja, 2009; Raju, Smith & Gibson, 2013). This can lead to additional adverse consequences on education and research in Africa, which leads to a continual cycle of restricted knowledge. African research scientists might lack access to their fellow researchers’ work, and students may lack access to the work of their senior colleagues and researchers around the world. Researchers and students therefore lack capacity to practice evidence-based science compounding further the challenges of implementing research projects and translating research findings into marketable products (Right to Research Coalition, 2013).

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RELATED STUDIES A number of studies have been conducted related to the current study. For instance, Ejikeme, Ezema (2019) examined the state of OA institutional repositories in Nigeria. Expository review of literature was used to x-ray the state of the art, while descriptive informetrics was used to extract informetric data from two major repository directories (Registry of Open Access Repositories and Directory of Open Access Repositories). Findings revealed that Nigeria has twenty repositories from 14 out of about 153 universities in the country; the majority of the repositories (70%) use DSpace as archiving software. The growth of repositories in the country has been slow, and the dominant contents of the repositories are journal articles, theses, and dissertations. While the study exposes the weaknesses of Nigeria universities in exploring the potentials of institutional repositories in the wider dissemination their scientific productivity, it challenges government and other stakeholders to develop a sustainable framework for the development of repositories in the country. Woszczynski and Whiteman (2016), examine the perspectives on OA opportunities for IS research publication: potential benefits for researchers, educators, and students in the United State of America. The study surveyed 68 IS scholars and found that IS scholars do not publish in OA journals due to concerns about fees, quality, prestige, and impact factors. This study found more similarities than differences between junior- and senior-level IS scholars, with junior faculty members placing more emphasis on the speed of publication than their senior colleagues do. By understanding the major reasons that IS faculty are favouring OA options, the study shed light on the reliance on traditional journal publication models that restrict the distribution of intellectual property. If the OA model were to be embraced by more journals, IS faculty members and their students would benefit through speedy access to relevant content to support faculty professional development, instruction, and research. Chepkoech (2015) investigated the adoption of OA initiatives in the dissemination of research findings by academic staff in selected universities in Kenya. The objectives were to establish the types of outlets accessed by academic staff, find out the extent to which academic staff were aware of OA, to determine the level of usage of OA outlets by academic staff in accessing and disseminating their research work and to determine the attitude of academic staff towards OA initiatives. The study utilised the theory of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Descriptive research design was used for this study. In total 301 academic staff from both the University of Nairobi and Africa Nazarene University were selected using simple random sampling methods. Stratified sampling was used to stratify the academic staff according to their academic status and simple random sampling was used to get samples from each of the strata. Questionnaires, documents and a desk review were used to collect data and information. A pilot study was conducted at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa to assure validity and reliability. Descriptive statistics such as percentages and means were used for analysis. Findings revealed that the attitude of academic staff towards OA was positive signifying acceptance of this mode of scholarly communication. However, traditional outlets were still the preferred mode of scholarly communication by academic staff and that OA publishing was low. The study recommends institutionalisation of OA publishing in universities in Kenya and training on OA issues to improve access and dissemination of scholarly research. The author claimed that research would be useful to academic institutions, education and policy administrators and libraries in Kenya to improve the usage of OA outlets among academic staff. Matheka et al. (2014) highlight the current status and future challenges of OA in Africa. The author placed particular emphasis on Kenya, where multidisciplinary efforts to improve access have been established. The author noted that these efforts in Kenya can be further strengthened and potentially replicated 189

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in other African countries, with the goal of elevating the visibility of African research and improving access for African researchers to global research, and, ultimately, bring social and economic benefits to the region. The study offered recommendations for overcoming the challenges of implementing OA in Africa and called for urgent action by African governments to follow developed countries like the UK and Australia, mandating OA for publicly-funded research in their region and supporting future research on how OA might bring social and economic benefits to Africa. Togia and Korrobili (2014) report the results of a meta-synthesis of the empirical literature on scholars’ attitudes towards OA (OA) journals. A total of 15 articles published in scholarly journals since 2002 (when the Budapest Open Access Initiative was released) were included in the study and five major themes emerged from their examination and analysis. The literature indicates that attitudes and perceptions of OA varied across countries and disciplines. Free access, which is perceived to facilitate wider dissemination of research outputs, is a strong incentive for publishing in OA. However, quality and reputation are the most important factors in selecting a journal and take priority over the availability of free access. Although OA is perceived to have many advantages over the traditional publication model, it also raises some concerns especially the author-pays model, the quality of peer-review and the impact of the journals. Islam and Akter (2013) discuss the situation of OA in the developing world, with a focus on Bangladesh. The study addressed reasons why OA is important for developing countries and the initiatives that have been taken in Bangladesh. The study identified some challenges of OA and made suggestions on how to overcome them. It was reported that developing countries have always faced the problem of access to research information and were unable to afford sufficient subscriptions to journals. Also there is poor dissemination of the research outcomes. In Bangladesh, only three organisations have an institutional repository with a reasonable number of local OA journals. Jain (2012), in a review of literature on promoting OA to research in academic libraries, examined academic libraries’ initiatives in promoting OA. The author looked at the obstacles and challenges faced in OA with specific reference to developing countries; and explained the concept of OA. The author concluded that academic libraries are ceaselessly striving to be involved in scholarly publishing to bring scholars together around the world through OA. It was also indicated that here are many benefits of OA. However, in spite of many positive indications, developing countries still lag behind in achieving its full objectives. The author emphasised that the noble objective of OA will not be realised if scholars in developing countries merely constitute ‘active consumers’ and ‘passive contributors’ under the initiative - reading only research works and publications by scholars and academics from developed countries published in the OA journals and archives (Christian, 2006). The author emphasises numerous problems in the realisation of the full objective of OA in the developing world; and notes that they need to be addressed to make knowledge and information readily and widely available to people irrespective of where they live. Abdulhayyu (2014) identifies the challenges and the effects of OA in Nigeria. Notable amongst these are: lack of awareness of OA publishing; dearth of cross linked e-libraries; inadequate information and communication technology infrastructure; inadequate and epileptic power supply; inadequate funding of research institutions; and inhibiting copyright protection regime. The author concludes that by prescribing a copyright regime that will assure researchers of intellectual property rights protection for research outputs should be published in digital networks. From the analysis of related studies, it is clear that most of the studies were conducted outside of Africa. Most of the studies emphasise promoting OA in developing countries, challenges associated with 190

 Opportunities Associated With Open Access Initiatives

OA, the situation of OA in developing countries, and attitude of scholars towards OA. Most of these studies approach their discussion from the literature review perspective. The two most related studies are Woszczynski and Whiteman (2016) and Chepkoech (2015). The two studies are similar but yet still differ in some respects. For instance, Woszczynski and Whiteman (2016), examine the perspectives on OA opportunities for IS research publication: potential benefits for researchers, educators, and students in the United State of America; while Chepkoech (2015) investigates the adoption of OA initiatives in dissemination of research findings by academic staff in selected universities in Kenya. Woszczynski and Whiteman (2016) seem to be the most relevant to the current study as it focuses on perspectives of OA opportunities by IS scholar while the current study focuses on the perspectives of research students in Nigeria on the opportunities of OA initiatives. While the former was conducted in the US focusing on IS scholars, the current study was conducted in Nigeria focusing on research students. Generally, limited studies have focused precisely on the perspectives of the research students on the opportunities of OA from a developing country, such as Nigeria. Also, looking at Jain’s (2012) study, it was emphasised that the noble objective of OA will not be realised if scholars in developing countries merely constitute ‘active consumers’ and ‘passive contributors’. It is on this note that this study identifies research students who are regarded as emerging scholars in Africa and examines their perspectives on the opportunities of OA in promoting their research.

Research Methodology Research Design This study adopts the survey method as its research design. Creswell (2018) describes descriptive research as the process of gathering information about prevailing conditions or situations for the purpose of description and interpretation. A survey was adopted because it involves describing characteristics of population of interest on a particular problem and the response of the people is expected to provide solutions to the problem.

Target Population and sampling The target population for the study consists of postgraduate students in selected universities in Southwest, Nigeria. From this region, ten universities were purposefully selected to participate in the study. The entire population of postgraduate students in the ten selected universities constitute the population of the study. The sample for the study was taken through simple random sampling of the available respondents that the researchers met at each of the university’s graduate school when the instrument was being distributed. This made the sample from each of the universities varied. The selection of the participated universities was based on the functionality of their institutional repositories where research students have the opportunity to use OA. The names of the participated universities were not mentioned for anonymity and confidentiality. As shown in the table (1), a total of 511 postgraduate students represent the sample for the study. The analysis of the sample taken from each of the universities is as follows:

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Table 1. Sample Selection S/N

Universities

Sample Taken

1.

University A

96

2.

University B

72

3.

University C

63

4.

University D

38

5.

University E

44

6.

University F

47

7.

University G

57

8.

University H

28

9.

University I

25

10.

University J

41

Total

511

Data collection method and Procedure A researcher designed questionnaire was used for the collection of data. The questionnaire has been known as one of the most effective instruments for collecting data in a survey study. The questionnaire was divided into two sections, i.e. Section A and B. Section A collected data on the demographic information of the respondents including age, gender, and level of study. Section B featured items related to opportunities to use OA by postgraduate students. The response format to the items in the questionnaire varied based on the variable focused on in each part of the questionnaire. The response ranges from Strongly Agree, (SA) to Strongly Disagree, (SD); Not at all important to Extremely important; while others were just response by ticking as applicable. Section B was sub-divided into seven parts, each focusing on addressing the objectives of the study.

Validity and Reliability of the Instrument To achieve the validity of the items in the questionnaire, it was given to two colleagues in the research department to check for the relevance of the contents and to ensure its face validity. The comments and suggestions of colleagues led to the modification, removal and substitution of some of the items. This study adopted the test-retest method in testing the reliability of the questionnaire. Copies of the questionnaire were administered on thirty postgraduate students of a university outside South-west, Nigeria. The collected responses were split into two equal halves and analysed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation to ascertain the co-efficient of the questionnaire. The reliability of each part of the questionnaire and over-reliability of the entire questionnaire reveal the following. The researchers worked with two research assistants to collect data at the first university and later allocated one person to cover three universities each. With this exercise, a visit was made to the postgraduate school in each of the participating universities. For two days each, research students found at the postgraduate school or college and students’ hall of residence in each university were administered the questionnaire. However, none were forced to take part in completing the questionnaire but were

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Table 2. Reliability Co-efficient S/N

Variables

No of Items

Co-efficient

1

5

0.77

2

12

0.69

3

5

0.69

4

15

0.71

5

8

0.69

6 7

5 8

0.74 0.81

Overall reliability of scale 58 0.72 Source: Author’s fieldwork (2019)

intimated with the purpose of the study and were assured of the confidentiality of their response. They were also made aware that they reserve the right to withdraw from participating in the study. Based on the sample of the study, a total of 511 copies of the questionnaire were administered and returned properly filled in and good for data analysis.

Method of Data Analysis This study is a descriptive survey research study, hence the data collected was analysed using the descriptive method of analysis and inferential statistics. The research questions were analysed using frequency counts and simple percentage. Moreover, the hypotheses will be tested with t-test and multiple regression.

Ethical Considerations The researcher ensured the collection of a letter of introduction from the Head of Department of Library and Information Science in order to help in the collection of data for this study. All reviewed literature was engaged objectively. In the course of the administration of the questionnaire, none of the respondents were compelled to participate in the study. The anonymity of the participatory respondents was also ensured.

RESULTS The demographic characteristics of the respondents indicate that 321 respondents (62.8%) were male while 190 (37.2%) were female. In terms of age, 279 respondents (54.6%) fall under the ages of 21-25 years and constitute the majority. This is followed by those in the age range of 26-30 years, 137 (26.8%), and those in the age range of 31-35 years, 67 (13.1%); while 28 respondents, (5.5%) fall into the age range of 36 years and above. The data on the level of study reveals that 357 (69.9%) are at the masters level while 154 (30.1%) are at the doctoral level. Table 4 features the perception of research students on OA. The results reveal that majority strongly agree and agree that ‘OA is beneficial to the scholarly community’ compared to the percentage of those who don’t know, disagree or strongly disagree. Similarly, research students opined that ‘Publishing in

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OA outlets is a good idea’. This strong agree and agree by the majority compared to the minority that don’t know, disagree and strongly disagree. ‘Publishing in OA is easy’ was perceived by the majority who strongly agree and agree to the statement compared to those who disagree and strongly disagree. The majority of the respondents also strongly agree and agree that ‘Accessing and use of OA materials is a good idea’ and that ‘Publishing in OA outlets would make research more interesting’. The results here generally imply that OA is perceived by the research students as a good idea, easy, beneficial in terms of access and use, and usually makes research more interesting. Table 3. Demographic Distribution of Respondents (N=511) Demographics

Frequency

Percent (%)

Gender Male

321

62.8

Female

190

37.2

Total

511

100.0

21-25 years

279

54.6

26-30 years

137

26.8

31-35 years

67

13.1

36 years +

28

5.5

Total

511

100.0

Master’s Level

357

69.9

M.Phil/Ph.D.

154

30.1

Total

511

100.0

Age

Level of Study

Source: Author’s fieldwork (2019)

Table 4. Perception of Open Access by Research Students (N=511) Perception

Strongly Agree

Agree

Undecided

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

349 (69.2%)

157 30.7

4 0.7

1 0.2

1 0.2

321 62.8

183 36.8

1 0.1

0 0

0 0

1.

Publishing in OA outlets is a good idea.

2.

Publishing in OA is easy

3.

OA is beneficial to the scholarly community.

353 69.0

155 30.3

2 0.2

1 0.2

0 0

4.

Accessing and use of OA materials is a good idea.

201 39.3

267 52.2

23 4.5

10 1.9

10 1.9

5.

Publishing in OA outlets would make research more interesting.

279 54.5

193 37.7

27 5.2

7 1.3

4 0.7

Source: Author’s fieldwork (2019)

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Table 5 reveals results on OA opportunities. The table reveals that the most prominent opportunity provided by OA is that it enables readers with access to published articles. This is followed by the revelation that OA is the future of scholarly research and that it publishes faster than the traditional outlets. Another opportunity indicated is that it can be in any format ranging from texts and data to software, audio, video and multi-media and event with their pre-print. It usually has a high impact factor with visibility, high speed of publication, wider dissemination, and free access to all. This implies that OA most importantly provides opportunities such as enabling readers with access to published articles; the future of scholarly research and publishes faster than the traditional outlets along with wider dissemination of research and the opportunity of free access to all. Table 5. Open Access Opportunities (N=511) Frequency

Percentage%

1.

Providing readers with free access to published articles makes OA journals superior to traditional journals.

Opportunities

506

99.0

2.

OA publishing is the future of scholarly research.

504

98.6

3.

In general, OA journals publish faster than traditional journals.

500

97.8

4.

OA contents can be in any format from texts and data to software, audio, video, and multi-media, scholarly articles and their pre-prints.

500

97.8

5.

Perceived Impact Factor of Published Work

487

95.3

6.

Peer vs Editorial Review Method

456

89.2

7.

Visibility of Journal

444

86.8

8.

Speed of Publication

443

86.6

9.

Copyright Ownership (author vs publisher)

440

86.1

10.

Number of Journal Subscribers/Readers

438

85.7

11.

Wider dissemination of research and increased citation of a researchers’ work

437

85.5

12.

Free access to all and sundry

436

85.3

Source: Author’s fieldwork (2019)

Aside from the opportunities listed in the table, respondents were given an opportunity to add others. Parts of the other opportunities indicated are the following: Materials on OA can be accessed by anybody from anywhere without any discrimination; material can be freely used by anyone; OA is free of copyright and licensing restrictions; materials are available online or on the Internet; there is efficient archiving and availability; metadata can be harvested; guaranteed sustainable storage and accessibility; OA presents material in full text; and the retention of copyright by authors. Table 6 reveals results on the OA incentives as perceived by the research students. The results indicate that in terms of users’ accessibility, a considerable number of respondents 508 (99.4%) indicated it is important, very important and extremely important compared to others who indicated not at all important and somewhat important. A considerable number of respondents 507 (99.2%) indicated broad exposure as an incentive of OA compared to (0.1%) who indicated not all important and somewhat important. Copyright retention is another incentive indicated by the respondents. O the respondents, 503 representing (98.4%) indicated important, very important and extremely important respectively.

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Table 6. Significance of Open Access Incentives (N=511) Not at all important

Somewhat important

Important

Very important

Extremely important

F

1

2

57

188

263

%

0.2

0.5

11.1

36.7

51.4

F

2

2

65

156

286

Incentives 1

Users’ accessibility

2

Broad exposure

3

Copyright retention

4.

High quality publication

5.

Institution/college/department covers author’s fees

6.

Publication recognition

7.

Rapid dissemination

8.

Speed of publication

9.

Fee-based or non-fee-based

%

0.5

0.5

12.7

30.5

55.9

F

5

3

87

149

267

%

1.0

0.7

17.0

29.1

52.2

F

9

1

123

136

242

%

1.7

0.2

24.0

26.6

47.3

F

3

7

119

141

241

%

0.7

1.3

23.2

27.5

47.1

F

7

7

136

153

208

%

1.3

1.3

26.6

29.9

40.7

F

6

13

155

144

193

%

1.1

2.5

30.3

28.1

37.7

F

13

9

161

128

200

%

2.5

1.7

31.5

25.0

39.1

F

3

23

141

173

171

%

0.7

4.5

27.5

33.8

33.4

Source: Author’s fieldwork (2019) Key: f – frequency; % percentage

Respondents also indicated high quality publication, institutional covering of authors fees, publication recognition, rapid dissemination in terms of speed and fee-based versus non-fee-based. The results here imply that incentives of OA include users’ accessibility, copyright retention by authors, and high quality publications among others. The disincentives of OA were revealed in Table 7. The results show that there are concerns for lack of reach of published articles. This was indicated as important, very important and extremely important by 476 respondents (93.2%) as opposed to those indicated not at all important and somewhat important. Similarly, cost of publishing for fee-based OA platforms was indicated as disincentive by 468 (91.6%) respondents as opposed to respondents who indicated not important and somewhat important. Another disincentive indicated is inadequate quality of some OA as indicated by 456 (89.2%) of the respondents opposed to others who indicated not at all important and somewhat important. Other disincentives revealed in this table are lower impact of some OA platform compared to traditional ones and low peer perceptions of OA values. The results here imply that disincentives of OA include lack of reach, cost of publishing and inadequate quality of some OA platforms.

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Table 7. Significance of Open Access Disincentives (N=511) S/N

Not at all important

Disincentives

1.

Concerns for lack of reach of published articles

2.

Cost of publishing in fee-based OA platforms

3.

Inadequate quality of some OA publication

4.

Inadequate OA support from institution

5.

Lower impact factor than traditional venues

6.

Low Peer perceptions of OA values.

Somewhat important

Important

Very important

Extremely important

f

12

23

45

121

310

%

2.3

4.5

8.8

23.6

60.6

f

9

34

56

138

274

%

1.7

6.6

10.9

27.0

53.6

f

11

44

67

167

222

%

2.1

8.6

13.1

32.6

43.4

f

7

32

81

157

234

%

1.3

6.2

15.8

30.7

45.7

f

7

51

78

141

234

%

1.3

9.9

15.2

27.5

45.7

f

11

27

81

177

215

%

2.1

5.2

15.8

34.6

42.0

Source: Author’s fieldwork (2019) Key: f – frequency; % percentage

In terms of use intention continuous of OA by research students, the results indicate that the majority (95.8%) prefer to publish and continue using OA instead of traditional outlets. The majority (97.2%) indicated their intention to publish in OA in the near future, the majority (99.9%) indicated to use OA for study and research while (95.6%) of the respondents intend to study other subjects through OA. In addition, the results reveal that the majority (97.2%) intend to increase their use of OA in the future, (94%) indicated recommending OA to colleagues to study and research, (95.3%) indicated using OA to improve their research while (93.8%) indicated they intend to use OA as an autonomous research tool. The results here imply that a considerable number of respondents (99.5%) on average have the continuous intention to use OA instead of traditional platforms, for study and research, as an autonomous tool for improving research and to recommend to colleagues. Table 9 reveals results on the challenges associated with OA. The prominent challenges revealed are procrastination to publish in OA, inadequate ICT infrastructure, high cost of the Internet, slow speed of the Internet, restrictions placed on using storage devices such as discs or flash drives for downloading from OA platforms, inadequate funding to upgrade OA, problems of managing intellectual property rights through alternative publishing agreements, are all the significant challenges revealed by the study. This implies that there are significant challenges associated with OA, as indicated above.

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Table 8. Use Intention Continuance of Open Access by Research Students (N=511) SN

Intention

Strongly Agree

Agree

Undecided

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

1.

In general, I prefer to publish my articles in OA journals over traditional journals.

f

323

167

10

6

5

%

63.2

32.6

1.9

1.2

10.0

2.

I plan to publish in an OA journal in the near future

f

370

127

8

3

3

%

72.4

24.8

1.5

0.5

0.5

f

233

278

0

0

0

%

45.5

54.4

0

0

0

f

217

272

12

5

5

%

42.4

53.2

2.3

10.0

10.0

221

276

7

3

4

3.

I intend to use the OA to study and research

4.

I intend to study other subjects through OA

5.

I intend to increase my use of the OA in the future

f %

43.2

54.0

1.3

0.5

0.7

6.

Having used the OA, I would recommend it to my colleagues to use it for study and research purposes

f

311

170

15

7

8

%

60.8

33.2

2.9

1.3

1.5

7.

I intend to use OA contents to improve my research

f

302

186

13

8

4

%

59.0

36.3

2.5

1.5

0.7

8.

I intend to use OA as autonomous research tool

f

291

189

15

9

5

%

56.9

36.9

2.9

1.7

10.0

Source: Author’s fieldwork (2019) Key: f =frequency; % = percentage

Discussion of the Findings Generally, OA is perceived by the research students as a good idea, easy, beneficial in terms of access and use and usually makes research more interesting. This findings correspond to some earlier reports. For instance, to Woszczynski and Whiteman (2016), who reported that respondents in their study placed more emphasis on the speed of publication by OA. This corroborates the findings by Chepkoech (2015) whose findings revealed that the attitude of academic staff towards OA was positive signifying acceptance of this mode of scholarly communication. Though this study did not examined attitude but the perception of the respondents towards OA, it is said to also be positive, since a considerable percentage of them indicated OA is a good and welcome idea pointing out that it is easy, beneficial due to access and use, and makes research interesting. Similarly, the report by Togia and Korrobili (2014) that OA is perceived to have many advantages over the traditional publication model supports the current findings in this study. OA, most importantly, provides opportunities such as enabling readers with access to published articles; the future of scholarly research and publishes faster than the traditional outlets along with wider dissemination of research and opportunity of free access to all. In line with the literature, many scholars and researchers (e.g. Jain, 2012; Togia and Korrobili, 2014; Chepkoech, 2015) have all reported that there are a number of benefits and advantages associated with OA. This also lends credence to the findings on opportunities of OA revealed in this study.

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 Opportunities Associated With Open Access Initiatives

Table 9. Challenges of Open Access (N=511) Strongly Agree

Agree

Undecided

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

F

341

170

0

0

0

%

66.7

33.2

0

0

0

F

311

199

1

0

0

%

60.8

38.9

0.2

0

0

F

255

220

25

7

4

%

49.9

43.0

4.8

1.3

0.7

F

267

189

5

5

5

%

52.2

36.9

0.9

0.9

0.9

F

299

193

11

4

4

%

58.5

37.7

2.1

0.7

0.7

F

272

235

2

1

1

%

53.2

45.9

0.4

0.2

0.2

F

268

231

8

4

1

%

52.4

45.2

1.5

0.7

0.2

F

245

254

7

3

2

%

47.9

49.7

1.3

0.5

0.4

F

287

215

3

3

3

%

56.1

42.0

0.5

0.5

0.5

Challenges 1.

Procrastination to publish in an OA journal in the near future

2.

Inadequate ICT connectivity and infrastructure

3.

High cost of internet bandwidth

4.

Slow speed of internet connectivity

5.

Prohibition of the use of external storage devices like disks or flash drives

6.

Inadequate skills of access

7.

Inadequate Funding to build and upgrade the internet infrastructure

8.

Inadequate advocacy and misconceptions: Managing intellectual property rights through alternative publishing agreements

Source: Author’s fieldwork (2019) Key: f = frequency, % = percentage

Incentives of OA include users’ accessibility, copyright retention by authors, highly quality publications among others; while the disincentives of OA include lack of reach, cost of publishing and inadequate quality of some OA platforms. Togia and Korrobili’s (2014) findings that free access, which is perceived to facilitate wider dissemination of research outputs, is a strong incentive for publishing in OA and lends support to the current findings in this study. A considerable number of respondents have the continuous intention to use OA instead of traditional platforms, for study and research, as an autonomous tool for improving research and to recommend to colleagues. This finding is not different from what was obtained in the Information System literature that users will have a continuous intention to use any technology that is beneficial and advantageous to them. Therefore, the findings in this study are not surprising. Significant challenges associated with OA include procrastination, inadequate ICT infrastructure, high cost of the Internet, and slow speed of the Internet, and restrictions place on using storage devices like discs or flash drives for downloading contents from OA platforms, among others. There is no improvement brought by technology that does not have shortcomings. The findings in this study have proved this through the revelation of challenges associated with OA which are also confirmed by Jain (2012) that there are numerous problems in the realisation of the full objective of OA in the developing world. The results by Dulle, Minishi-Majanja, (2013) and Raju, Smith and Gibson, (2013) who reported earlier that high subscription costs inhibit the exposure of African research scientists to the discoveries such as

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OA and their ability to either use the most up-to-date research knowledge to strengthen their research or to build upon research also corroborates the current findings. Furthermore, some concerns raised by Togia and Korrobili (2014) regarding the author-pays model, the quality of peer-review and the impact of the journals also support the challenges identified in the current study. Similarly, Abdulhayyu’s (2014) identification of the challenges of OA in Nigeria, such as lack of awareness of OA publishing; a dearth of cross linked e-libraries; inadequate information and communication technology infrastructure; inadequate and epileptic power supply; inadequate funding of research institutions; and an inhibiting copyright protection regime also support the current findings in this study.

CONCLUSION Generally, OA is perceived by the research students as a good idea, easy, beneficial in terms of access and use, and usually makes research more interesting. OA provides opportunities such as enabling readers with the access to publish articles; the future of scholarly research and publishes faster than the traditional outlets along with wider dissemination of research and opportunity of free and speedier access for all. Incentives of OA include users’ accessibility, copyright retention by authors, and high quality publications among others; while the disincentives of OA include lack of reach, cost of publishing and inadequate quality of some OA platforms. A considerable number of respondents have the continuous intention to use OA instead of traditional platforms, for study and research, as an autonomous tool for improving research and to recommend to colleagues. Significant challenges associated with OA include procrastination, inadequate ICT infrastructure, high cost of the Internet, and slow speed of the Internet, and restrictions on the use of storage media like discs or flash drives for downloading contents from OA platforms, among others.

RECOMMENDATIONS This chapter based on the findings reported in the study hereby recommends that research students in Nigeria universities should follow up their positive perception of OA by improving its use as outlets to publish and improve their research. Institutions that place restrictions on using devices such as discs and flash drive for downloading contents from OA should consider removing such restrictions with the view of improving the use of OA for study and research by the research students. Inadequate funding of OA is reported as one of the challenges in this study. It is recommended that institutions should make more funds available for managing and improving OA thereby improving research and access to it by the research students and other researchers as well. Institutions in Nigeria and other African countries should also consider making more ICT infrastructure available on campuses, providing alternatives for internet access to reduce the high cost incurred by the research students when trying to access OA. They need to also work on the slow speed of their Internet. To further tap the opportunities of OA, research students should endeavour to improve their continuous intention towards using OA for study, research and recommending OA to their colleagues.

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REFERENCES Abdulhayyu, Y. (2013). Issues and challenges in the development of open access publishing and scholarly communication in Nigeria. Available: https://atbubauchinigeria.academia.edu/yahayaabdulhayyu Aman V. (2014). Is there any measurable benefit in publishing preprints in the arxiv section quantitative biology? CoRR. abs/1411.1955. Antelman, K. (2004). Do open-access articles have a greater research impact? College & Research Libraries, 65(5), 372–382. doi:10.5860/crl.65.5.372 Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale. University Press. Bernius, S., Hanauske, M., Dugall, B., & König, W. (2013). Exploring the effects of a transition to open access: Insights from a simulation study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 64(4), 701–726. doi:10.1002/asi.22772 Cambridge University Press. (2018). Benefits of open access. Available: https://www.cambridge.org/ core/services/open-access-policies/introduction-to-open-access Canada, D. (2009). Open access and developing countries. Available: http://infosherpas.com/ojs/index. php/openandlibraries/article/view/50/74 Chepkoech, R. V. (2015). Adoption of open access initiatives in dissemination of scholarly research by academic staff at selected universities in Kenya (Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis). Department of Library and Information Science, University of Nairobi. Christian, G. E. (2006). Open access initiative and the developing world. African Journal of Library Archives and Information Science, 18(1), 21–30. Christian, G. E. (2006). Open access initiative and the developing world. African Journal of Library Archives and Information Science, 18(1), 21–30. CODESRIA. (2016). Dakar declaration on open access in Africa and the Global South. Fourth Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Conference on Electronic Publishing and Dissemination, Dakar, Senegal. Creswell, W. J. (2018). Research Design, Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches. Sage. Dulle, F. W., & Minishi-Majanja, M. K. (2009). Researchers’ Perspectives on Open Access Scholarly Communication in Tanzanian Public Universities. South African Journal of Information Management, 11(4). Advance online publication. doi:10.4102ajim.v11i4.413 Egwunyenga, E. J. (2008). Dystrophies and Associated Crises in Research and Academic Publications in Nigerian Universities. Anthropologist, 10(4), 245–250. doi:10.1080/09720073.2008.11891057 Ejikeme, A. N., & Ezema, I. J. (2019). The Potentials of Open Access Initiative and the Development of Institutional Repositories in Nigeria: Implications for Scholarly Communication. Research Quarterly, 35(1), 6–21. doi:10.100712109-018-09626-4

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Eysenbach, G. (2006). Citation advantage of open access articles. PLoS Biology, 4(5), e157. doi:10.1371/ journal.pbio.0040157 PMID:16683865 Gentil-Beccot, A., Mele, S., & Brooks, T. (2010). Citing and reading behaviours in high-energy physics. Scientometrics, 84(2), 345–355. doi:10.100711192-009-0111-1 Hajjem, C, Harnad, S., & Gingras, Y. (2006). Ten-year cross-disciplinary comparison of the growth of open access and how it increases research citation impact. arXiv preprint cs/0606079 Harnad, S., & Brody, T. (2004). Comparing the Impact of Open Access (OA) vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals. D-Lib Magazine: the Magazine of the Digital Library Forum, 10(6), 1–15. Hood, L. (2013). ARC poised to join open-access movement. Available: http://www. researchresearch. com/index.php?articleId=1251042&option=com_ news&template=rr_2col&view=article Houghton, J. W., & Oppenheim, C. (2010). The economic implications of alternative publishing models. Prometheus, 28(1), 41–54. doi:10.1080/08109021003676359 Islam, M. A., & Akter, R. (2013). Institutional repositories and Open Access initiatives in Bangladesh: A new paradigm of scholarly communication. LIBER Quarterly, 23(1), 3–24. doi:10.18352/lq.8245 Jain, P. (2012) Promoting Open Access to Research in Academic Libraries. Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal), 737. Available: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/737 Khabsa, M., & Giles, C. L. (2014). The number of scholarly documents on the public web. PLoS One, 9(5), e93949. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0093949 PMID:24817403 Lawrence, S. (2001). Access to scientific literature. In D. Butlu (Ed.), Nature Yearbook of Science and Technology (pp. 86–88). Macmillan. Matheka, D. M., Nderitu, J., Mutonga, D., Otiti, M., Siegel, K., & Demaio, A. (2014). Open access: Academic publishing and its implications for knowledge equity in Kenya. Globalization and Health, 10(1), 26–30. doi:10.1186/1744-8603-10-26 PMID:24716579 McCabe, M., & Snyder, C. M. (2014). Identifying the effect of open access on citations using a panel of science journals. Economic Inquiry, 52(4), 1284–1300. doi:10.1111/ecin.12064 Norris, M., Oppenheim, C., & Rowland, F. (2008). The Citation Advantage of Open-Access Articles. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(12), 1963–1972. doi:10.1002/ asi.20898 Ola, O. (2015). Scholarly Publication in Nigeria: Implications of Open Access. The WIPO Journal, 6(2). Available: SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2619033 Open Access, N.L. (2015). Amendment to copyright act. Author. Raju, R., Smith, I., & Gibson, H. (2013). Opening access to African scholarly content: Stellenbosch University’s AOARI platforms. Insights, 26(1), 44–50. doi:10.1629/2048-7754.26.1.44 RCUK. (2012). Proposed Policy on Access to Research Outputs. Available: http://www. openscholarship. org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-03/ rcuk_proposed_policy_on_access_to_research_outputs.pdf

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Right to Research Coalition. (2013). Why Open Access? Available: http://www.righttoresearch.org/learn/ whyOA/index.shtml Sample, I. (2013). Free access to British scientific research within two years. The Guardian. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/15/free-access-british-scientificresearch Sarah, G. (2013). A week of open access conferencing: Part 1. Available: http://openuct.uct.ac.za/ blog/ week-open-access-conferencing-part-1 Science Direct. (n.d.). Available: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/14635003 Swan, A. (2010). The open access citation advantage: Studies and results to data. https://eprints.soton. ac.uk/268516/2/Citation_advantage_paper.pdf Tennant, J. P., Waldner, F., Jacques, D. C., Masuzzo, P., Collister, L. B., & Hartgerink, C. H. J. (2016). The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: An evidence-based review. F1000 Research, 5, 632. doi:10.12688/f1000research.8460.3 PMID:27158456 Togia, A. & Korobili, S. (2014). Attitudes towards open access: A meta-synthesis of the empirical literature. Information Services & Use, 34. DOI doi:10.3233/ISU-140742 Trust, W. (2013). Open access policy: Position statement in support of open and unrestricted access to published research. Available: http://www.wellcome. ac.uk/About-us/Policy/Spotlight-issues/Openaccess/Policy/index.htm Wagner, B. (2010). Open access citation advantage: An annotated bibliography. Issues In Science and Technology Librarianship, 60(2), 1–10. Willinsky, J. (2010). The access principle: The case for open access to research and scholarship. Available: https://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=10611&ttype=2 Woszczynski, A. B., & Whitman, M. E. (2016). Perspectives on open access opportunities for IS research publication: Potential benefits for researchers, educators, and students. Journal of Information Systems Education, 27(4), 259–276.

ADDITIONAL READING Antelman, K. (2004). Do open access articles have a greater research impact? College & Research Libraries, 65(5), 372–382. doi:10.5860/crl.65.5.372 Christopher, M. M., & Young, K. M. (2015). Awareness of predatory open access journals among prospective veterinary and medical authors attending scientific writing workshops. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 2(1), 1–11. doi:10.3389/fvets.2015.00022 PMID:26664951

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Open Access: Open access is a broad international movement that seeks to grant free and open online access to academic information, such as publications and data. Open access is a mechanism by which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers. With open access strictly defined, or libre open access, barriers to copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for copyright. (Wikipedia) Open Access Initiatives: This is defined as a public statement of principles relating to open access to the research literature, which is released to the public. Opportunity: This is defined as a time or set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something. It is an exploitable set of circumstances with uncertain outcome, requiring commitment of resources and involving exposure to risk. An occasion or situation that makes it possible to do something that you want to do or have to do, or the possibility of doing something. Perception: This is defined as the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses. It is the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted. Perception is the organisation, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information, or the environment. Research Students: A research student is defined as one who is learning how to research by doing research under the supervision of a more senior academic. A student studying for a doctoral award, that is, a PhD or an MPhil or Masters.

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Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication in Sub-Saharan Africa Tuesday Bwalya The University of Zambia, Zambia Akakandelwa Akakandelwa The University of Zambia, Zambia

ABSTRACT The concept of open access has opened up access to scholarly communication. Academia today can publish and have access to a cocktail of information resources without restrictions and without paying anything. This chapter seeks to explain open access to scholarly communication and its future in SubSaharan Africa. The chapter begins by explaining the concept of open access, various forms of open access publishing, benefits of open access, and a brief history of open access to scholarly communication in Sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter also highlights some notable open access initiatives that have been implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa in the quest to improve access to scientific research findings in order to accelerate economic development. Furthermore, the chapter catalogues some challenges being encountered in the promotion of open access in Sub-Saharan Africa. Lastly, the chapter predicts the future of open access to scholarly communication in Sub-Saharan Africa, based on the current happenings in this sector.

INTRODUCTION The Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) are among technologies that have had a profound impact on mankind (Bwalya, 2014). The birth of Internet and W3 have ushered scholars into the much dreamed realm of freely exchange of scholarly information called open access (OA). The philosophy of OA seeks to return scholarly publishing to its original purpose of disseminating knowledge and allowing the creation of new knowledge (The Right to Research Coalition, 2019). This brings the concept of OA DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch011

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in line with the concept of Open Science (OS). According to ORION (2020), OS is the movement to make scientific research, data and their dissemination available to any member of an inquiring society, from professionals to citizens. Proponents of OS argue that OA is one of the components of OS which ensures that scientific findings are published in OA avenues to ensure unlimited access to such findings. Whatever the argument, it has been observed that OA movement facilitates the realisation of OS; hence, it is practically impossible to think of OS without OA publishing. It is therefore paramount for scientific communities to fully embrace OA publishing if the much publicised concept of OS has to be fulfilled. OA has been found to be impactful on the scholarly communication and scientific publishing. According to Piwowar (2018), at least 28% of the scholarly literature is OA and the proportion is growing, driven particularly by growth in gold and hybrid forms of OA. Further, Piwowar et al (2018) findings show that 47% of the articles viewed online were OA articles and that OA articles were found to be cited 18% more than the average. Incredibility, scholars through OA publishing have unrestricted access to scholarly articles through the Internet and W3. This has definitely liberated researchers and scholars who for many years created knowledge which ended up in the hands of commercial publishers who in turn created limited access to such knowledge by demanding payment in form of subscriptions (Bwalya, Mkulama and Mwalimu, 2019). OA publishing has ensured that researchers’ work become more accessible thereby enabling them to benefit from increased visibility of their work and thus improving their universities’ international ranking. OA is also paramount to knowledge sharing and innovation. According to the European Commission (2020), OA to scientific publications and data helps to: a) b) c) d)

build on previous research results (improved quality of results), encourage collaboration and avoid duplication of effort (greater efficiency), speed up innovation (faster progress to market resulting in means faster growth), and involve citizens and society (improved transparency of the scientific process).

In order to take full advantage of the philosophy of OA, universities and non-governmental organisations such as Public Library of Science (PLOS) have set up Open Access Journals (OAJs). As at 20th January, 2020, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a community entity that indexes OAJs, had indexed a staggering number of 14,197 OAJs. Furthermore, DOAJ had 4,569,674 articles aggregated under it and that AOJs indexed by DOAJ were drawn from 131 countries across the globe (DOAJ, 2020). It should be noted that DOAJ is not a comprehensive list of all OAJs because there are other OAJs yet to be indexed by DOAJ. Therefore, the number of OAJs around the globe is much higher than what is released by DOAJ.

OA PUBLISHING CHARACTERISTICS AND MODELS The 2003 Berlin Declaration on OA to knowledge in Sciences and Humanities clearly describes two conditions to be satisfied under OA publishing. The first condition is that “the author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access and a license to, copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly, make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution

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and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.” The second condition is that a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, inter-operability, and long-term archiving (Max Planck Society, 2003). The 2003 Berlin Declaration clearly states what OA publishing should be and spells out the freedoms granted by producers of content to the users. It further stipulates what should be published under OA. Therefore, any publishing of scholarly communication that does not meet the Berlin Declaration cannot be deemed to be OA. All OAJs possess four features in that they; are scholarly/peer reviewed journals, use quality control mechanism just like conventional journals, are published online and made available through the Web and do not charge the readers as they are freely accessed by the readers (Vanderbilt University, 2019). The last two characteristics of OAJs distinguish them from commercial journals. OAJs are premised on the philosophy of ensuring that scholarly communication is freely accessible in order to allow the creation of new knowledge. There are three strands of OAJs, namely Traditional, Hybrid and Delayed OAJs. Traditional OAJs are established by digital commercial or non-profit publishers for the sole purpose of publishing OA content (Vanderbilt University, 2019). These types of journals are sometimes referred to as bronze or platinum/diamond OAJs. Bronze OAJs publish and make available the content without a charge. No fee is charged to the authors or readers. However, this model is not sustainable as the publisher does not indicate the type of OA license in use thus the publisher can stop providing content on OA. Similarly, in the Platinum or Diamond model, the authors do not pay any fee to the publishers just as the readers do not pay for accessing the articles. However, publishers under this model have parent organizations which provide financial support to them. This model is used by academic OAJs. Platinum or diamond has been described as the best example of OA model (Brooks OA, 2019). Hybrid OAJs as the name suggests, are a combination of fee paying and non-fee paying models. In hybrid OAJs, some journal articles are made freely accessible to the readers after the authors or sponsors have paid processing and publishing fees to the publishers. This however leaves some articles closed to access as access is upon payment. Examples of Journals that fall under this category include Elsevier Open access and SAGE open access. The hybrid model is sometimes referred to as the Gold OAJs in which authors, institutions or research funders pay an open access fee (sometimes referred to as processing charge) and the publisher makes the published content free to the readers. Delayed OAJs are typically traditional or commercial journals which make published articles to be later accessible on OA. These journals normally place embargo on recently published articles but after a stipulated period of time the embargo is lifted thus allowing articles to be accessed freely. The Journal of Molecular Biology of Cell uses this model. The delayed model is similar to the green model of OA in which published articles are made available on OA by author. In this regard, the author uploads the article initially published by commercial journals in an institution repository or subject repository (Brooks OA, 2019). From the above categorisation of OAJs, it can be argued that platinum/diamond is the true embodiment of the philosophy of OA. This is because platinum, also known as sponsored or diamond OAJs 207

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allow immediate access to the content of the journal without the payment of a subscription fee or license. Authors pay no article processing charge and all the costs of publishing the journal are met by one or more sponsoring organisations.

BENEFITS OF OA PUBLISHING The benefits of OA publishing are three-fold; namely benefits to the researchers, benefits to research and benefits to society.

BENEFITS FOR RESEARCHERS With OA, all manner of research in form of standard research articles, clinical trial findings, systematic reviews, study protocols, data sets, negative/null results, and case reports can be published rapidly. Authors who are researchers provide their articles to publishers for free, because their compensation comes in the form of recognition for their findings. The fact that findings under OA are published online and made available free to the readers has made it possible for researchers to address a wider audience without the corresponding expenditure. The visibility of the articles or materials increases tremendously since readers can retrieve them regardless of their economic status or geographical location (Enago Academy, 2019). In this regard, publishing under OA means more readers, more potential collaborators, more citations for researchers’ works, and ultimately more recognition for the researchers and their institutions (SPARC Europe, 2020).

Benefits for Research The more people that can access and build upon the latest research, the more valuable that research becomes and the more likely people are to benefit as a society (SPARC Europe, 2020). Therefore, it is logically correct to say that research findings published in OA platforms are more feasible and accessible thereby spurring further research which ultimately results in better research findings and the creation of new knowledge. OA has also been seen to result in quick proliferation of research results which does not only invigorates similar research but also inspires others to make in-roads into other areas which may open up as a consequence (Enago Academy, 2019). On the other hand, easy access to research materials from all fields ultimately makes interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research to flourish. Publishing in OA platforms such as OAJs also shifts the way research and researchers are evaluated. For instance, OA supports research assessment based on the intrinsic value of the research, not the venue of publication.

Benefits for Society Research funders invest in research with a view to advancing human knowledge and ultimately improve lives. OA publishing increases the return on investment by ensuring that the results of the research they fund can be read and built on and used by anyone, including industry and society (SPARC Europe, 2020). The fact that more people can access and build upon the latest research may result in valuable innovations and inventions which would benefit society. It is through unlimited sharing of knowledge 208

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that humanity can invent and reinvent solutions that could solve many challenges the world is facing in the 21st Century. In this regard, OA publishing becomes a corner stone to achieving societal aspirations which include ending poverty and hunger among many communities and countries.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF OA PUBLISHING IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Sub-Saharan Africa refers to countries found in African, south of the Sahara desert. Geographically, the demarcation line is the southern edge of the Sahara desert. Some countries such as Chad, Mali, Sudan, Niger and Mauritania belong both to the Saharan desert region and sub-Saharan Africa (Okemwa, 2016). All the countries in green in Figure 1 below are classified as Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa consists of 48 independent nations, 42 of which are located on the mainland and six are island nations (Figure 1). Figure 1. Map of Sub-Saharan Africa Source: Okemwa (2016)

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The history of OA publishing in Sub-Saharan Africa cannot be complete without mentioning the Budapest Open Access Conference convened in Budapest, Hungary, in December 2001. The conference was convened to operationalise the concept of OA to scholarly communication and was organised by the Open Society Institute and resulted in the creation of the “Budapest Open Access Initiative” (BOAI) which was made public in February, 2002. The Budapest Open Access Initiative clearly stated that literature should be freely accessible online because scholars give to the world without expectation of payment (BOAI, 2002). In this regard, calls were made to researchers and scholars to begin publishing their scholarly works in OA platforms in order to ensure wider dissemination of their research findings and ensure free access to such research results. This Budapest Open Access Initiative was followed by the 2003 Berlin and The Bethesda Declarations on OA to knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. These declarations spelt out clearly conditions of the OA in terms of access rights and other conditionality. In Sub-Saharan Africa, OA publishing is a recent phenomenon. For many years, scholarly communication in Sub-Saharan Africa has been published by university presses in a commercial manner. Further, Sub-Saharan African scholars have been publishing most of their research findings mainly in commercial journals in the West. However, the launch of the OA movement in Budapest in 2002 and the OA declarations in Berlin and Bethesda in 2003 saw Sub-Saharan Africa begins to embrace OA through the implementation of institutional repositories (IRs) in academic institutions such as universities. Consequently, South Africa has been cited to have led the way in the implementation of OA publishing in Sub- Saharan Africa through the implementation of IRs. This implies that OA publishing in Sub-Saharan Africa first came in the form of green OA which later graduated into more advanced forms of OA publishing such as diamond and platinum. According to Van Wyk and Mostert (2014) South African universities began planning the implementation of IRs as early as the 1990s. However, the actual implementation of IRs started in 2000 when major South African public universities began establishing IRs (Bangani, 2018). However, in the early stages, IRs in South Africa used to keep only electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) which were accessed freely. There are also some traces of evidence of the existence of OA publishers in Sub-Saharan Africa as early as 1998. For instance, the African Online Journal (AJOL) was established as pilot project in 1998 by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), a non-profit organization in Oxford, United Kingdom (UK). AJOL was later relaunched in 2000 with a more OA face and since then, more OA projects have emerged and are still merging in Sub-Saharan Africa.

OA PUBLISHING INITIATIVES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Today, Sub-Saharan Africa is home to many OA publishing initiatives that are radiating beyond the region and these initiatives have become instruments through which researchers and scholars exchange information with a view to fostering development in their localities. Some of the OA initiatives provide platforms for online journals to be discovered. In other words, these initiatives are discovery tools or aggregators which lead users to the actual journal they wish to visit. Other initiatives provide platforms for several OAJs to be hosted. Common OA publishing initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa include the African Journals Online (AJOL), Africa Academy of Science (AAS) Open Research, Bioline International, Scientific African and The Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO). It is worth mentioning that some OA publishing initiatives are in form of individual institutional repositories and Open Access Journals (OAJs) which are hosted and run by various academic institutions and non-profit organizations. 210

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African Journals Online (AJOL) African Journals Online (AJOL) is an online platform that provides access to African-published research, and increase worldwide knowledge of indigenous scholarship. AJOL is a non-profit making organization domiciled in South Africa and as indicated earlier, it began in 1998 as pilot project sponsored by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), a non-profit organization based in Oxford, United Kingdom (UK). AJOL has been relaunched twice; in 2002 and 2004. The last relaunch saw AJOL install and an advanced Open Access Journal System (OAJs) to improve its operations. This journal platform is available online at https://www.ajol.info/. AJOL is the world’s largest online collection of African-published, peer-reviewed scholarly journals which seeks to contribute to African developmental agenda. AJOL provides free online hosting for over 524 peer-reviewed journals published by higher education institutions from 32 African countries, using open source software (AJOL, 2020). Journals hosted by AJOL cover a full range of academic disciplines which include health, agriculture, education, humanities and African studies, among others. As at 29th January, 2020, AJOL was host to 524 Journals of whom 262 were Open OAJs. The site further had 14 682 issues containing 177 757 abstracts and 171 472 full text articles available for download; 111 721 of which were OA. This implies that 50% of AJOL hosted journals as at 29th January, 2020 were OA which means that their content is accessible to the public for free. This is a step in the right direction in ensuring that research findings are widely disseminated in order to support accelerated sustainable development on the African continent. It should also be mentioned here that not all journals published in Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular are listed and hosted by AJOL but only those journals that have met the set criteria. For instance, a journal called the Zambia Journal of Library and Information Science (ZAJLIS), published by the Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Zambia in Zambia, is yet to be listed under AJOL because it was recently launched. For a journal to be listed under AJOL, it should be scholarly in content, and contain original research (in addition to other content). Further, the content should be peer-reviewed and have an established publishing track record. Furthermore, the journal should have an actively functioning Editorial Board (institutional affiliations and contact details required) and the journal should have a registered ISSN and eISSN. AJOL claims to use Creative Commons Licenses (CCL) for the content it publishes with all the publishers of the 524 journals. However, this does not apply to all the journals as only 262 (50%) of journals under AJOL publish their contents under OA using Creative Common Licenses. CCL licenses are used by publishers that provide OA to contents; hence AJOL cannot fully claim the use of CCL to all its journal contents.

Africa Academy of Science (AAS) Open Research African Academy of Science (AAS) Open Research is a platform for rapid publication and open peer review for researchers supported by the AAS through its funding platform, Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA). AAS Open Research is a brain child of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), a Pan-African organization whose headquarters is in Nairobi, Kenya. AAS recognizes individuals who have reached the highest level of excellence in their field of expertise and have made contributions to the advancement of the field in the Africa continent (IAU and IDEA, 2018). AAS and its off-springs are connected to the African continental body, the African Union (AU). 211

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The AAS Open Research was launched in 2018, and as the name suggests, it is fully OA because its contents are accessed by the public freely. AAS Open Research uses an open peer review process, a more transparency peer review process in which the author and the reviewer know each and every review report are published alongside the actual article. Moreover, AAS Open Research receives article submissions from AAS fellows and affiliates (who together number around 400), as well as researchers funded through programmes managed by the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Africa. This OA platform ensures that researchers publish any research they wish to share, supporting reproducibility, transparency and impact. Under AAS Open Research, any paper submitted is published within few days after an open invited peer review process. In short, it is quicker to publish under AAS Open Research. As indicated, articles published under this platform are from the realm of science which includes climate change, health and wellbeing, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), water and sanitation, food security and nutritional wellbeing, and sustainable energy. A check at AAS Open Research website (https://aasopenresearch.org) on 30th January, 2020 showed that it uses two Creative Commons Licenses, namely the Public Domain and BY. Public Domain implies that all its contents can be used without attribution while the BY license requires content users to provide attribution, acknowledging the source of the information. It sounds like contradiction but this entails that the user can either acknowledge the source of the information or not. It is clear that the AAS Open Research is indeed an OA platform as all its contents are freely available on its website. However, the platform could do more if it allowed non fellowship and affiliate members on the continent of Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, to publish their research findings in Science and Technology.

Bioline International Bioline International is a non-profit scholarly publishing cooperative committed to providing OA to quality research journals published in developing countries. It was launched in 1993 as a partnership between the Tropical Database in Brazil (now the Reference Center on Environmental Information, or CRIA) and the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT) in the UK. However, in early 2000, the University of Toronto Libraries assumed the role previously performed by the EPT (Bioline International, 2020). The goal of Bioline International is to reduce the South to North knowledge gap, salient to global understanding of health (tropical medicine, infectious diseases and epidemiology, as well as emerging new diseases), biodiversity, the environment, conservation and international development. This platform hosts peer-reviewed journals from Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda and Venezuela. Bioline International is managed by scientists and librarians. It is a collaborative initiative between Bioline Toronto (management office) and the Reference Center on Environmental Information, Brazil (host computer and software development). The project is supported by the Digital Scholarship Unit at the University of Toronto Scarborough and by the support of sponsoring libraries and members (Bioline International, 2020). Like AJOL, Bioline is not only an aggregator but also a publisher that provides a free platform for journals who wish to participate in the global OA movement. This implies that it provides an avenue for various journals in developing countries including Sub-Saharan Africa to have their journals hosted in order to achieve OA publishing. A check at Bioline International website (http://www.bioline.org.br/ journals) revealed that all journals hosted by this platform provide OA to all their contents.

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It is worth mentioning that the type of OA license being used by Bioline International is not indicated on its website. However, it could be assumed that it is operating as a bronze type of OA publisher that makes contents available for free to the public but does not indicate the type of license in use. Also, this OA platform claims to be a pioneer of OA publishing as it began operating in 1993. However, one could argue that Sub-Saharan African countries joined the platform much later because in 1993, very few Sub-Saharan African countries had access to the Internet for them to migrate their journals to an online platform.

Scientific African Scientific African is another peer reviewed OA, inter- and multidisciplinary scientific journal that is dedicated to expanding access to African research, increasing intra-African scientific collaboration, and building academic research capacity in Africa. This OA publishing outfit was launched in 2018 at Next Einstein Forum (NEF) in Kigali, Rwanda. It is supported by the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), and Elsevier, the Science and Health publisher (Adegoke, 2018). Moreover, the journal aims to provide a modern, highly-visible platform for publishing Pan-African research and welcomes submissions from all scientific disciplines which include Agriculture and Food Security, Chemistry, Conservation and Sustainability Studies, Economics and Business, Environmental and Geosciences, Information Technology and Engineering, Life and Health Sciences, Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences and Policy. Scientific African Journal hosted by Elsevier is truly OAJ as its contents are permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy and distribute. It uses two Creative Commons Licenses; namely Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) and Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No-Derivs (CC BY-NC-ND) (Elsevier, 2020). This entails that Scientific African can be classed as diamond or platinum type of OAJs.

The Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) South Africa Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) is a bibliographic database, digital library, and cooperative electronic publishing model of OAJs which was originally established in Brazil in 1997. Today, SciELO has members not only in Latin America but also Sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa is the member of SciELO and the SciELO South Africa (SA) is managed by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology and endorsed by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (SciELO South Africa, 2020). SciELO SA provides OA (free to access and free to publish) searchable full-text journal database in service of the South African research community. The database covers a selected collection of peerreviewed South African scholarly journals and forms an integral part of the SciELO Brazil project. SciELO SA focuses on strengthening the scholarly journal evaluation and accreditation systems in South Africa. Journals that are included in SciELO SA are evaluated first by ASSAf’s journal quality peer-review panel. As at 30th January, 2020, SciELO SA had listed 78 journal titles which are all South African based. A check at the SciELO SA website (http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?) revealed that SciELO SA does not host journals but just list them for easy discovery. Individual journals host their contents and publish separately, hence it can be concluded that SciELO SA acts as an aggregator for South African based journals. However, all journals listed by SciELO SA use Creative Commons Licenses preferable the BY (the attribution license). 213

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CHALLENGES BEING ENCOUNTERED IN THE PROMOTION OF OA PUBLISHING IN SUB- SAHARAN AFRICA The previous section has discussed various initiatives that are being undertaken in Sub-Saharan Africa to increase research productivity and access to research outputs. These approaches have enabled wider dissemination of African scholars’ research, especially to researchers and institutions that cannot afford subscriptions to journals and various electronic databases. But while this access is good for enabling research and improving productivity, it has also brought challenges to the various stakeholders involved in the process (Tempest, 2013). This section highlights some of these challenges.

Lack of Incentives The major centres of knowledge creation and scholarly communication in Sub-Saharan Africa are universities. However, most universities in Sub-Saharan Africa have many problems that constrain knowledge productivity and scholarly publishing (Okari-Ondemwa, 2007). Research funding is almost non–existent in many institutions of higher learning, most of whom have seen enrollment of students escalating while emoluments of faculty members and researchers have remained stagnant over a long period of time. Consequently, majority of these institutions, which are the major employers of scholars in the region, do not provide incentives to scholars to publish in scholarly journals. In addition to inadequate remuneration and other monetary rewards for scholars, most institutions of higher learning in Sub-Saharan Africa are unable to facilitate their scholars to go on sabbatical leave due to lack of adequate funds and under staffing. Sabbatical leave is meant to enable scholars have time and attention for research and interaction with their counterparts from other regions of the world. Furthermore, due to lack of funding, most scholars and researcher in Sub-Saharan Africa are unable to participate in the numerous academic conferences organized locally, within the region and around the globe every year. These scholars cannot afford to pay attendance fees, travel and accommodation costs. These conferences provide opportunities to share knowledge and to get abreast with latest developments in their disciplines. Non-attendance of these conferences robs the scholars the opportunities to present their research to their peers from other regions, and subsequently it denies them opportunities to have their works published in conference proceedings and journals. Non-attendance of these conferences also denies Sub-Saharan scholars’ opportunities to develop collaborative networks with their colleagues from other regions of the world.

Brain Drain Many universities in Sub-Saharan Africa provide poor working conditions to researchers and scholars. As a result, the region has experienced mass exodus of scholars to academic institutions in other regions of the world, particularly to North America, Europe, and Australia, New Zealand, the Arabic oil–rich countries, and lately to Japan. Consequently, it is difficult for Sub–Saharan countries to develop without preserving their local intellectual capital (Ondari–Okemwa, 2004). Reasons for this brain drain include low and eroding wages and salaries, unsatisfactory working and living conditions, social unrest, political conflicts and wars and declining quality of educational systems (Ondari–Okemwa, 2004). Other reasons which encourage scholars to migrate out of the region include lack of research and other facilities, inadequacy of research funds and lack of professional equipment and tools. Scholars whose origin is sub–Saharan Africa but who reside in foreign countries may not be counted on to contribute to scholarly 214

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publishing in the region. This brain drain of scholars and other highly qualified professionals from the region will continue as long as conditions in the region do not improve.

Lack of ICT Infrastructure Although Africa has recorded tremendous growth in the ICT infrastructure in the past two to three decades, particularly with regard to the levels of cellphone coverage and wireless availability, many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa still lack ICT infrastructure. Internet access is one of the most recurrent hindrances for scientific research in Africa and remains very low in some regions and Internet penetration remains low across the continent (Attanasio, 2018). Where ICT infrastructure has been developed, in most cases this infrastructure is bedeviled with poor connectivity and inadequate bandwidth. Even where there is wider cellphone coverage and wireless Internet availability, there is a lack of research content engineered to be read on cellphones. Consequently, many African researchers continue to rely on paper format articles to read their journals. In this regard, transition from print to electronic needs to be assessed on a local basis.

The Cost of OA The cost of OA (in its Gold form) is too high for many in Africa, hence, publishers need to consider alternative arrangements. An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors to make their work available in OA in either an OAJ or hybrid journal (Solomon and Björk, 2012; Richard Van Noorden, 2013). Although majority of OAJs do not charge article processing charges (Kozak and Hartley, 2018), a significant and growing number of them do (Laakso and Björk, 2012). Article processing charges (APC) are the most common funding method for professionally published OAJs. Unfortunately, many OAJs charge an article publication charge which can cost up to thousands of dollars, thus creating another financial burden on poorly funded Sub-Saharan African researchers (Tempest, 2017). Consequently, many African authors do not have the funding to support OA publishing in this way.

Lack of Support and Appreciation of OA One of the challenges being faced by the OA publishing in Sub-Saharan Africa is lack of awareness and support from the decision and policy makers, both in government and institutions of higher learning, and among many researchers, scientists and scholars. Many senior scientists and directors of research laboratories and vice chancellors of universities do not have a clear appreciation of OA and its implications. Recent surveys confirm that few African scholars and researchers appreciate OA publishing (Bwalya, Mkulama and Mwalimu, 2018). Further, low levels of political willingness among Sub-Sahran African countries to make funding available towards advancing research have been observed. The Open Science movement in Africa could only benefit from a better or greater involvement of educational and political decision-making bodies. According to figures from the Registry of Open Access Repository (ROAR), in 2018, the number of OA policies on the continent is evaluated at 31, the majority of which are from East African countries (17) and South Africa (9) (roarmap.eprints.org) (Hameau, 2015).

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Predatory Publishing Another challenge affecting the OA movement in Sub-Saharan Africa is the so-called predatory publishing, i.e. malpractices in OAJs publishing. “Many (predatory publishers) purport to be headquartered in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada or Australia but really hail from Pakistan, India or Nigeria” (Beall, 2012). There has also been a proliferation of ‘predatory journals’ which do not offer an acceptable level of peer review or publication quality and prey on authors from Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) by charging lower article processing charges (APCs). These authors’ careers depend on publishing their research but they are often barred from publishing in high-level international journals. In South Africa, where authors are paid per published paper, many researchers are pushed into predatory publishing. Despite increased efforts to screen journals, many predatory publishers still make it onto accredited lists. The number of South African publications in predatory journals is now five times that of Brazil and the USA (Mouton and Valentine, 2017).

THE FUTURE OF OA AND SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION IN SUB SAHARAN AFRICA Scholarly publishing in African and Sub-Saharan Africa has been changing and the publishing landscape is changing for the better because of the birth of OA publishing. Tempest (2013) observes that as a publisher, he had never seen so much change to how journals were published as in the last five years, and claimed that when he joined Elsevier, 17 years ago, the discussion was about a transition from print to electronic journals but in 2013 print journals continue to circulate, especially in Africa”. He further goes on to observe that, with OA, the changes have accelerated rapidly, and almost every journal now offers authors choices on how to publish through OA mechanisms. The previous section has discussed various initiatives that are being undertaken in Sub-Saharan Africa to increase research productivity and access to research outputs. These OA platforms have enabled wider dissemination of research, especially to researchers and institutions that cannot afford subscriptions to journals and various electronic databases. But while this access is good for enabling research and improving productivity, it also brings challenges to the various stakeholders involved in the process (Tempest, 2013). Various stakeholders in OA publishing have different goals and objectives. For example, funding organizations and governments that provide research grants to investigators wish to have this research published open-access, especially since much of this funding comes from public sources. Universities on the other hand want to ensure that the research they produce is showcased to the world and their researchers are promoted so they will bring in new funding contracts, build their expertise and ultimately enhance the institution’s reputation. Publishers, on the other hand, want to maximize the visibility of their journals and ensure the widest readership possible, but need this to happen in an economically sustainable way to ensure their journals survive. Also, researchers want their research to be available to others and to enable the widest recognition of their work, but need to consider all of the policies that the other stakeholders have developed. The demand for OA is increasing in the developing world, Sub-Saharan Africa included, as it is contributing to solving problems related to access gaps (Schöpfel, 2013). Researchers in the global south are among the most determined advocates for OA (Poynder, Open and Shut (Blog). Researchers want it not only as consumers of academic information, to have access to international research, but also as 216

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authors so that their work can be known to colleagues elsewhere. OA does not only provide access and consumption to research but above all, enable Sub- Saharan African’s scholars to increase their research productivity, dissemination and visibility of their research output. Therefore, OA is expected to facilitate the full participation of the global academic community in research and scholarship, sustained by international collaborative strategies. The future of OA publishing in Sub-Saharan Africa is bright as more OA platforms and journals are being launched by academic institutions and other players in the education sector. This is because OA publishing has the potential to contribute to and foster local research and ultimately facilitate development in sub-Saharan Africa. For the region, to realize this potential and make OA sustainable, there is need to find a lasting solution as regard the funding of OA publishing.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, it can be said that OA publishing is evolving in Sub-Saharan African as witnessed by many OA publishing platforms established in the region which include Africa Journal Online (AJOL), Africa Academy of Science (AAS) Open Research and Scientific African. There is also a proliferation of individual OAJs in universities and non-governmental organizations. Sub-Saharan African scholars and researchers are poised to benefit more from OA publishing as it enables them to share their research findings with a wider community as scholarly publications are accessed free. OA publishing’s facilitation of sharing research findings in Sub-Saharan Africa is bringing about creation of new knowledge which in the long run will help the region solve many problems it faces. It can therefore be said that the future of OA publishing in Sub-Saharan Africa is bright. However, there is need to resolve various problems plaguing OA publishing such as funding problem, predatory publishing and other challenges highlighted in this chapter.

REFERENCES AAS Open Research. (2020). How it Works. Retrieved January 30, 2020, from https://aasopenresearch. org/about Adegoke, Y. (2018). The overlooked research work of Africa’s best scientists will have a better chance to go global. Retrieved January 30, 2020, from https://qz.com/africa/1239266/elsevier-next-einsteinlaunch-scientific-african-journal-for-african-scientists-research/ African Journals Online. (2020). African Journals Online: Browse by Category. Retrieved January 3, 2020, from https://www.ajol.info/index.php/index/browse/category Ahinon, J., Havemann, J. (2018). Open Science in Africa - Challenges, Opportunities and Perspectives. Elephant in the Lab. DOI: doi:10.5281/zenodo.1492745 Attanasio, G. (2018). Connecting Africa - Internet: Africa Starts to Open Its Window to the World LINK. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://www.supinfo.com/articles/single/4927-internet-in-africa

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Bangani, S. (2018). The History, Deployment, and Future of Institutional Repositories in Public Universities in South Africa. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 44(1), 39-5. . doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2017.12.003 Bioline International. (2020). About Bioline International. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from http://www. bioline.org.br/info?id=bioline&doc=about Björk, B., & Solomon, D. (2012). Pricing principles used by Scholarly Open Access Publishers. Retrieved December 29, 2019, from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1c4d/dff605f922fe0384696511d026 9521c93346.pdf BOAI. (2002). Budapest Open Access Initiative. Retrieved November 11, 2019, from https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read Brookes, O. A. (2019). The different models of Open Access. Retrieved December 12, 2019, from https:// brookesoa.blog/open-access/the-different-models-of-open-access/ Bwalya, T., Mkulama, A., & Mwalimu, E. C. (2019). Perception of Lecturers and Researchers Towards Open Access Journals: Case Study of the University of Zambia. In Digital Technologies for Information and Knowledge Management. The Technical University of Kenya. DOAJ. (2020). News. Retrieved January 20, 2020, from https://doaj.org/ Elsevier. (2020). Open access journal. Retrieved January 30, 2020, from https://www.elsevier.com/ journals/scientific-african/2468-2276/open-accessEnago Academy. (2019). Benefits of Open Access Publications. Retrieved January 20, 2020, from https:// www.enago.com/academy/benefits-of-open-access-publications/ European Commission. (2020). Open access. Retrieved January 30, 2020 from https://ec.europa.eu/ research/participants/docs/h2020-funding-guide/cross-cutting-issues/open-access-data-management/ open-access_en.htm IAU & IDEA. (2018). African Academy of Sciences (AAS). Retrieved January 30, 2020 from https:// idea-phd.net/index.php/en/projects-and-initiatives/279-aas-african-academy-of-sciences Kozak, M., & Hartley, J. (2018). Publication fees for open access journals: Different disciplines—different methods. Retrieved January 20, 2020 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/asi.22972 Laakso, M., & Björk, B. (2012). Anatomy of open access publishing: a study of longitudinal development and internal structure. Retrieved January 29, 2020 from https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/ articles/10.1186/1741-7015-10-124 Max Planck Society. (2003). Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. Retrieved January 21, 2020 from https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration McNaught, K. (2015). The Changing Publication Practices in Academia: Inherent Uses and Issues in Open Access and Online Publishing and the Rise of Fraudulent Publications. Retrieved December 30, 2019 from https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0018.308?view=text;rgn=main Mouton, J., & Valentine, A. (2017). The extent of South African authored articles in predatory journals. Retrieved January 28, 2020 from https://www.sajs.co.za/article/view/3995

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Okemwa, O. (2016). Open Access, Scholarly Publishing and Knowledge Production in Sub-Saharan Africa: Opportunities and Challenges. Retrieved January 21, 2020 from https://www.codesria.org Ondari–Okemwa, E. (2004). Impediments to promoting access to global knowledge in Sub–Saharan Africa. Retrieved January 28, 2020 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242021124_Impediments_to_promoting_access_to_global_knowledge_in_sub-Saharan_Africa Ondari–Okemwa, E. (2007). Scholarly publishing in sub–Saharan Africa in the twenty– first century: Challenges and opportunities. Retrieved January 28, 2020 from https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/ fm/article/view/1966/1842 ORION. (2020). What is Open Science? Retrieved January 20, 2020 from https://www.orion-openscience. eu/resources/open-science Piwowar, H. (2018). The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. Retrieved January 28, 2020 from https://peerj.com/articles/4375/ Richard, V. N. (2013). Open access: The true cost of science publishing. Retrieved January 21, 2020 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236090233_Open_access_The_true_cost_of_science_publishing Schöpfel. (2017). Open Access to Scientific Information in Emerging Countries. Retrieved January 26, 2020 from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march17/schopfel/03schopfel.html SciELO South Africa. (2020). Library Collection. Retrieved January 30, 2020 from http://www.scielo. org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_alphabetic&lng=en&nrm=iso Science and Business. (2018). EU and national funders launch plan for free and immediate open access to journals. Retrieved January 20, 2020 from https://sciencebusiness.net/news/eu-and-national-funderslaunch-plan-free-and-immediate-open-access-journals Science and Business. (2018). EU and national funders launch plan for free and immediate open access to journals. Retrieved January 24, 2020 from https://sciencebusiness.net/news/eu-and-national-funderslaunch-plan-free-and-immediate-open-access-journals Solomon, D. J., & Björk, B.-C. (2012). A study of open access journals using article processing charges. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(8), 1485–1495. Retrieved January 24, 2020 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/asi.22673 SPARC Europe. (2020). Setting the Default to Open. Retrieved January 20, 2020 from https://sparceurope.org/what-we-do/open-access/oa-benefits/ Stevens Institute of Technology. (2019). Open Access and Academic Freedom. Retrieved January 24, 2020 from https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/11/15/essay-impact-open-access-requirementsacademic-freedom Tempest, D. (2013). Open access in Africa — changes and challenges. Retrieved January 27, 2020 from https://www.elsevier.com/connect/open-access-in-africa-changes-and-challenges

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The Right to Research Coalition. (2019). Why Open Access? Retrieved January30, 2020 from http:// www.righttoresearch.org/learn/whyOA/index.shtml The Right to Research Coalition. (2019). Why Open Access? Retrieved January 30, 2020 from http:// www.righttoresearch.org/learn/whyOA/index.shtml Van Wyk, B., & Mostert, J. (2014). African Institutional Repositories as Contributors to Global Information: A South African Case Study. Retrieved January 30, 2020 from https://repositorioacademico.upc. edu.pe/bitstream/handle/10757/622565/VWykETD2012FT.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y Vanderbilt University. (2019). Open Access: Open Access Publishing Models. Retrieved January 28, 2020 from https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/c.php?g=144567&p=946137

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Open Access (OA): the practice through which research outputs are made available online for use without a charge on the part of users (ORION, 2020). Open Access Publishing (OAP): the process of distributing and disseminating scientific research outputs to users on open access principles. Scholarly Communication: a system, through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future. Open Access Journals (OAJ): a journal system whose scholarly publications are accessed by users without a charge (Mkulama, Bwalya and Mwalimu, 2019).

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Open Access Initiatives and its Implications on Research Transformations Musediq Tunji Bashorun University of Ilorin, Nigeria Jamiu Oladele Muhammed LARIS, Faculty of Education, Univeristy of Ibadan, Nigeria Hajarat Abubakar Kwara State College of Education, Nigeria

ABSTRACT The Open Access initiative enhances innovative forms of scholarly inquiry and aids the impactful communication by transforming the way research output is disseminated and published. Prime objective of OA initiative is to improve wide accessibility and promotes visibility of research outputs without geographical barriers. This chapter investigates open access initiatives and the principles behind OA. It identifies the characteristics of OA and types of OA publishing business models. Moreover, the chapter discusses the growth of OA in Africa and examines the current trend in OA journals. Also, the chapter identifies various roles played by stakeholders towards adoption and use of OA for research transformation. This chapter examines different benefits and challenges faced by organizations, libraries, publishers, and researchers towards OA adoption and use for the research advancement. Recommendations on how to improve research outputs’ visibility using OA were highlighted. Conclusion and suggestion for further research are provided.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch012

Copyright © 2021, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

 Open Access Initiatives and its Implications on Research Transformations

INTRODUCTION Nowadays, development of Internet Technology (IT) has brought transformations in the ways information is being access and share among the stakeholders. An Open Access initiative as a product of advanced Information and Communication Technology improves access to information and enhances wide visibility of research outputs. The OA initiative as an agent of research transformation provides access, wide dissemination of research information for free on the Web, brings benefits to researchers, their institutions, funders and the generality of the society. This chapter covers open access initiatives and its implications on research transformations.

BACKGROUND With the current trends in the world publication, transformative actions from a moderately small number of global research-intensive institutions would be needed to drive a permanent and large-scale transformation, but the involvement of institutions from every geographical location and academic setting are essential for creating a truly open and just information environment. Yet the truth is that modern knowledge-based societies benefit from an efficient system for transferring research output from the basic research process to the community. Innovation reinforces wealth creation in all aspects of economies and the dissemination of open access knowledge from research benefits the scientific and cultural life of any literacy society. OA empowered with unlimited access to accessible findings, and the opportunity to collaborate, share and build on these, will speed up the research process, drive innovation, yield development, arouse new discoveries and drive scientific inquiry forward, to the advantage of society. Sustainable development in the 21st Century is founded on access to information and knowledge using OA initiatives. Gideon (2008) reiterated that in a world of inequality, the OA initiative seeks to provide people all over the world with equal access to knowledge and information irrespective of their geographical location. The concept of OA arrived in response to the restrictive access to knowledge in scholarly and scientific journals imposed by commercial publishing houses via subscription fees, license fees or pay-per-view fees which could be described as serial crisis in academic libraries. The concept of OA developed during 1991 due to the insight of the need to facilitate scholarly communication. OA to scholarly communication is regarded as a mechanism to tackle rising journal prices, and as a means of averting rising limited access to the growing volume of scholarly works. Sanjeeva and Powdwal (2017) stressed that reasons for a move to OA is the opinion that publicly funded research by rights should be more accessible to the public taxpayers. Also, digital divide between developing and advanced world should be lessen, that access to research outputs by and in the developing world should be greatly enhanced. In addition, that researcher at poorly funded institutional libraries will have increased access to the scholarly work. OA has various definitions from different groups advocating the concept. The Budapest OA Initiative (BOAI) defined the concept in relation to journal literature as follows: [the] free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to download, read, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without legal, financial or technical barriers other

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than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited (BOAI, 2002). Similarly, Suber (2010a) opined that OA literature is online, digital, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. The Berlin Statement on OA to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities restates an obvious truth to the effect that the mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the information is not made widely accessible and readily available to society. The dissemination of knowledge through academic and scholarly research journals, as well as the use of the same by scholars and members of the academic community is not new. Before the arrival of the internet, the academic community relied heavily on research articles in offline journals published by many commercial publishing houses and made available to libraries that chose to subscribe to the journals. Only a small number of libraries in the developing world could afford such journal subscriptions. This has led to crisis in scholarly communications that informed the arrival of OA that meant to reform the present system. OA has evolved two systems for delivering research articles. Research is defined as a systematic effort of human to gain new knowledge through intellectual investigation of matter. Generally, scientific research involves identifying a phenomenon, formulation of hypotheses and questions, gathering data through a scientific process and analysing the data to solve a problem identified. Research community has been facing unparalleled changes, largely driven by technological growths accompanied by changes in research habits and scholarly communications. Research based organisations are grappling with fund shortage on one hand and on the other hand the research output, citation metrics and visibility are becoming more and more significant in the scholarly community either to get grants from funding agencies or for further research. Currently, one of the most important metric for the researchers was publication in journals. Researchers published their work in toll-accessed based journals and book chapter contribution. Many a times scholars did not have access to their own work and the library could not afford to subscribe to highly priced journals or books from vendors and publishers. According to Ifeanyi (2011), the poor visibility of scholarly publications in Africa has resulted in the call for a way of fashioning out a proper method of disseminating scholarly research in developing countries, particularly Nigeria so as to balance the global information equation and improve the visibility and impact of research outputs. This ugly condition calls for urgent attention to tackle issues of serial crisis and poor visibility of research output that led to the emergency of OA initiatives. The next section deals with history of OA initiatives.

HISTORY OF OPEN ACCESS INITITIATIVES There are many corresponding initiatives around Europe that support OA in various forms, but these are yet to be connected to a collective goal. The disjointed drive indicates that this is a timely moment to develop an international transformation programme to support and exploit on the different efforts being made to create an OA environment. The expression ‘OA’ was first used by the Budapest OA Initiative- BOAI (Budapest OA Initiative, 2002). The BOAI is a public statement of principles relating to OA literature, which was launched by Open Society Foundations in February 14, 2002. BOAI arose from a conference organised in Budapest by the Open Society Institute (OSI) on December 1–2, 2001 to support OA at the 223

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period tagged Free Online Scholarship. It was a small gathering of individuals that were known as one of the main defining events of OA movement. Similarly, in the following year, there was a declarative statement named Bethesda Statement which is an international statement that came out in April, 2003 in Maryland USA, which defines the concept of OA and then supports that concept. With the drive of initiating discussions on how to provide OA publishing to the primary scientific literature in the area of biomedical research. Furthermore, another statement was issued on OA and access to knowledge labeled Berlin Declaration which is an international statement on OA and access to knowledge. It arisen from a conference on OA hosted in the Harnack House in Berlin, Germany by the Max Planck Society in 2003. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the initiative, it was reiterated in 2012 and supplemented with a set of solid suggestions for achieving the new goal that within the next ten years, OA will become the default method for distributing new peer-reviewed research in every field and country. OA has special features that promotes easy access and wide visibility of research outputs.

CHARACTERISTICS OF OPEN ACCESS Access to scholarly publications in the 21st Century has been greatly enriched with the arrival of OA initiatives the world over. This development has immensely contributed to the growth of scholarly communication system. OA initiatives brought about OA publishing that gives opportunity of wide visibility of scholarly works to information users and researchers. This has brought transformation in research especially in promotion of wide access to research outputs. OA has various characteristics. According to Suber (2010) and Jain (2012), OA features could be summarized as follows: 1. Unrestricted access: OA materials can be freely used by anyone: users have free access to use the materials without any barrier. Many users of information accessed materials online free of charge without prior knowledge of OA initiatives. This is possible when users by accident gain access to both subscribed and free access content while searching for information on the Internet (Dulle, 2010). 2. OA provides access to the available materials online including research findings using Internet as a podium. Most times full text materials are available and accessible by information users via Internet. 3. OA is free availability of scholarly publication: The OA scholar work is free for access without any barrier. 4. It is free of copyright and licensing restrictions: authors and users are free from any legal issue and permission right of use. The various characteristics discussed are common to the two strategies of OA (green and gold) that will be discussed in the next section.

PRINCIPLES BEHIND OPEN ACCESS INITIATIVES OA initiatives comprise of two strategies. One of them, known as the gold road/route, encourages the scholarly publishing in OA journals. The other, called green road/route, aims to develop digital OA repositories from which the publications, or papers accepted for publication, are alternately distributed. 224

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Both strategies have been strengthened through the establishment of OA platform. OA initiatives are based on principle. The Budapest definition of OA is not elaborate enough because certain concepts were left out. As a result, Bethesda declaration identified two (2) strategies to OA policy which are OA journal (Gold route) and OA archive (Green route). These are the two main basic strategies that can be used to achieve free access and wide visibility of research findings.

Open Access Journal (Gold Route) This is a process of making articles published in a journal freely and permanently available online or a channel of delivering OA principle of free access to scholarly content using Internet as a platform for the online access. OA journals are scholarly journals that are available online to the users without any barrier of either cost, legal/copyright other than those attached condition from gaining access to Internet. OA journal could be referred to as gold route. Therefore, OA journals are journals which are freely available online worldwide and do not rely upon the traditional subscription based business model to generate revenue. This is synonymous with OA journal publishing which is a model of scholarly work that makes journal articles accessible to the public by means of the internet without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself (Margoni & Peter, 2016). Transformative journals will assist in promotion of access and visibility of research findings.

Open Access Self-archiving (Green Route) OA self-archiving is often used as a synonym for OA green route. OA green route could be defined as all freely accessible copies of articles either preprint or post print that exists on various locations in the web. OA Archives (OAAs) are electronic repositories of submitted materials that may include published articles either post-print or pre-print articles, dissertations, theses and any other materials that authors or institutions believe that it can be available to the public without financial or legal barrier. There are four types of OA Archive (OAR). 1. Discipline/Subject OA archive: it is an OA archive or OA repository that captures, stores, preserves and provides access to the digital contents of a particular field of study or particular subject 2. Personal/Individual repository: it is an OA archive or OA repository that captures, stores, preserves and provides access to the digital content of individual collections. 3. Departmental/Institutional repository: it is an OA archive or OA repository that captures, stores preserves and provides access to the digital scholarly contents of members of department or institution. 4. Institutional Repositories (IRs) are now becoming a part of the technical infrastructure in research demanding institutions and a favoured option for providing OA to research finding. Foster and Gibbons (2005) defined an institutional repository as an electronic system that captures, preserves and provides access to the digital work products of a community. An OA repository could be defined as a storage and retrieval system where published research outputs and other scholarly works would be stored and made available for full, open and free access by the research community and the generality of the society. OA institutional repositories are designed to expose the details of their contents to web search engines. 225

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CHARACTERISTICS OF INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES (IRS) According to Crow (2002) and Ware (2004), IR has the following characteristics: (1) Institutional Repository (IR) supports the process of scholarly communication in collecting, storing and disseminating the scholarly content. Here authors and researchers can deposit scholarly materials in IRs, subject to copyright, with the host institution providing the infrastructure that supports materials which must be properly organized, archived and disseminated; (2) IR is an institutionally defined and it captures only the intellectual property of the host institution such as purely scholarly publications, or administrative, teaching and research materials, both published an unpublished; It is open an interoperable and the primary goal is to disseminate the institution’s intellectual output; and (3) It is cumulative and perpetual and this carries with it a long term obligation on the host institution to preserve IR content. A few research universities in Nigeria have established, or are partway to establishing IR services with the aim to enhance the visibility and provide wide access to research outputs generated within that university. The development of the IR services is related to the OA movement in Nigeria, which seeks to make valued research outputs openly available by encouraging academics to place their publications into repositories for easy access and wide visibility. OA model is a way to reduce costs and increase access as attested by Jones et al. (2006) that IRs has a greater potential than other types of information resources for disseminating research. Similarly, Bauer (2005) pointed out that IRs can gather and give access to a wide range of grey resources, i.e., material not in a journal article format, such as theses, datasets, presentations, archive documents and images. Abiraz, Noorhidawati and Kiran (2010) reported that large numbers of institutions essentially hold multidisciplinary subjects in OpenDOAR. Similarly, Biswas and Mukhopadhyay (2013) stressed that most of the institutions are multidisciplinary in nature and cover different subjects to their repositories. On the contrary, few repositories hold specialized subjects like Health, Medicine, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, and Technology for example, African Digital Health Library in University of Ibadan. Universities in Nigeria that are listed in Open Directory of OA Repositories (OpenDOAR) are shown in Table 1. Table 1 shows that Dspace is the most used software by institutional repositories in Nigeria. DSpace is one of the foremost software used by repositories especially in academic environments, non-profit, and commercial organizations building open digital repositories. This might be due to huge benefits accrued from its usage. It is free and easy to install out of the box and completely customizable to fit the needs of any organization. DSpace preserves and enables unlimited access to all types of digital content including text, images, moving images, mpegs and data sets. Several studies (Ali, Jan & Amin, 2013; Ganie, Jan, Lone & Nisa, 2014; Lone & Sheikh, 2016) have established that most of the repositories preferred DSpace and Eprints software in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) worldwide. This is followed by Eprints, Digital Commons DLibra, OPUS and a few numbers of repositories using other software. The growth in software used in repositories by institutions would bring research transformation by increasing citation impact.

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Table 1. Nigerian universities with intuitional repositories listed in OpenDOAR (Source: University of Nottingham (2015). Directory of OA Repository) S/N

Universities

URL

Content

Software

1

Covenant University, Otta

http://theses.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/ http://eprints. covenantuniversity.edu.ng/

Articles, E-theses

E-prints

2

Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria

hhttp://kubanni.abu.edu.ng:8080/jspui

Conferences, Theses

D-space

3

Federal University Tech., Akure

http://dspace.futa.edu.ng:8080/jspui/

Articles; References;

D-space

4

University of Jos

h http://dspace.unijos.edu.ng/

References, conferences, Learning objects

D-space

5

University of Nigeria

hhttp://unn.edu.ng/chart/repo

Articles; Theses

Open registry

6

Federal University Ndufu-Alike Ikwo

http://dspace.funai.edu.ng/xmlui/

Articles; Theses

D-space

7

Landmark University

http://eprints.lmu.edu.ng/

Articles; Theses

E-prints

8

University of Ibadan

http://ir.library.ui.edu.ng/handle/123456789/3

Articles; Theses

D-space

89

Federal University, Oye Ekiti

http://www.repository.fuoye.edu.ng/

Articles; Theses

D-space

910

University of Ilorin

http://uilspace.unilorin.edu.ng:8080/jspui/

Articles; Theses

D-space

111

University of Lagos

http://repository.unilag.edu.ng:8080/xmlui/

Articles; Theses

D-Space

112

Fountain University, Osogbo

https://library.fuo.edu.ng/fuo-institutional-repository/

Past questions, journals, staff publications

D-space

13

Federal University Kogi State

http://repository.fulokoja.edu.ng/

Theses, Journals dissertations,

D-space

14

Federal University Dutsinma, Katsina State

http://dspace.fudutsinma.edu.ng/jspui/

Theses, Journals. dissertations, book chapter,

D-space

15

Federal University Ekiti State

http://repository.fuoye.edu.ng/

Theses, Journals .dissertations, book chapter,

D-space

16

Ebonyi State University

http://ir.ebsu.edu.ng:8080/

Theses, Journals, dissertations, book chapter,

D-space

17

Afe Babalola University, Ekiti

http://eprints.abuad.edu.ng/

Theses, Journals, dissertations, book chapter,

E-prints

18

American University of Nigeria

http://digitallibrary.aun.edu.ng:8080/

Theses, Journals dissertations, book chapter,

D-space

19

University of Port Harcourt

https://www.uniport.edu.ng/resources/library/ librepository.html

Theses, Journals, dissertations, book chapter

D-space

20

African Digital Health Institution

http://adhlui.com.ui.edu.ng/

Theses, dissertations,

D-space

RESEARCH TRANSFORMATION AND ITS IMPACT Research impact is the degree to which research findings are seen, noticed, read, built upon, used, cited and applied by other researchers/scholars. To achieve the high research impact, adoption and use of OA initiatives is the answer. Chan (2004) reiterated that many authors of scholarly content wish their papers to

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be widely disseminated, read, cited and built upon to increase scientific knowledge and research impact. According to Swan and Brown (2005), OA has the potential to improve research impact that was based on increasing the usage of research papers through the provision of information access to users at free of charge and also increasing awareness by being indexed in OA services. Many studies have proved that articles made available through OA are cited more than that of toll-accessed versions (Sanchez-Tarrago & Fernandez-Molina, 2009). For example, Antelman (2006) reported that the relative increase in citation for OA articles ranged from 45% in philosophy, 51% in electrical engineering, 85% in political science and 91% in mathematics disciplines. Similarly, several studies (Brody, 2006; Hajjem, Harnad & Gingras, 2005) findings showed that OA articles received between 25-250% more citations than articles that are not freely accessible via the Internet. Gargouri, et al. (2010) noted that the OA benefit over toll-accessed versions of paper was due to quality benefit, from the users self-selecting what to cite and use, free by OA from the constraints of selective accessibility to subscribers only. OA provides enabling conditions to facilitate research transformation and equally serves as a catalyst to research outputs.

OPEN ACCESS AS A FACILITATOR FOR RESEARCH TRANSFORMATION With the adoption and use of OA initiatives by scholarly communities, the time for flow of information is faster than that of toll-accessed articles thereby; increase the speed of dissemination of research content. Research content dissemination is the rate at which an article of a publication is available to the user after its development and this can be aided by adoption and use of OA initiatives. The amount of time between acceptance of an article and its publication is an essential aspect in the scholarly publication process. The approach used in traditional publishing gives room for delay in processing of manuscripts from author to publisher. Hence, create a communication gap between author and publisher due to “snail movement” in the postal system. Dulle (2010) noted that the delay in publishing may increase the chances for the research to be out-of-date when published or that a competing research group may publish similar results before the originator of the research. One of the benefits of publishing in OA journals is that they serve as motivators for the author to have the results of their findings accessible at the soonest time possible. According to Ifeanyi (2011) the poor visibility of scholarly publications in Africa has resulted in the call for a way of fashioning out a proper method of disseminating scholarly research in developing countries, particularly Nigeria so as to balance the global information equation and improve the visibility and impact of Nigerian research outputs. Therefore, adoption of OA initiatives assisted tremendously in promoting easy accessibility and wide visibility of research outputs that brought research transformation.

IMPLICATION OF OPEN ACCESS ON TEACHING, LEARNING AND RESEARCH The researchers’ outputs need to be visible and accessible to scholarly community and society at large for the purpose of decision taking and policy formulation. The only initiative that can enhance free access and wide visibility without any constraint except cost of provision of Internet is OA initiative. OA assists academics to have access to current and relevant materials for teaching, learning and research. With the provision of access to current scholarly work, researchers will not only re-invent the work but will build upon what others researchers have done hence, improve research work citations. With OA, researchers 228

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can read and build on the findings of others without restriction. Even the best research is ineffectual, if others aren’t able to read and build on it. Academics create, share and allow their teaching resources not only to be used but be amended, improved and transformed (Mahony et al., 2012). The adoption and use of OA initiatives are very beneficial to students’ educational achievements in terms of outcomes and excellent academic performance. When students use OA publications, they will find information quickly and efficiently to complete their assignment, do their research and improve students’ academic performance. Stakeholders have various roles to play for OA developments.

STAKEHOLDERS’ROLES TOWARDS OPEN ACCESS DEVELOPMENT FOR RESEARCH TRANSFORMATION There are different stakeholders that play important roles towards OA development for the research transformation. Among the shareholders are the following with their various roles:

Library’s Role The prime objective of any library is to provide access to information that serves as a key to effective scholarly communication. Library as one of major stakeholders in OA has numerous roles to playas supported by Crow (2002) who restated the role of library towards OA institutional repositories as follows: 1. Academic libraries retain responsibility for managing and archiving traditionally published printing materials 2. Library budget should incorporate programs that support faculty’s OA publishing activities. Libraries played a vital role in setting up and managing OA especially repositories and this is widely admitted and acknowledged. According to Suber (2007) the following could be done by librarians to promote OA: 1. Ensure scholars at their institutions know how to find OA journals and archives in their disciplines and set up tools to permit them to access them (e.g., by including the journals listed in the DOAJ in their catalogues). 2. Establish institutional/departmental repositories. 3. Assist faculty archive their research papers (old and new) within the repository, digitizing older papers when necessary. 4. Assist OA journals to launched at their institutions and become known to other libraries, indexing services, potential funders, and potential readers. 5. Involve with funding bodies and University/Institute administrators to create the awareness on OA matters. Similarly, Kassahun and Nsala (2015) stated that many librarians have shown their support for OA by signing on to OA initiatives petitions and also taking the initiative in academic publishing. In addition, Cryer (2011) observed that academic libraries have taken it to be their responsibilities and have paved a path in the expansion of the OA movement by various activities: including creating of records for OA 229

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journals in their public catalogues and e-journals. Also, collaborating and the lists with their institutions to establish institutional repositories.

Publisher’s Role Online publishers are expected to do the under listed activities towards promotion of OA 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Organized seminars and workshops for new members to discuss issue related to OA Provision of free online full-text edition of their publications Assist reader to have free access to online articles Divert substantial amount of money realized from subscription based journals to OA journal Offers forum for bringing together the community of OA journal publishers and give support for active participation.

Authors/Researchers’ Role The role of author and researcher towards OA development cannot be over-emphasized. The goal of authors is to communicate their scholarly work (all papers in all fields, interconnected and accessible from any researcher’s desk worldwide) to information users. The following roles are expected to played by researchers and authors 1. Authors and researchers should create intellectual content and make it available to OA publishers 2. Authors and researchers should adopt author-pay OA model by paying bills involved in publishing. This will enable readers to enjoy free access to OA publications. 3. Authors and researchers make their articles freely accessible and available online through their institutional/ organizational repository 4. Authors and researchers at time engage in editorial work for free in order to promote good quality OA publications to readers. 5. Authors and researchers make provision for readers to copy, distribute, disseminate and preserved knowledge For lecturers and academics, the concept of ‘publish or perish’ has come to strap their sustenance and promotion within the academic environment to the volume of their research findings and published works. On the part of the graduate students, the nature of their academic studies requires that they be actively engaged in research activities either in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree being sought or as part of terminal thesis or dissertation. In the light of these requirements on the part of both lecturers and students, it is to be expected that the volume of research outputs originating from academic institutions and addressing local issues in any country especially Nigeria will be accessible without any constraint using OA initiatives.

Role of Organisations The major agent that drives and enhances various policies that promotes OA movement is organization. Organizations can be categorized into two: Government and Non-government organisations. Both 230

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governmental and non-governmental organisations have made immensely contributions towards dramatic growth of OA. According to Berlin Declaration, the expected roles of organisations towards OA development are stated as: 1. Developing means and ways to evaluate online journals and OA contributions in order to maintain the standard of quality assurance and good scientific practice; 2. Encouragement of researchers and grant recipients to publish their scholarly work according to the principle of OA paradigm; 3. Encouragement of holders of cultural heritage to support OA by providing their resources on the Internet for wider access and visibility; 4. Advocating acceptance and recognition of OA publications for promotion and tenure elongation for academic staff. International Federation of Library Association (IFLA) as an example of organization has been working with global organizations such as United Nations (UN), United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Health Organization (WHO), World Submit on the Information Society (WSIS), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and several others in advocating and promoting OA publicly funded research. The stakeholders use various types of OA publishing models to minimize the researcher’s constraints and improve access to research findings.

TYPES OF OA PUBLISHING MODELS Author Pay Open Access These are hybrid journals and subscription for publications is made by authors. The payment of the fee makes the article available in OA. It is a very prominent form of OA model, found especially in the medical sciences, is based on charging authors fees. Of all the different funding models available to OA journals, the “author pays” model is considered to compete with traditional subscription model. It is unique in providing the journal with source of income outside grant or sponsorship. The author pay fee after submission of manuscript and acceptance fees could be paid together or journal may charge acceptance fee only. This model adopted by both commercial and not for profit OA publishers. These fees could be covered by the author through research grants or with department conference funding or, in some cases, through the purchase of institutional or national membership to the journal. For example, BioMed Central.

Subsidized Open Access The journal management receives various subsidies from scholarly societies, foundations, university departments and government agencies to provide for journal cost. This form of OA model does not charge any fees to authors or readers but regularly run on largely volunteer efforts or with some type of non-monetary compensation offered by universities. This is done to promote access to research findings. For example, First Monday. In this model, the library subscribed, continues to get the required access rights and secures the right to publish in OA for its patrons. 231

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Dual-Mode Open Access This model encourages management of journals to adopt both toll-accessed and free access versions. With this model, journal management preferred to maintain both print and non-print publications, with their deep interest in switching to free OA model later. Journals adopted this model have started publishing an online open-access version and also maintained toll-accessed version to offset the costs of a print type of the publications. This approach attempts to flaw the logic of subscriptions by demanding additional OA services. For example, Journal of Postgraduate Medicine. This mode of OA provides a good entry point for a systematic redeployment of licensing costs (subscriptions) to publication costs.

Partial Open Access This model adopts both subscription and free access. Here, OA journals are provided free to authors and readers of the online version only. For printed paper version, subscription payment are made before accessed. Hence, access to paper version is restricted to subscribers only. Partial OA is to offer free access to some of the contents of the journal while restricting the rest to subscribed users. A journal’s decision to adopt this model can be based on several reasons. It could be for economic reason, since journal income from the subscription to paper version may be used to pay part of publishing cost. For example, Spanish Journal of Neurocirugia and Lancet adopted such model.

Delay Open Access This type of OA model provides OA journal free access to content after the period of embargo after they must have made certain amount of money. Here, OA to content only is provided after several months have passed since the original publication has been toll-accessed. It is a compromise that guarantees the journal’s sustainability and allows the profit to be invented in knowledge promotion activities. The method attempts to crack the logic of subscriptions by demanding additional OA services based on current sales volumes. Many medical journals have adopted this model. For example, New England Journal of Medicine.

Per Capital Open Access This is a special OA journal that provides free access for countries with very low per capital income i.e countries with scarce financial resources. This is done to promote wide access to research and guarantee a broad readership. For example, HNARI use such OA model.

Home Page Open Access The model allows researchers to make their work freely available on the Internet. This is done at their personal homepages or on pages provided by their institution. This model makes provision for authors that deposited their works with the university free of charge. This is done to encourage the researchers to do more of research and as well as promoting OA policy. University of Ilorin, Nigeria offers this service free. Home page OA differs from institutional repositories and e-Print servers in that the later offer a global indexing system. 232

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Open Access E-Print Archive The journal management allows authors to display a copy of their work published in their journal (either pre-print or post print materials), in an OA e-print archives or institutional repositories. An e-print archive can be structured around a discipline; Open source software is accessible for setting up e-print archives that can index the contents following the principles set by the Open Archives Initiative. The e-print services such as the physics e-print archives arXiv first subject repository set up by Paul Gingsparg and the PubMedCentral (PMC). Another example is the institutional repository for the Universidad Nacional de Colombia uses MIT‟s D-Space software and arxiv.org. (e-print archive)

Open Access Indexing OA indexing is a great source for finding publications that would otherwise only be found through commercial databases. In this model, articles themselves may not be open source. There are many indexes that are providing access to article metadata, so that researchers can at least know of article’s existence. For example, Science Direct journal.

Open Access Cooperative This involves coming together of publishers/institutions with mutual understanding or same cooperating ideas to promote wider free access to bibliographic information of such scholarly publication. This model can be formed among publishers, libraries, like scholarly societies, as they work together to safeguard free OA to bibliographic information. For example, abstracts are provided as services rendered by government for the publishers as an advertising tool, often with links to pay-per-view for the full text of articles most efficient form of knowledge dissemination. Member of institutions such as libraries, scholarly association contribute to support of OA journals. Example of such scholarly association is German Academic Publishers.

Open Access Freemium The centre for open electronic publishing is a French initiative for OA publishing in social sciences and humanities developed a new economic model in 2011 that was based on “freemium” for its full OA journals and books series .The prime objectives address two issues: improve their economical soundness and increase visibility of scholarly publications in libraries. Freemium as the portemanteau word indicates, combines “free” access to some services with licensing of other “premium” ones. Libraries subscribing to Open Edition Freemium offer their users the possibility to download pdf and electronic publication files of articles and books without quota and without digital right management (DRM) of the journals and book series that have adopted OA freemium model. This model preserves OA to information together with the marketing of premium services (Mounier, 2011).

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THE GROWTH OF OPEN ACCESS IN AFRICA The growth of OA institutional digital repositories has been very remarkable in developed countries as well as some developing countries like Brazil, India and South Africa (Christian, 2008). The contribution towards repositories by countries showed that United States is the leading country with the largest number of repositories (500) followed by United Kingdom (256) Japan (217), Germany (202), Africa(155), Spain(127), France(122), Italy(117), and Brazil(97) respectively(Ali, Lone & Mushtaq, 2018; Bashir, Aasif & Zahoor, 2019). Yet, not much had been heard in African countries (Nigeria inclusive). For instant, there are 19 active Institutional Digital Repositories in South Africa, 6 each in Egypt and Kenya and Nigeria has 5 (Directory of Open Access Repository, 2013). The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indexes 38 out of 41 OA journals from Nigeria. The 3 OA journals were unsuccessfully registered to be part of DOAJ, or they are rejected from DOAJ because they could not meet the requirements. Most of these acclaimed OA journals are not fully adopted OA publishing because out of 38 indexed OA journals, 29 of these Nigerian journals charge authors, 3 are charging conditionally and only 6 are free of charge (UNESCO, 2015a). As at 14th of June, 2014, Nigeria was not part of the ten countries that publish the highest portion of OA journals (UNESCO, 2015b). Nigeria with an estimated population of 150 million has 129 universities, 63 colleges of education, 75 polytechnics and 100 research and allied institutions host the highest number of institutions compared to any country in Africa (Bola, 2013). As at 2017, Nigeria tops the list of journals listed in the Africa Journals Online (AJOL) with 221 journal titles followed by South Africa with 96. Out of the 221 Nigerian journals listed in AJOL, only 70 are OA journals (Oguche, 2018). In addition, in 2017, there are 30 active IRs in South Africa, 20 in Nigeria, 15 in Kenya and Ghana has 3 (Directory of Open Access Repositories Official Website (DOAR), 2017). Adewole-Odeshi and Ezechukwu (2020) carried out an analytical study of OA institutional repositories in Nigerian universities. The findings revealed that the highest number of institutional repositories constituting 11 (44%) were developed by Nigerian institutions between 2014 and 2016; followed by 9(36%) between 2017 and 2019. As at December 2019, only 20 universities in Nigeria were registered with DOAR (See Table 1). Nigeria took 47th position with other countries that had the highest output of OA journals. In spite of slow adoption and use of OA publishing, there are huge benefits accrued to stakeholders.

BENEFITS OF OPEN ACCESS INITIATIVES TO STAKEHOLDERS The OA will continues to records progress and wider acceptance because of its increase in availability, usability and visibility of research findings. Suber (2004) and Jain (2012) clearly spelled out opportunities accrued from OA to various stakeholders: Readers and Scholars: Researchers especially from developing countries benefit from the OA initiative as enumerated 1. Readers gain free access to OA literature without barrier and scholars enjoy access to scholarly publications they need for their research. 2. With the adoption and use of OA by readers and scholars, it increases access convenience, visibility and retrieval power. 3. Readers and scholars gain 24/7 access to OA publications. 234

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4. Readers and scholars can read and easily build on research findings of others. 5. OA provides quick proliferation of research findings that enliven and inspire others researchers 6. Easy access to research material from all fields serves as incentive for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research activities.

Societies 1. OA provides opportunity to taxpayers to have access to the results of their investment especially scientific and medical research paid for with public funds.

Students and Teachers 1. Teachers and their students have access to the current research outputs throughout the world. This will improve their performance in teaching, learning and training.

Libraries With less funding available to libraries in developing countries to carter for subscription charges for research and academic journals, the benefit of OA cannot be over-emphasized. Some of the benefits of OA to libraries are discussed: 1. OA solves issue of pricing and permission crisis (serial crisis) for libraries. 2. OA enable libraries to help faculty to increase their audience and citation impact and thereby raised university research profile. Hence, it’s resulted in good webo-metric ranking. 3. OA improves library services to users especially Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI & Current Awareness service (CAS).

Institutions 1. Provides opportunity to gather and preserve its scientific findings and disseminates it through its repository. 2. Opportunity for indexing and tracking the research output of the institution from international search engines on the internet. 3. Opportunity to track the number of visits and use and collects data and indicators that can be used in institutional planning, and the search for sources of funding etc. 4. Provides opportunities for the use and re-use of the institution’s output for scientific purposes (CVs, publications, excellence reports, indicators, institutional websites, personal websites). 5. Strengthens international communication and collaboration channels and the institution’s international profile Despite series of benefits accrued to adoption and use of OA, research institutions and academic in several developing countries like Nigeria are still struggling to overcome various challenges in an attempt to make their research findings openly accessible.

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CHALLENGES FACING OPEN ACCESS ADOPTION AND USE TOWARD RESEARCH TRANSFORMATION The arrival of Internet technology has provided research institutions and academic with a very high level of visibility on the web. As a result, learning, teaching and research are abounding to enjoy wide access and more visibility of research findings in the global society. This would be possible as a result of adequate facilitating conditions like regular power supply, Internet and OA policy development that promote OA adoption (Finch, 2012). However, there are challenges militating against adoption and use of OA for research transformation. Challenges are the barriers that forestall effective and efficiency utilization of OA. Research community has been facing unprecedented changes, largely driven by technological developments accompanied by changes in research customs and scholarly communications. Research Institutes are grappling with fund shortage on one hand and on the other hand the poorly accessible research output and citation metrics. Hence, research findings’ visibilities are becoming more and more important in the scientific community to get grants from funding agencies. Till recent times, one of the most important metric for the researchers was publication in journals. Researchers published their work in subscription based journals and also served on several editorial and peer review committees. However, many a times they did not have access to their own work and the library could not afford to subscribe the same. This was one of the drawbacks of the traditional scholarly publishing model. In spite of enormous benefits of OA, there are still challenges facing adoption and use of OA as discussed. 1. Insufficient Awareness of OA Publishing: Many of scholars and researchers are not well informed about OA initiatives that yielded to OA publishing. A well informed about OA may lead to the adequate adoption or usage. The benefits of OA are achievable provided the users have adequate knowledge of the OA concept. Few journal publishers that are aware of OA are trying to shy away from it because of their commercial interest. For instant, with the huge benefits of OA institutional digital repository abounds, this can be achieved only, if stakeholders involved are fully aware of its benefits. Christian (2008) stressed that there is empirical evidence that the knowledge of OA institutional digital repository is very low among the major stakeholders including lecturers, researchers, librarians and students. 2. Language Barrier: Language barrier has been an issue in Africa countries. Most countries in Africa continent have many tribes with various languages and different official language apart from English. Two languages are mainly use for publication of online literature and OA materials are majorly written in English. For instant, Kenya as a country has 42 tribes with different dialects and Nigeria with about 371 tribes has 521 languages. 3. Resistance to Change: Change is inevitable and is permanent. Many researchers, scholars, librarians, readers and authors resisted the change that followed Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) revolution in the present e-world era. OA publishing can only achieve its prime objective of wide access and visibility using ICTs and its products as platform. 4. Dearth of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Infrastructure: The alternative ways of sharing their research outputs was derived from the benefits of ICTS product (Internet) that serves as platform for OA movement. Taking opportunity from benefits that technology offered, the scholars, scientists and researchers have responded to this by working out OA adoption. However, research community has been facing unparalleled changes, mostly driven by technological devel236

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5.

6.

7.

8.

opments accompanied by changes in research habits and scholarly communications. According to Christian (2008), the major problem that is militating against the takeoff of OA institutional digital repository in Nigerian libraries is the dearth of ICT infrastructure and facilities. This is an ugly confirmation of a similar complaint several years ago by Afullo (2000) that Nigeria was rated among the lowest in Africa in telecommunication infrastructure and not much is expected of academic libraries in Nigeria, though the situation seems to have improved overtime. In addition, the institutional repository requires necessary technological skills; however, such technological skill is either totally absent in some institution libraries or inadequate (Okoye & Ejikeme, 2011). Epileptic Power Supply: Electricity supply is a major problem in developing countries like Nigeria. This problem has made the development of projects such as adoption and use of OA publishing and usage of institutional digital repository in Nigeria much difficult and expensive. Internet that serves as platform for the use of OA requires power supply. According to Fatunde (2008), the erratic power supply is a major problem to the growth and operation of information and communication technology in Nigeria especial in scholarly community like universities. Digital Divide: The wide gap between technology developed nations and poorly technology based developing countries could be referred to as digital divide. According to Bashorun et al. (2013b), the digital divide between technology rich and poor nations of the world has deprived African countries from full benefits of OA. Inhibiting Copyright Protection Regime: Efforts of OA, aim to make the outputs of publicly funded research more widely accessible in digital formats. While these technological advances have made sharing and processing information easier, however, it does not change the fact that the information could be secured by Intellectual Property (IP) laws. Given the ease at which users can gain access to the digital information, the legal liability to provide access is far greater difficulty than the products of print in nature. Poor Funding of Research Institutions: Research Institutes are contending with fund shortage on one hand and on the other hand the poorly visible research output, and citation metrics. Researchers published their work in subscription based journals and also served as peer review committees and as editorial members. Nevertheless, many times they did not have access to their own work and the library could not have enough money to subscribe to the same. According to Arunachalam (2003), the development of institutional repository in developing countries is capital intensive project than in developed countries. This is because academic and research institutions in advanced countries already have a well-established state-of-the-art ICT infrastructure to build on. Similarly, Saroj (2016) reported that the opportunity for faculty and researchers to publish in OA is scarce especially in the state government funded academic universities due to the lack of funding, technology awareness and skilled manpower. Several studies (Ivwighreghweta, 2012; Ezema & Ugwu, 2013; Ridwan, 2015) reiterated lack of funding as an impediment to establishing IR in Nigeria.

Funding agencies across the globe like Wellcome Trust and National Institutes of Health (NIH) are now mandating research findings from grants given to them to be published in OA outlets. The NIH in the US asked all its grantees to provide OA to the results of NIH-sponsored research within 12 months of publication. The Wellcome Trust requires OA to Wellcome Trust-sponsored research within six months of publication. Similarly, Research Councils in the UK have a related policy. Major research institutions in China, Australia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, the US, and the UK have dedicated themselves to provide unlimited access to their research output. One of the 237

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organizations that were the first to embrace OA was Wellcome Trust that started mandating that all its sponsored research should be made OA from April 2005 (Finch, 2012). This was possible as a result of facilitating conditions like Internet, regular power supply and OA policy development that support adoption and use of OA (Finch, 2012).

SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Generally, the level of adoption and use of OA publishing in African countries is far from the realities. As noted by Enefu, Gbaje and Aduku (2015) that utilization of OA publishing by academics in Nigeria is slow. Be that as it may, the following are recommended as the way forward for the research transformation in era of OA initiatives: Promoting OA Publishing Awareness Campaign: awareness campaign on benefits of OA should be organized by government establishments such as ministries of education, science & technology and information. Also, libraries, and universities management should embark on any program that would sensitize all stakeholders the need to adopt and utilize OA. Provision for Language Translator Software: Nation with many tribes will have diverse languages. Most of these countries have official language and other indigenous languages. The official language could be English or French. Hence, there is need for the translator to convert research outputs written in native language to widely acceptable language. For instant, OA publications written in local language could be converted to either French to English language. Attitudinal Change: People should develop positive changes towards ICT usage and comply with ICTs rules. For the effective utilization of OA, there is need by stakeholders to develop ICT skill such as surfing Internet and literacy skills. Provision of Sufficient Information and Communication Technology Infrastructure: Universities, organisations, individuals and all levels of governments should acquire enough of modern technology equipment such as computer and upgrading of Internet connectivity for effective use of OA. Provision of Alternative Source of Power Supply: Government, private organization and individual stakeholders should provide alternative source of power like solar energy, generating plant for steady supply of electricity and uninterrupted Internet connectivity. License should be developed to facilitate OA: for example, PLOS applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to works we publish. This license was developed to promote OA—namely, free immediate access to, and unrestricted reuse of, original works of all types. With this license, authors agree to make articles legally available for reuse, without permission or fees, for virtually any purpose. Anyone may copy, distribute or reuse these articles, as long as the author and original source are properly cited.

FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTION The future research work should examine impact of OA business models on publishing system.

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CONCLUSION The development and consolidation of OA initiative has brought transformation in research outputs in the world especially in developed and developing countries particularly in Africa. OA has become a prerequisite to survive and thrive in research transformation. Key-in into OA initiatives relating to research promotion and its impact on the society, organizations and individuals is germane. A central element of the sustainability transformation of research outputs would be effective with the inclusion of OA initiatives. OA initiatives are a powerful driver that brought a new direction of change to scholarly works by facilitating free access to research outputs. Adoption of OA publishing has huge benefits such as promotion of research outputs emanating from researchers, improved visibility of research findings, increase citation, usage and assisting policy makers to access useful research findings for progressive decision making that could lead to huge economic development. With the attendant, huge benefits of OA initiatives would continue to flourish.

REFERENCES Afullo, T. J. (2000). Global information and Africa: The telecommunications infrastructure for cyberspace. Library Management, 21(4), 205–214. doi:10.1108/01435120010317507 Antelman, K. (2004). Do open access articles have a greater research impact? College & Research Libraries, 65(5), 372–382. doi:10.5860/crl.65.5.372 Arunachalam, S. (2003). Information for research in developing countries-Information technology, a friend or foe? The International Information & Library Review, 35(2-4), 133–147. doi:10.1080/10572 317.2003.10762596 Bashorun, M. T., Jain, P., Sebina, P.M., & Kalusopa, T. (2013a). Open access publishing: A catalyst for scholarly research publication. European Journal of Academic Research, 1(2), 84-99. Retrieved November 17, 2019, from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278047334open_access_publishing_A_catalystforscholarly_research_publication Bashorun, M. T., Sani, L. I., & Isah, A. (2013b). Emerging issues in open access initiatives in Africa. In S. Thanuskodi (Ed.), Challenges of academic library management in developing countries (pp. 141–151). Information Science Reference. doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-4070-2.ch011 Bauer, C. (2005). Institutional repositories. In N. Courtney (Ed.), Technology for the rest of us. Libraries Unlimited. Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing. (2003). Retrieved December 15, 2019, from http:// www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm Björk, B.-C., & Solomon, D. (2012). Open access versus subscription journals: A comparison of scientific impact. BMC Medicine, 10(1), 73. doi:10.1186/1741-7015-10-73 PMID:22805105 Bola, O. (2013, Mar. 7). Research and allied workers on strike. The Guardian, p. 9.

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Brody, T. D. (2006). Evaluating research impact through open access to scholarly communication (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of Southampton. Retrieved December 15, 2019, from: http://eprints. ecs.soton.ac.uk/13313/01/brody.pdf Budapest Open Access Initiative. (2002). Retrieved November 14, 2019, from: https://www.researchgate. net/publication/307696427_Budapest_Open_Access_Initiative _2002 Chan, L. (2004). Supporting and enhancing scholarship in the digital age: The role of open access institutional repositories. Canadian Journal of Communication, 29(3), 277–300. doi:10.22230/cjc.2004v29n3a1455 Chan, L., & Costa, S. (2005). Participation in the global knowledge commons: Challenges and opportunities for research dissemination in developing countries. New Library World, 106(3/4), 141–163. doi:10.1108/03074800510587354 Chan, L., Krisop, B., & Arunachalam, S. (2011). Towards open access and equitable access/to research and knowledge for development. PLoS Medicine, 8(3). doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001016 PMID:21483470 Christian, G. M. (2008). Issues and challenges to the development of open access institutional repositories in academic and research institutions in Nigeria. A paper presented at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Retrieved December 16, 2019, from: http://idlbnc.idrc.ca/dspace/ handle/123456789/36986/1/127792.pdf Costa, M. P., & Leite, F. C. (2016). Open access in the world and Latin America: A review since the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Transinformação, 28(1), 33–46. Advance online publication. doi:10.1590/2318-08892016002800003 Cryer, E. (2011). Incorporating open access into libraries. Serials Review, 37(2), 103–107. doi:10.108 0/00987913.2011.10765359 Directory of Open Access Repositories-DOAR. (2012). Proportion of repositories by country world wide. Retrieved November 24, 2019, from: http://www.opendoar.org Dulle, F. W. (2010). An analysis of open access scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities (PhD thesis). University of South Africa. Retrieved November 22, 2019, from: http://uir.unisa.ac.za/ bit5tream/handle /10500/3684/thesis_dulle_f.pdfsequence=l Dulle, F. W., Minishi-Majanja, M. K., & Cloete, L. M. (2010). Factors influencing the adoption of open access scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities. In World Library and Information Congress: 76th IFLA General Conference and Assembly. Gothenburg, Sweden: IFLA. Retrieved November 12, 2019, from: http: //www. Ifla.org/en/ifla76 Enefu, O. M., Gbaje, E. S., & Aduku, B. S. (2015). The adoption of cloud computing technology for library services in the National Open University of Nigeria Library. Information Manager (The), 15(12), 22–32. Fatunde, T. (2008). Nigeria: poor electricity supply hits ICT growth. University World News (African Edition). Retrieved December 18, 2019, from: https://www.universityworldnews.com/article. php?story=20080424153055598

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Finch, D. J. (2012). Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications. Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings. RIN. Foster, N. F., & Gibbons, S. (2005). Understanding faculty to improve content recruitment for institutional repositories. dLib Magazine, (11). Retrieved December 14, 2019, from: www.dlib.org/dlib/january05/ foster/01foster.html Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Lariviere, V., Gingras, Y., Carry, H., Brody, T., & Harnad, S. (2010). Self-selected or mandated open access increases citation impact of higher quality research. Retrieved November 26, 2019, from: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18493 Giarlo, M. J. (2005). The impact of open access on academic libraries. Retrieved December 7, 2019, from: http://lackoftalent.org/michael/papers/532.pdf Gideon, C. (2008). Open access initiative and the developing world. African Journal of Library Archives and Information Science, 18(2). Hajjem, C., Harnad, S., & Gingras, Y. (2005). Ten-year cross-disciplinary comparison of the growth of open access and how it increases research citation impact. A Quarterly Bulletin of the Computer Society of the IEEE Technical Committee on Data Engineering, 28(4), 39–47. Retrieved November 25, 2019, from http://sites.computer.org/debull/AO5dec/hajjem.pdf Ifeanyi, J. E. (2011). Building open access institutional repositories for global visibility of Nigerian scholarly publication. Library Review, 60(6), 473–485. doi:10.1108/00242531111147198 Ifinedo, P. (2006). Acceptance and continuance intention of web-based learning technologies (WLT) use among university students in a Baltic Country. The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries, 23(6), 1–20. doi:10.1002/j.1681-4835.2006.tb00151.x Imo, N. T., & Igbo, H. U. (2015). Institutional policy and management of institutional repositories in Nigerian universities. Academic Press. Jain, P. (2012). Promoting open access to research in academic libraries. Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). paper 737. Retrieved December 22, 2019, from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/737 Jones, R. E., Andrew, T., & MacColl, J. (2006). The institutional repository. Elsevier. doi:10.1533/9781780630830 Kassahun, K., & Nsala, C. (2015). The awareness of academic librarians towards open access resources to support reference services: A case of private institutions of higher learning in Gaborone. Academic Press. Lawal, A. O. (2016). Adoption of open access for teaching and research by lecturers in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria Nigeria (Dissertation). Department of Library and Information Science, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. Mahony, S., Sirmons, I., & Tiedau, U. (2012). Open access and online teaching materials for digital humanities. Digital Humanities in Practice, 167. Margoni, T., & Peters, D. (2016). Creative commons licenses: Empowering open access. Retrieved November 23, 2019, from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2746044

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Mounier, P. (2011). Freemium as a sustainable economic model for open access electronic publishing in humanities and social sciences1. Information Services & Use, 31(3-4), 225–233. doi:10.3233/ISU2012-0652 Sanchez-Tarrago, N., & Fernandez-Molina, J. C. (2009). The open access movement and Cuban health research work: An author survey. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 27(1), 66–74. doi:10.1111/ j.1471-1842.2009.00852.x PMID:20402806 Sanjeeva, M. M., & Powdwal, S. C. (2017). Open access initiatives: Reframing the role of librarians. Library Herald, 55(4), 467–487. doi:10.5958/0976-2469.2017.00037.9 Saroj, K. P. (2016). Open access initiatives and its impact on scientific communities: A review of INFLIBNET Centre. International Journal of Research, 3(1), 181–189. Retrieved December 22, 2019, from http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ Suber, P. (2010a). Open access overview: Focusing on open access to peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints. Retrieved November 24, 2019, from: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm/ Suber, P. (2010b). Open access news. Retrieved December 15, 2019, from at: https://legacy.earlham. edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html Suber, P. A. (2003). Welcome to the SPARC open access Newsletter, issue #64. Retrieved December 12, 2019, from http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-04-03.htm#define Suber, P. A. (2007). What you can do to promote open access. Retrieved December, 18, 2019, from http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/do.htm Swan, A., & Brown, S. (2005). Open access self-archiving: An author study. UK FE and HE funding councils. UNESCO. (2015a). Global open access portal: overview of OA in Nigeria. Retrieved November 14, 2019, from: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/portals and-platforms/goap/ access-by-region/africa/nigeria// UNESCO. (2015b). Scholarly communication. Retrieved November 24, 2019, from: https://unesdoc. unesco.org/images/0023/002319/231938e.pdf

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Digital Divide: The wide gap between technology developed nations and poorly technology-based developing countries. Library: An institution established to acquire, organize, preserve, and disseminate information from different sources in various format. Open Access: The removal of major obstacles to accessing, sharing, re-using and promotion of visibility of the research outputs. Open Access Initiative: An initiative that supports freely available and accessible scholarly work online without any forms of barriers.

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Research: An organized and systematic human activity of finding answers to question using intellectual application. Research Impact: The degree to which research findings are seen, noticed, read, used, built upon, cited and applied by other scholars. Research Transformation: Is the revolutionary process of changing the research outputs for the enhancement of accessibility and visibility of research findings.

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Chapter 13

Sharing Open Data in Agriculture:

A Learning Curve for Developing Countries Liah Shonhe https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2233-2164 Dalian University of Technology, China

ABSTRACT The main focus of the study was to explore the practices of open data sharing in the agricultural sector, including establishing the research outputs concerning open data in agriculture. The study adopted a desktop research methodology based on literature review and bibliographic data from WoS database. Bibliometric indicators discussed include yearly productivity, most prolific authors, and enhanced countries. Study findings revealed that research activity in the field of agriculture and open access is very low. There were 36 OA articles and only 6 publications had an open data badge. Most researchers do not yet embrace the need to openly publish their data set despite the availability of numerous open data repositories. Unfortunately, most African countries are still lagging behind in management of agricultural open data. The study therefore recommends that researchers should publish their research data sets as OA. African countries need to put more efforts in establishing open data repositories and implementing the necessary policies to facilitate OA.

INTRODUCTION It is undisputable that the agricultural sector plays a key role in economic development as it provides the basic requirements to mankind and raw materials for industrialization. Agriculture enhances sustainable development, poverty reduction and inclusive growth. It aids in the attainment of sustainable development goals in various ways. For example: by providing employment to a vast army of uneducated and unskilled labour; by earning valuable exchange through the export of agricultural products and by providing food and raw materials to non-agricultural sectors (Macatta, 2016). The United States of America (U.S.A), DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch013

Copyright © 2021, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

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England, and Japan are clear examples of how agriculture can help in the process of industrialization and poverty alleviation. Macatta (2016) noted that, about 70-80 percent labour in Tanzania is absorbed in the agricultural sector. In India, the agricultural sector provides nearly 52 percent of the total number of jobs available in India and contributes around 18.1 percent to the GDP (Arjun, 2013). Essays, UK (2016) also stated that, the contribution of agriculture towards GDP is about 25% which is higher than the contribution of any other sector in Pakistan. All these statisctics demonstrates how agriculture plays a key role in country’s economic development. Similarly, “Turkey accounts for 75% of the global hazelnut production and 70-75% of the exportation” (Aydın, Ünal, & Aydın, 2018, p.1). Aydın, Ünal and Aydın (2018) further stated that the stakeholders of hazelnut inTurkey, had problems relating to availability, meaningful, accuracy of the hazelnut data. This demonstrates how crucial data is for sustainable agricultural activities. Thus, agricultural data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish (Aydın, Ünal, & Aydın, 2018). Despite the importance of open data in agriculture, it is disheartening to note that the impact of open agricultural data in developing countries is low. CTA, GODAN and PAFO (2017, p.8) further explained that this is often “because the data needed to have local impact does not exist, or is not openly available”. Thus, without access to necessary data, sustainable agriculture and development may be hindered. Mbulawa (2017) noted that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to end extreme hunger and all forms of poverty, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. This can be attained fully if stakeholders in the agricultural sector have access to accurate, timely, quality information and open data (Nyaggah, 2017). As a result, information workers, farmers, researchers, policy makers and entrepreneurs ought to proactively work together and promote sharing of open data to enhance open access and informed decision making. Thus, based on the above premise, this paper aims to explore the practices and/ initiatives for open data sharing in the agricultural sector including establishing the research outputs concerning open data in agriculture.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES This chapter aims to; • • •

Establish frameworks used for open data principles and data sharing which enhances access to information. Establish research output of open data in agriculture, through descriptive bibliometrics analysis. Outline a few projects/agencies supporting open data management and sharing in agriculture.

This paper provides a reference point for developing countries to learn from best practices and benchmark from other nations’ initiatives.

LITERATURE REVIEW According to the Agriculture Goods (2020) and Farming Portal (2019) the agriculture sector is one of the most important sectors in an economy as it: (1) provides food and fodder to feed people and livestock; (2) is a source of raw materials for production; (3) is a source of employment and livelihood to a large 245

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portion of the global population; (4) contributes to the national income and is a source of government income; and (5) is a basis for economic development – locally and nationally. Therefore, it is essential for agricultural organizations, farmers and researchers to be active in this area and their research outputs should be made open so as to enable access by all (Ballantyne, 2009). Open data forms a foundation for open access to agricultural information. Open data has the potential to providing solutions to a variety of actors tackling food security and nutrition challenges in developing countries. According to GODAN (2018, p.1): Open data can support innovation and economic growth, improve service delivery and effective governance. It can improve environmental and social outcomes for stakeholders participating in “innovation systems” and across value chains. Making open data work for agriculture and nutrition requires a shared agenda to increase the supply, quality, and interoperability of data, alongside action to build capacity for the use of data by all stakeholders Thus, in order to achieve sustainable development goals, sharing and access to open data should be promoted in the agricultural sector. The following sub-sections outlines the principles and frameworks for enabling open data sharing.

The Data Spectrum Open data refers to data licensed in a way that anyone can access, share and use. Examples of open data include government financial data. Complete open data should be available in formats that can easily be retrieved and have unlimited rights to reuse and distribute. The characteristics of full open data includes: availability and access, re-use and redistribution and universal participation (Open Knowledge Foundation, n.d.). As seen on the data spectrum on Figure 1, data access is categorized into three; closed, shared and open. According to Dgen (2019, para 9): Open data: refers to data that anyone can use, for any purpose, for free (earth observations). This data maybe identified with the licenses CC0 and CC-BY. Shared data: is data that has pre-emptive licences for specific use-cases, and open data descriptions of both the data and the licence conditions (e.g. reports of crop diseases). Closed data: is data that requires a per-use, custom licence, negotiated on a case-by-case basis (e.g. employment contracts, lease agreements) Generally open data is important as it offers various benefits such as accountability, self-empowerment, scientific and technological advancement, impact measurement of policies, innovation, improved effectiveness of government services, transparency and democratic control, improved efficiency and effectiveness of government services (Open Knowledge Foundation, n.d.; Open Data Soft, 2017). Similarly, these benefits can be harnessed in the agriculture sector if open data practices are fully employed.

Open Data Principles The concept of open data started some decades ago and government have been appreciating and adopting the concept at various levels. In an effort to make governments more open, accountable and responsive to citizens, collaboration between countries and various organizations resulted in what is now known as the International Open Data Charter. (Gurin, 2015). According to the Open Data Charter (2019), the 246

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Figure 1. The Open Data Institute’s (ODI) data spectrum: Agriculture Source: Open Data Institute (2019), the image is CC-BY licensed

charter comprises of 73 government adopters and 53 organizations endorsers. Its goal “is to embed open data as a central ingredient to achieving better solutions to the most pressing policy challenges of our time” (The Open Data Charter, 2019, para 1). The charter established six principles for how governments should be publishing information. These principles mandate that data should be: (1) Open by Default, (2) Timely and Comprehensive, (3) Accessible and Usable, (4) Comparable and Interoperable, (5) For Improved Governance and Citizen Engagement and (6) For Inclusive Development and Innovation. These are further described in Table 1 below. Adoption of these open data principles in the agricultural sector can help facilitate effective implemenation and management of the open data initiatives. In addition, there are frameworks that also guide the data sharing practices to support the principle of openness. These are briefly discussed below.

Guiding Frameworks for Data Sharing This section presents two most popular guiding framework for open data sharing; The 5 Star Deployment Scheme and the FAIR Principles. These frameworks recognize the concept of ‘open’ as the cornerstone of all initiatives on knowledge and data sharing (GODAN, 2019).

Tim Berners-Lee’s 5 Star Deployment Scheme for Open Data The 5 Star Deployment Scheme for Open Data was developed in 2010 by the world wide web inventor, Tim Berners-Lee (GODAN, 2019). The 5-star scheme (Fig. 2) is said to be cumulative in that ‘each additional star presumes the data meets the criteria of the previous step(s) (GODAN, 2019).

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Table 1. Open data principles Principles

Description

Open by default

Government data should be made open and available for the public to find, access, and use under an open and unrestrictive license, unless there is a specific, pressing reason why that data cannot be made open, and that reason is clearly communicated to the public.

Timely and comprehensive

While the primary goal of governments should be to release data as early as possible, capacity and resource limitations may require governments to prioritize data for ongoing release. Data that is comprehensive is both complete and detailed, without significant gaps or missing data elements.

Accessible and usable

Open data supports better informed decision-making outside government by allowing organizations and individuals to have a clearer idea of how government makes decisions, creates policy, and delivers services. Open data also supports better informed decision making within government by breaking down silos between departments.

Comparable and interoperable

Data should be comparable (over time, across organizations, etc.) as well as interoperable. This means ensuring that two datasets generated in completely different contexts (e.g. by different departments in different years) will have a sufficient level of data standardization to allow the data within those datasets to be easily compared by users. The publication of data in structured, standardized formats can allow users to compare and contrast data, trace data points over time and across projects, and create effective, meaningful data analyses to support policy decisions.

For improved governance and citizen engagement

Open data allows governments themselves to have a more complete picture of the complex work behind the delivery of all government programs and services. Likewise, it offers civil society and private sector organizations, as well as individual entrepreneurs, the opportunity to understand how government services are delivered, and propose alternative solutions that may improve outcomes or reduce costs. Finally, open government data supports better informed engagement between citizens and governments, empowering citizens to hold governments to account, and encouraging governments to listen thoughtfully and open up dialogue with citizens and organizations.

For incluisive development and innovation

When data can be accessed and used by citizens, it can drive entrepreneurship, innovation and social problem solving - increasing its economic and social value exponentially. The more people and organizations are looking at open government datasets, the greater the chance for one of them to identify an innovative policy or solution, or to identify new potential efficiencies in program or service delivery. Likewise, open data represents a knowledge sharing opportunity, allowing individuals and organizations to collaborate on innovative or entrepreneurial projects.

Source: The Open Data Charter (2019).

Figure 2. Tim Berners-Lee’s 5-star open data deployment scheme Source: GODAN (2019)

The FAIR Principles “The term FAIR was launched at a Lorentz workshop in 2014, the resulting FAIR principles were published in 2016” (FORCE11, 2017, para 1). According to the Association of European Research Libraries (2017, p.1), “the FAIR Data Principles are a set of guiding principles in order to make data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable”. The principles refer to three types of entities: data, metadata, and infrastructure (GOFAIR, n.d.). Figure 3 further depicts what FAIR data entails.

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Figure 3. The FAIR principles

Source: Association of European Research Libraries (2017)

A research survey conducted by Brock (2019, para 2) revealed that “majority of researchers surveyed … on open data had never heard of FAIR, regardless of their field. Of the 748 researchers that responded to this question, 144 said they were familiar with the principles.” This implies that there is vital need to raise awareness of these principles in all disciplines and also carry out surveys to establish the level of compliance. According to Wise, et al. (2019), the FAIR principles enables powerful new artificial intelligence analytics to access data for machine learning and prediction; and the principles are a fundamental enabler for digital transformation research and development. The GODAN Action (2019) suggests that applying the data sharing principles include: • • • • •

Licensing: data owners should provide data license information. Data service infrastructure: use persistent URIs as identifiers of datasets Data formats: use machine-readable standardized data formats. Metadata: provide metadata especially regarding machine readable metadata. Linking: use persistent URIs as identifiers within datasets.

Despite various organizations and authors having identified the guiding principles for sharing open data, it is disheartening to note that during the literature review process, no empirical study was retrieved on the relevance or applicability of the open data principles, 5-star open data scheme and the FAIR principles in agriculture. This is a research gap that need to be addressed so as to facilitate and enhance open data sharing in agriculture. 249

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METHODOLOGY This is mainly a desktop research paper. As shown in Figure 4, the research methodology followed was in three stages. The first step was data collection which entailed literature review on google scholar, institutional websites and Web of Science (WoS) database. Sample data for bibliometric analysis was extracted from WoS databases; WOS, BCI, BIOSIS, CCC, DRCI, DIIDW, KJD, MEDLINE, RSCI, SCIELO. The keywords “Open data” AND “Agriculture” were used to search for all types of documents within the years 1945-2019 (All years recorded in WoS). This action retrieved 213 records. However, abstract analysis was conducted to ensure that the most relevant documents are included in the sample. This resulted in a total of 100 records relating to open data in Agriculture. Supporting data was also extracted from the European Data Portal, The Open Data Barometer, AgTrials Repository and datasets provided by Antognoli, Sears and Parr (2017). The second step was data analysis which was conducted through the WoS Clarivate Analytics. Lastly data visualization was achieved by exporting the data to Microsoft excel for charts production while VOS viewer (version 1.6.13) was used for density and network maps visualization. Figure 4. Research methodology process

According to the OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms (2013, para 1-3) bibliometrics refers to “the statistical analysis of books, articles, or other publications … to measure the “output” of individuals/ research teams, institutions, and countries, to identify national and international networks, and to map the development of new (multi-disciplinary) fields of science and technology.” The Iowa State University of Science and Technology (2020) further stated that bibliometrics research can be used quantitatively or qualitatively to approach a variety of questions in the humanities and sciences. Thus, various authors (Cabrera, Talamini, & Dewes, 2016; Kwadzo & Annor, 2007; Raparelli & Bajocco, 2019; Studies, 2016)

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have conducted bibliometrics studies in the agricultural sector to answer various questions. Similarly, this paper also conducts a bibliometric analysis to establish the extent to which researchers are publishing about open data in agriculture and how many are actually publishing their articles as open access or their research data as open data.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION There is an urgent need to improve the infrastructure supporting the reuse of scholarly data (Wilkinson, et al., 2016), hence the need for a bibliometric analysis in the field of agriculture and open data. This was conducted so as to establish the research output in this field and the quantity of scholarly research that is complying to open data principles. The following presents the descriptive bibliometrics results.

Descriptive Bibliometric Analysis This section provides results from the WoS database. Descriptive statistics such as yearly research productivity, authors supporting open data discussion, most cited articles and most productive countries are discussed below.

a. Characteristics of the Data Set The sample dataset for this study comprised of 100 records retrieved from different databases as shown on Table 2. Majority of the articles within the sample are journal articles (54) and conference proceedings (45). Ninety-four (94) of the articles are all written in English. The sample articles were published between the years 2012-2019. Table 2. Data set characteristics Databases Name

Document Types Articles

Type

Language

Articles

Language

Articles

English

94

Chinese, Czech, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese

1 each

WOS Core collection

76

Journal Articles

54

INSPEC

22

Conference papers

45

Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD)

1

Book Chapter

1

Korean Journal Database (KJD)

1

Publication period: 2012 - 2019

Total Number of Publications = 100

Total Citations = 531

Average citations per item = 5.31

Citing articles = 509

h-index = 9

Source: WoS Clarivate Analytics, December 2019.

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As seen on Table 2, the total number of articles that covered open data and agriculture were only 100. This shows that research activity in this area is very low. However, it is worth noting that this cannot be a general conclusion as other articles related to this topic may not have been included in the sample due to the limitations of WoS database which does not include all indexes especially in the humanities and social sciences field. Moreover, WoS is highly ranked database that indexes highly ranked journals with high impact. Therefore, authors who publish in predatory journals will not appear on WoS. As a result, when conducting bibliometric studies such as this, researchers are likely to retrieve small samples.

Validity of the sample and Research Trends As a way of ensuring that the sample data set represents the desired content, which in this case is open data in agriculture; a co-occurrence analysis of keywords was conducted based on author keywords. The results as shown on Figure 5 show that the majority of the articles in the sample data set fall within the high-density areas (red colour) representing the topics “open data” and “agriculture”, which is the key focus for this study. In addition, Figure 5 represents the most popular topics in relation to open data and agriculture. As can be seen Internet of Things, precision agriculture, land use Geo systems. Remote sensing, linked open data and big data are appearing in the densest areas. Figure 5. Co-occurrence of terms based on author keywords and keyword plus Source: Data from WoS, Density map from VOS viewer, 2019

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b. Yearly Productivity in Open Data and Agricultural Research In order to track research productivity of open data in the agriculture sector, a yearly productivity analysis was conducted as shown on Figure 6. The findings show that there has been a rise in publications since 2012 till 2015 which had 20 publications. Then there was a decline in 2016 and 2017. On a positive note, the year 2018 (19 articles) and 2019 (20 articles) became more productive. Similarly, the years 2019 (208 citations), 2018 (165 citations) and 2017 (68 citations) had the most total citations per year. Figure 6. Articles published per year Source: WoS Clarivate Analytics, 2019

The fluctuations in research output (Figure 6) could be caused by a number of factors such as lack of interest in open data and agriculture, lack of funds to do research and lack of awareness. Thus, it is imperative for stakeholders in the agricultural sector to increase collaboration activities with supporting organizations such as Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), Pan African Farmers’ Organisation (PAFO) and the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN), which stimulate discussions around open data sharing and management in agriculture.

c. Top Ten Authors/Researchers According to the findings on Figure 7, researchers who have gained more interest and are more productive in publishing content related to open data and agriculture are K. Charvat (6 publications), S. Horakova, Z. Krivanek and V. Lukas all with four (4) publications each. The rest of the authors have 3 publications or less in this field. These findings show that researchers are moderately active in this research field as majority of them have few publications addressing open data in agriculture.

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Figure 7. Most productive authors agriculture and open data research Source: WoS Clarivate Analytics, 2019

Figure 8 shows a co-authorship network of authors with at least 2 documents and above. Interestingly, K. Charvat who is the most productive author and also has the highest link of collaboration network as depicted by the biggest node on Figure 8. The second author with the biggest node (i.e. high collaboration network) is J. Keizer who has 3 publications. It is commendable that the most productive researchers in this field value and engage in networking and research collaboration. Research collaboration is key as it offers numerous benefits such as; exchange on knowledge among experts from different cultural background and work environments, the opportunity to develop as a scholarly author, foster innovativeness among team members, reduces research costs and redundancies (duplication of efforts) and there are various funding opportunities for collaborative research (Iglič, Doreian, Kronegger, & Ferligoj, 2017; Sprunger, 2017). Lamberts (2013, para 3) further noted that “there is a positive correlation between the number of authors on a publication and the impact of the research.” This shows how important collaboration is.

d. Top Ten Enhanced Countries In relation to the most productive countries in the field of open data and agriculture, Italy (17 articles), USA (14 articles) and Czech Republic (10 articles) have the highest number of publications. As seen on Figure 9 these are the countries with authors interested in open data and agriculture. Correspondingly, findings from the European Data Portal (2019) reveals that Italy has 44837 open data sets on agriculture alone. Thus, not only does Italy lead in publishing about open data but it is also doing well in the provision of open data sets in agriculture. In total, the European Data Portal hosts 54012 (10.5%) of agriculture datasets.

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Figure 8. Co-authorship network map

Source: Data from WoS, Network visualization map from VOSviewer, 2019

Figure 9. Most productive countries

Source: Data from WoS Clarivate Analytics, 2019

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Figure 10. Term co-occurrence map based on text data Source: Data from WoS, network map from VOS viewer, 2019

e. Keyword co-occurrence Different from Figure 5 which was based on author keywords, Figure 10 presents a term co-occurrence map based on text data. These key terms were extracted from both title and abstract and only words appearing more than 5 times were included in the network map. The results in Figure 10 shows that there is a lot of connectivity among different keywords however there isn’t much insight on the terms with the biggest nodes as they do not represent any research trends as could be deduced in Figure 5. Nevertheless, important terms such as linked open data, agriculture sector, big data and open data badge are appearing thus representing the focus of this paper. The appearance of the term ‘dataset’ in the biggest node (and its linkage to another blue node- ‘publication’) is likely to indicate that the articles in the sample emphasized the need for open datasets in agriculture research. In the same vein, the study sample had nine (9) articles which were written based on existing open datasets. Thus, explains the existence of the term ‘linked open data’ and why the node for the term ‘dataset’ is huge on the network map. Examples of the datasets used by authors in the sample include AGROVOC linked dataset. Examples of the authors who used other existing open datasets include: 1. Tagami, Howard and Uchida (2016) who used open data sources used from Fukushima, Miyagi, Ibaraki, Tochigi, and Gunma prefectures. And

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Table 3. Articles with the open data badge Author

Title

Available dataset

(Wang, et al., 2019)

Full-length mRNA sequencing and gene expression profiling reveal broad involvement of natural antisense transcript gene pairs in pepper development and response to stresses

The data is available at: http://bigd.big.ac.cn/gsa Accession number, CRA001412

(Cresswell, Cunningham, Wilcox, & Randall, 2019)

A trait-based approach to plant species selection to increase functionality of farmland vegetative strips

The data is available at: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8t52n38

(Ohnishi, Osawa, Yamamoto, & Uno, 2019)

Landscape heterogeneity in landform and land use provides functional resistance to gene flow in continuous Asian black bear populations

The data is available at: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gn0qf16

(Magris, et al., 2019)

Genetic, epigenetic and genomic effects on variation of gene expression among grape varieties

The data is available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject /PRJNA385116 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject /PRJNA265039

(Couret, Huynh‐Griffin, Antolic‐Soban, Acevedo‐ Gonzalez, & Gerardo, 2019)

Even obligate symbioses show signs of ecological contingency: Impacts of symbiosis for an invasive stinkbug are mediated by host plant context

The data is archived in the Dryad data repository: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kg4bc56

Porwollik, Rolinski, Heinke and Mueller, (2019)

Generating a rule-based global gridded tillage dataset

The data is available at: https://doi.org/10.5880/PIK.2019.009 https://doi.org/10.5880/PIK.2019.010

Source: Data from WoS, 2019

2. Osawa, Kadoya and Kohyama (2015, p.757) who mentioned that “The source data came from the Census for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Japan. The Datum was the Japanese Geodetic Datum 2000 (JGD2000).” In addition, the sample had 36 articles which were actually published as open access (OA). This is quite a significant effort in ensuring access to information by all and supporting achievement of sustainable development goals. Moreover, publishing as open access is key for citation impact as supported by Kousha and Abdoli (2010) who revealed that there is citation advantage for self-archived agriculture articles as compared to non-OA articles. On another note, the study sample had six (6) articles which published their data sets (data sources) as open data (see Table 3). These articles earned an Open Data Badge for making publicly available the digitally-shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results. The authors of these six articles (Table 3) are commendable for making their datasets open to other researchers, thus they appreciate the importance of open data sharing. However, six articles out of 100 is quite a small number. This imply that majority of the researchers are still publishing their articles without making available their research data sets. This corroborates with Caballero-Rivero, Sanchez-Tarrago and dos-Santos (2019, p.1) who noted that “practices related to Open Data still seem incipient; … the deposit/use of Open Data repositories predominates in the areas of Science & Technology, Parasitology and Genetics & Heredity.” On a positive note, Antognoli, Sears and Parr (2017) mentioned that over half of the top 50 agriculture related journals require or encourage open data for their published authors.

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EXAMPLES OF AGRICULTURAL OPEN DATA REPOSITORIES/DATABASES Many efforts have been made to ensure that agricultural data is made open in various platforms or data repositories. For example; Antognoli, Sears and Parr (2017) provides an inventory of online public databases and repositories holding agricultural data in 2017. In their datasets, they provide a list of 255 domain specific repositories such as 150 Tomato Genome ReSequencing project, Ag-Analytics, AgEcon, AgMIP datasets, Agri-Environmental Research Data Repository, Agricultural and Natural Resources Archive, Agricultural BMP Database Portal, Agricultural Research Service Culture Collection (NRRL Northern Regional Research Laboratory) Database and AGRIS. On the list of general repositories there were 78 repositires with example being; DataCenterHub, 4TU.Centre for Research Data, ArrayExpress, Austrailian National Data Services, BioCollections (NCBI), Climate.gov, University of Michigan / ICPSR, DataONE and Zenodo. Antognoli, Sears and Parr (2017) further made a list of 161 repositories that are often recommended by journals. Examples include; CSIRO Data Access Portal, Australian National Data Service, Australian Ocean Data Network, BioModels Database, CloudFlame and Crystallography Open Database (COD). From the above findings, it is evident that there are numerous databases or data repositories for agricultural data, it is left to researchers to utilize these facilities by both depositing their data sources and also analysing the available datasets to avoid duplication of efforts.

COUNTRY STATUS USING AGTRIALS REPOSITORY AS AN EXAMPLE The Global Agricultural Trial Repository and Database (AgTrials.org) “is an information portal developed (in 2012) by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), in collaboration with a number of national and international partners including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID” (AIMS, 2017, para 1). AgTrials provides access to a database on the performance of agricultural technologies at sites across the developing world (re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositories, 2019). As can be seen on Figure 11, there are numerous data repositories across the globe. The USA (1060) has the largerst number of repositories, followed by Germany (400), the United Kingdom (280), Canada (255) and France (103). This findings also corroborates with the statistics of the The Open Data Barometer (2016) which indicates that generally on management, use and implementation of open data in all sector; the United Kingdom (rank 1), Canada (rank 2), France (rank 3) and the USA (rank 4) are the top four countries with the highest scores of open data implementation and achieving highest social and economic impact. Figure 11 represents countries with recorded repositories, these are coloured in green while those coloured in blue do not have any recorded repositories on AgTrials. It is disheartening to note that majority of the African countries do not have agricultural data repositories. However, it is praiseworthy that South Africa is on the lead in Africa with 11 repositories, followed by Kenya with four (4) repositories. Based on Figure 11, it is evident that Africa is lagging behind in supporting sharing and management of open data in agriculture. This is also evidenced by the statistics provided on the Open Data Barometer, which is “a global measure of how governments are publishing and using open data for accountability, innovation and social impact” (The Open Data Barometer, 2016). In terms of open data readiness, implementation and emerging impact, most African countries scored very low marks out of 100. For example, Table 4 presents 20 randomly selected African countries and their measure for different categories. As can be seen most countries have zero (0) impact measure of open data on their 258

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Figure 11. Agriculture data repositories by country

Source: re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositories (2019)

communities while the few that has some impact, none scored more than 50 out of 100. Based on these statistics (Table 4) it is clear that generally most African countries are not ready for publishing and using open data for accountability, innovation and social impact. This in turn affects sustainable development not just in the agriculture sector.

EXAMPLES OF PROJECTS/AGENCIES SUPPORTING OPEN DATA IN AGRICULTURE a) The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) “FAO is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger” (FAO, 2020, para 1). FAO established and maintains a multilingual bibliographic database called AGRIS (the International System for Agricultural Science and Technology). AGRIS offers 11,714,169 bibliographic records produced by more than 500 data providers from 148 countries (FAO, 2020). Currently AGRIS hosts 1,528 datasets. According to Celli, et al. (2015) AGRIS database provides access to agricultural research data by exploiting open data on the web. AGRIS embraces linked open data technologies and It provides a gateway to scientific research in Agriculture, Science and Technology (Celli, et al., 2015).

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Table 4. Open data measure: Africa Country

Readiness

Implementation

Emerging impact

Botswana

21

4

0

Zambia

14

5

0

Zimbabwe

9

4

0

Swaziland

10

0

0

Mali

12

3

0

Mozambique

14

4

0

Egypt

27

14

6

Ethiopia

47

9

0

DR Congo

35

9

0

South Africa

51

28

29

Tanzania

40

17

14

Nigeria

31

7

41

Togo

23

24

0

Kenya

57

22

29

Namibia

25

8

0

Malawi

8

16

13

Uganda

26

11

4

Senegal

24

9

0

Ecuador

37

27

0

Morocco

38

12

7

Source: The Open Data Barometer (2016)

b) The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) The mission of GODAN is “to support global efforts to make agricultural and nutritionally relevant data available, accessible, and usable for unrestricted use worldwide. The initiative focuses on building high-level policy, and public and private institutional support for open data” (GODAN, 2019, para 1). GODAN initiative advocates for agricultural open data management and sharing by creating partnerships networks and creating platforms for learning. The initiative facilitates the building of programmes, good practices, and lessons learned that enable the use of open data particularly by and for the rural and urban poor. For example, in 2019, GODAN, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations together with the Pan African Farmers’ Organisation (PAFO) organised and offered an online course “Farm Data Management, Sharing and Services for Agriculture Development”. This course raised awareness among practitioners and researchers about open data in agriculture and it stimulated innovativeness and creation of partnerships for various open data management projects. GODAN initiatives are a vehicle towards the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (thus, a solution to zero hunger by making agriculture and nutrition data available globally). GODAN’s impact can be categorized into four working areas as shown on Table 5.

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Table 5. GODAN impact initiatives Category

Description

Examples of Impact stories/ Initiatives

Convening

Enabling key actors to come together by providing space for conversations, priority setting, collaboration, products, advice/guidance to governments, direction to experts to support political, technical or other senior civil servants in the development of open data policies and Agriculture and Nutrition.

1.Soil Data Working Group 2. AgroDataCube 3. FarmHackNL 4. GARBAL Project, Mali 5. The Ministerial Conference on Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition, in June 2017, Nairobi

Empowering

Encouraging the implementation of open data policies. Through empowerment GODAN turn Open Data aspirations into policies, legal and technical environments that allow their full implementation in the agriculture and nutrition sectors.

1. Food Composition Database 2. CocoaSoils 3. The 2016 GODAN Summit, New York 4. New Partnership on Farmer Access to Data

Equipping

Providing the means and resources for open data

1. Data Ecosystem and the Farm Data Train 2. Africa Regional Data Cube 3. Government Open-Up Guide for Agriculture 4. Centre for Agricultural Networking and Information Sharing (CANIS)

Managing

Ensuring outputs are managed to enable information sharing and reporting

1. SYNGENTA: Data Ecosystem and the Farm Data Train. Syngenta’s mission is to improve the sustainability of agriculture and business through six commitments in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Source: GODAN (2020)

c) Farm-Oriented Open Data in Europe (FOODIE) FOODIE is a co-funded research project within the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP). Its aim is to support the use and management of open data in agriculture. Charvat, et al. (2014) asserts that project aims at building an open and interoperable agricultural specialized platform on the cloud for the management of spatial and non-spatial data relevant for farming production. FOODIE integrates existing and valuable European open datasets related to agriculture.

d) Rice Galaxy Rice Galaxy is an open resource for plant science that is customized to provide rice-specific genomic and genotypic data (Juanillas, et al., 2019). The system has shared “datasets that include high-density genotypes from the 3,000 Rice Genomes project and sequences with corresponding annotations from 9 published rice genomes”. Rice Galaxy makes it possible for rice researchers to deposit and analyse data freely. All the above initiatives or organizations support the production, use and management of open data in agriculture. Developing countries need to harness these initiatives to foster free access to agricultural data needed for research, policy making and decision making for sustainable development.

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CONCLUSION The main purpose of this study was to explore the practices of open data sharing in the agricultural sector, including establishing the research outputs concerning open data in agriculture. As presented in the findings section, descriptive bibliometrics analysis revealed that research activity in the field of agriculture and open access is very low. This was evidenced by the small number of retrieved study sample (100 articles). The year 2015 and 2019 were the most productive whereas K. Charvat was the most productive author in this research field. Italy, USA and Czech Republic were the most enhanced countries. The study sample had 36 articles that were published as open access while only 6 publications had their data sets published as OA. This shows that most researchers do not yet embrace the need to provide their dataset as open access despite the availability of numerous open data repositories. Furthermore, most African countries are still lagging behind in terms of establishing open data repositories and fostering the use and application of open data. Lastly, various projects or initiatives supporting open data in agriculture were identified. In conclusion, this chapter has attempted to present a knowledge map of open data in agriculture through bibliometric analysis with the hope that it will stir more interest in this field. This chapter has also attempted to raise awareness about available data repositories and provide a benchmark for developing countries, more specifically African nations, to improve their open data initiatives. As mentioned by the Open Data Charter (2019, para 1) “governments must step up their efforts to ensure that open data is for everyone and that data being released is truly what people need and use.”

RECOMMENDATIONS Based on the above findings, it is recommended that: 1. Researchers should wisely choose high impact journals for visibility. Publishing in predatory journals makes the results of descriptive bibliometric analysis incomplete and misrepresentative. 2. Researchers should endeavour to make their datasets open and accessible to everyone. Due to lack of publishing funds, researchers should seek for reputable open access journals within the agriculture sector. In addition, researchers need to liaise with existing data repositories for depositing of their research data. 3. African countries should put more effort in establishing open data repositories and ensure that they are registered on international portals/data registries. This will increase their visibility and improved access to the data. 4. African and other developing countries should benchmark from developed countries on how to implement and how to foster management of open data for high social and economic impact.

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CTA, GODAN, & PAFO. (2017). The impact of open data on smallholder farmers. The ICT update: Open data benefits for agriculture and nutrition, (84), 8-9. Retrieved November 22, 2019, from https:// ictupdate.cta.int/en/article/the-impact-of-open-data-on-smallholder-farmers-sid0e471cb3b-e005-452096d3-8c28e40d5f5b Dgen, G. (2019). The Data Spectrum: defining shared & closed. Retrieved January 13, 2020, from https:// www.dgen.net/0/2019/05/06/the-data-spectrum-defining-shared-closed/ Essays, U. K. (2016). Importance of agriculture in Pakistans economy and development. Retrieved December 16, 2018, from https://www.ukessays.com/essays/economics/importance-of-agriculture-inpakistans-economy-and-development-economics-essay.php European Data Portal. (2019). Open data in the agricultural sector. Retrieved December 20, 2019, from https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/highlights/open-data-agricultural-sector FAO. (2020). About FAO. Retrieved February 15, 2020, from http://www.fao.org/about/en/ Farming Portal. (2019). The Importance of Agriculture. Retrieved January 04, 2020, from https://www. farmingportal.co.za/index.php/farminglifestyle/agri-tourism/195-the-importance-of-agriculture FORCE11. (2017). The FAIR Data Principles. Retrieved January 09, 2020, from https://www.force11. org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples GODAN. (2018). GODAN’s impact 2014-2018: Improving agriculture, food and nutrition with open data. Retrieved November 23, 2019, from https://www.godan.info/sites/default/files/GODAN%27s%20 Impacts%202014%20to%202018%20-%20Improving%20Agriculture%2C%20Food%20and%20Nutrition%20with%20Open%20Data%20_0.pdf GODAN. (2019). Open data management in agriculture and nutrition. Retrieved January 08, 2020, from http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/assets.aims.fao.org/public/GODANAction_Lesson4.1.pdf GODAN. (2020). Impact stories. Retrieved February 20, 2020, from https://www.godan.info/impact-stories GOFAIR. (n.d.). FAIR Principles. Retrieved January 09, 2020, from https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/ Gurin, J. (2015). The open data charter: A roadmap for using a global resource. Retrieved January 08, 2019, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-open-data-charter-a-r_b_8391470 Iglič, H., Doreian, P., Kronegger, L., & Ferligoj, A. (2017). With whom do researchers collaborate and why? Scientometrics, 112(1), 153–174. doi:10.100711192-017-2386-y PMID:28725095 Iowa State University of Science and Technology. (2020). Research methodologies guide. Retrieved February 26, 2020, from https://instr.iastate.libguides.com/c.php?g=49332&p=318077 Juanillas, V., Dereeper, A., Beaume, N., Droc, G., Dizon, J., Mendoza, J. R., Perdon, J. P., Mansueto, L., Triplett, L., Lang, J., Zhou, G., Ratharanjan, K., Plale, B., Haga, J., Leach, J. E., Ruiz, M., Thomson, M., Alexandrov, N., Larmande, P., ... Mauleon, R. P. (2019). Rice Galaxy: An open resource for plant science. GigaScience, 8(12), giz156. Advance online publication. doi:10.1093/gigascience/giz156 PMID:31886874

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Kousha, K., & Abdoli, M. (2010). The citation impact of Open Access agricultural research: A comparison between OA and non-OA publications. Online Information Review, 34(5), 772–785. doi:10.1108/14684521011084618 Kwadzo, G., & Annor, G. (2007). Authorship trends in Ghana journal of agricultural science: A bibliometric study. Ghana Library Journal, 19(1), 31–52. doi:10.4314/glj.v19i1.33972 Lamberts, J. (2013). Two heads are better than one: The importance of collaboration in research. Retrieved January 20, 2020, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/two-heads-are-better-than_1_b_3804769 Macatta, M. (2016). Importance of agricultural sector in a country’s economic development. Retrieved December 12, 2018, from https://www.ippmedia.com/en/features/importance-agricultural-sectorcountry%E2%80%99s-economic-development Magris, G., Di-Gaspero, G., Marroni, F., Zenoni, S., Tornielli, G. B., Celii, M., De Paoli, E., Pezzotti, M., Conte, F., Paci, P., & Morgante, M. (2019). Genetic, epigenetic and genomic effects on variation of gene expression among grape varieties. The Plant Journal, 99(5), 895–909. doi:10.1111/tpj.14370 PMID:31034726 Mbulawa, S. (2017). Accelerating agricultural productivity to enhance economic growth in Botswana. Current Research in Agricultural Sciences, 4(1), 14–31. doi:10.18488/journal.68.2017.41.14.31 Nyaggah, M. (2017). Kenya opens up agricultural data. The ICT update: Open data benefits for agriculture and nutrition, 84, 6-7. Retrieved November 20, 2019, from https://ictupdate.cta.int/en/issues/84-opendata-benefits-for-agriculture-and-nutrition OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms. (2013). Bibliometrics. Retrieved February 12, 2020, from https:// stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=198 Ohnishi, N., Osawa, T., Yamamoto, T., & Uno, R. (2019). Landscape heterogeneity in landform and land use provides functional resistance to gene flow in continuous Asian black bear populations. Ecology and Evolution, 9(8), 4958–4968. doi:10.1002/ece3.5102 PMID:31031957 Open Data Institute. (2019). The Data Spectrum: Agriculture. Retrieved January 08, 2020, from https:// drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BcO98w0e5And-RF2bq-XtHVIRRW1k7z_ Open Data Soft. (2017). What Is Open Data? Retrieved February 17, 2020, from https://www.opendatasoft.com/blog/2017/02/16/what-is-open-data Open Knowledge Foundation. (n.d.). The open data handbook. Retrieved January 20, 2020, from https:// opendatahandbook.org/guide/en/what-is-open-data/ Osawa, T., Kadoya, T., & Kohyama, K. (2015). 5- and 10-km mesh datasets of agricultural land use based on governmental statistics for 1970-2005. Ecological Research, 30(5), 757. doi:10.100711284-015-1290-2 Porwollik, V., Rolinski, S., Heinke, J., & Mueller, C. (2019). Generating a rule-based global gridded tillage dataset. Earth System Science Data, 11(2), 823–843. doi:10.5194/essd-11-823-2019 re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositories. (2019). The Global Agricultural Trial Repository and Database. doi:10.17616/R3D

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Raparelli, E., & Bajocco, S. (2019). A bibliometric analysis on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in agricultural and forestry studies. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 40(24), 9070–9083. doi:10. 1080/01431161.2019.1569793 Sprunger, J. G. (2017). The benefits of engaging in collaborative research relationships. Retrieved January 20, 2020, from https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-benefits-of-engaging-incollaborative-research-relationships Studies, S. M. (2016). A Bibliometric Analysis of International Journal of Agriculture Sciences (20092014). Asian Journal of, 4(2), 151–157. Tagami, K., Howard, B. J., & Uchida, S. (2016). The time-dependent transfer factor of radiocesium from Soil to game animals in Japan after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident. Environmental Science & Technology, 50(17), 9424–9431. doi:10.1021/acs.est.6b03011 PMID:27513196 The Open Data Barometer. (2016). Country report. Retrieved February 20, 2020, from https://opendatabarometer.org/4thedition/?_year=2016&indicator=ODB The Open Data Charter. (2019). Who we are. Retrieved January 08, 2020, from https://opendatacharter. net/who-we-are/ Wang, J., Deng, Y., Zhou, Y., Liu, D., Yu, H., Zhou, Y., Lv, J., Ou, L., Li, X., Ma, Y., Dai, X., Liu, F., Zou, X., Ouyang, B., & Li, F. (2019). Full-length mRNA sequencing and gene expression profiling reveal broad involvement of natural antisense transcript gene pairs in pepper development and response to stresses. The Plant Journal, 99(4), 763–783. doi:10.1111/tpj.14351 PMID:31009127 Wilkinson, M., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I., Appleton, G., Axton, M., Baak, A., ... Boiten, J.-W. (2016). The FAIR guiding principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data, 3(160018), 160018. Advance online publication. doi:10.1038data.2016.18 PMID:26978244 Wise, J., de Barron, A. G., Splendiani, A., Balali-Mood, B., Vasant, D., Little, E., Mellino, G., Harrow, I., Smith, I., Taubert, J., van Bochove, K., Romacker, M., Walgemoed, P., Jimenez, R. C., Winnenburg, R., Plasterer, T., Gupta, V., & Hedley, V. (2019). Implementation and relevance of FAIR data principles in biopharmaceutical R&D. Drug Discovery Today, 24(4), 933–938. doi:10.1016/j.drudis.2019.01.008 PMID:30690198

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Bibliometrics: Refers to the use both quantitative and qualitative methods of tracking research outputs through various bibliographic databases. Data Repository: This is a data library or archive established and managed by an institution(s) to store data for secondary research. Open Access: Entails a set of principles and practices enabling researchers to distribute their publications and users are able to access them free of cost and no access barriers. Open Data: Refers to data that can be accessed, used and shared by anyone.

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Breaking the Walls of Jericho: A Foundation to Enhancing Open Access to Information and Knowledge – An African Perspective Donald Rakemane Office of District Commissioner, Botswana Olefhile Mosweu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4404-9458 University of Johannesburg, South Africa

ABSTRACT Access to information and knowledge is a fundamental element in an informed and democratic society. Open access (OA) allows users to freely access information and knowledge if they have access to internet. This chapter presents barriers to enhancing OA to information and knowledge with a reference to Africa. The said barriers are akin to the Biblical Walls of Jericho which prevented Israelites from capturing their Promised Land of Canaan. It starts by defining what OA entails, highlights the characteristics of OA and its types. Furthermore, the chapter highlights opportunities brought about by OA to information and knowledge which supports the attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Lastly, the chapter suggest strategies that can be adopted to enhance OA in Africa and thus make it a precursor for the achievement of SDGs. This study is qualitative and used content analysis from available literature to address the research problem.

INTRODUCTION An individual’s ability to acquire, incorporate and apply knowledge acquired is central for economic development as well as improving people’s life (Mutsvunguma, 2019). The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights Article 19 states that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch014

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and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (United Nations, 2015, p. 40). The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) (2017) on the other hand indicates that access to information empowers people and communities, giving them some platforms to progress towards equality, sustainability and prosperity. Traditionally, access to information and knowledge has been limited to libraries, archives and other information centers. The emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on the other hand has ushered a promising concept where users can freely access information and knowledge as long as they have access to Internet. Prior to the emergence of the Internet technology, users were mainly relying on information in offline journals published by many commercial publishing houses and made available by subscription only to institutions that can afford to pay subscription fees (Bashorun et al, 2019). The emergence of the Internet as an information superhighway enabled open access (OA) to information. OA enables many users to have access to information and knowledge free of charge. This method of publishing makes research available to the end user at no cost i.e. free at the point of consumption and opens repositories of knowledge to the public. With OA, users can easily access information anywhere without any paradoxes. Munikwa (2018, p. 2) remarked that “Open access publishing radically increases the resources at the disposal of many marginalised communities leading to the reduction of global disparities in so far as access and dissemination of information is concerned”. Hunt and Swan (2012) underscored that OA enable professionals, practitioners, business communities, and the general public to easily benefit from research and this increases the visibility, usage and impact of research. Thus, the role played by OA publishing in enhancing information and knowledge cannot be overemphasized. However, there are still many barriers hindering free access to information and knowledge which the authors liken to the biblical Walls of Jericho which prevented Israelites from capturing their Promised Land of Canaan. The authors argue that, if these barriers are not removed, access to information and knowledge will remain limited, a situation which can have a tremendous and negative impact towards attaining the achievement of sustainable development goals in Africa.

DEFINITIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF OPEN ACCESS (OA) Open Access (OA) is “a revolution which has to a great extent to reduced intellectual monopoly, made provision for everyone to be a publisher, reduced the digital divide, drove the transparency and seriousness for academic integrity” (Dandawate & Dhanamajaya, 2019, p. 1). According to Mohaptra and Vandana (2019:236), OA is “freely available to users on the Internet and do not have subscription charges. OA is cost free, unrestricted, online access to a scholarly publication. It can be called as barrier-free-access.” Resources can be retrieved by anyone at any time without any cost (Velmurugan, 2011). 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 (Suber, 2004). Munikwa (2018) remarked that OA movement emerged as a platform to make research freely available to the scientific community. It refers to “the removal of major obstacles to accessing, sharing and re-using the outputs of scholarly research” (Tennant et al, 2016, Online). Mudry (2014) underscored that the main purpose of OA is to provide information to readers in an online environment without any restrictions. From the above discussions, it can be deduced that OA is referring to resources that are available and ready to be access without any cost. Furthermore, it can arguably be stated that OA is an important instrument in

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enhancing access to information and knowledge as it allows user to access information free of charge. The intention of OA is to make information retrievable without any payment from the reader.

CHARACTERISTICS OF OA OA contents can be in any format from texts and data to software, audio, video, and multi-media, scholarly articles and their preprints (Suber, 2010; Jain, 2012). OA resources have certain characteristics that distinguish them from other resources. Some of the characteristics are; • • • •

Freely availability of scholarly publication Free of copyright and licensing restrictions Information resources or materials are available in an online environment Material can be accessed by anybody from anywhere without any boundaries or restrictions

TYPES OF OA OA enables free access to scholarly works. According to Clements (2017), it allows journal outlets to provide and share published works for free. This arrested a trend whereby the readership of academic journals went down. OA is generally classified into three categories. These are green, gold and hybrid access (Georgia State University Library, 2020). Although these categories suggest a difference between them, all of them share common characteristics which include digital formatting, free and lawful accessibility and practical usability. The difference is borne out of how access is provided, the responsibility for providing the very same access and the version of publication made available, including the time it is made available after publication (Taubert et al, 2019). These are briefly discussed below; Green access: refers to self-archiving generally of the pre or post-print in repositories (Georgia State University Library, 2020). This is whereby scholarly authors can openly share their work through different outlets such as personal webpage and social media. In green access there is usually no article processing charges that are paid by authors. Hunt and Swan (2012) underscored that with regard to green access “the researcher decides to submit the results of his/her research in a selected repository that is open, which means that anyone has access to it, and that the materials in it are free to view and download”. The same authors further stated that to access the content of this archive, search engines such as Google and Google scholar can be used. Gold access: refers to articles in fully accessible open access journals (Georgia State University Library, 2020). Gold access facilitates free access to an article directly from the publisher. Gold Open Access entail that the author publishes a paper in an Open Access publication. Hunt and Swan (2012) highlighted that in Gold access there is no any charges for the reader but rather the cost is assign to the authors or makes no charge at all, supporting covering the costs through sponsorship, subsidy or advertising. Hybrid access: refers to subscription journals with open access to individual articles usually when a fee is paid to the publisher or journal by the author, the author’s organization, or the research funder. It is sometimes called Paid Open Access (Georgia State University Library, 2020). According to the Eindhoven University of Technology (2020), hybrid access is a variant of gold access whereby authors have their research output being made freely available online as long as they pay author processing charges 269

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(APCs). In the words of Pavan and Barbosa (2018, p. 2), “the idea behind the hybrid system is to maintain the subscription system while attracting publications of authors from countries which require OA.” By implementing OA, barriers hindering access to information, mainly scholarly works are diminished, and the readership can also be increased. Although OA suggests that there are no monetary costs, it actually does hit authors hard on the pockets if they do not have funding and have to pay publication fees themselves, and these can be high and prohibitive. For example, publication fees can go as high as USD 5000. If institutions where publication fees are paid on behalf of authors, then OA can be regarded as free (Nariani and Fernandez, 2012).

BACKGROUND TO OA During the ancient times, scholar and philosopher Aristotle already wished for, and preached that information and knowledge should be shared freely, for the essence of meaning and life was that “all men by nature desire knowledge.” He called that “Eudaimonia”, the notion that for a man to fulfill their natural drive, they had to search for knowledge, because that is what drives them to the highest end, self-actualisation. Even in the Bible, Hosea Chapter 4 verse 6, it is stated that people perish due to lack of knowledge. The more modern historical beginnings of OA are attributed to what has been termed the “Three Bs: Budapest, Berlin and Bethesda” (Frocio, 2014, p. 48). The three Bs emanate from OA statements published by the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, respectively. The Budapest Initiative was the first one and it was released in February 2002, then the June 2003 Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, and finally the October 2003 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (Frocio, 2014). OA was first defined in meeting called by the Open Society Institute in Budapest, Hungary in early December 2001. This resulted in what came to be known as the Budapest Initiative. The meeting defined OA to mean a variety of OA advocates and as a result of that meeting, the Budapest Open Access Initiative was born and OA was initially defined. Another important event regarding developments in OA was the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing. Statements of principles were adopted at a meeting held in 2003 at the headquarters of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland in the United States of America (Brown et al, 2003). According to Brown et al (2003, p. 2), a publication had to meet the following two conditions in order to be regarded as OA; •

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The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open ac-

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cess, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository). The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge, was issued in 2003. It was the brainchild of a meeting held in Berlin, Germany in 2003 at which it was noted that the mission of knowledge dissemination was half complete if the information was not made widely and readily available to society. The intent of OA to information and knowledge are summed up in Ola (2019, p. 6) when they said; Looking at all of these meetings it is clear that the stakeholders supporting and driving the movement are diverse including authors, researchers, funding agencies, universities, libraries, publishers, research institutions, other interested organisations and the user publics. The fact that there are many supporters and drivers is an indication that these different groups may approach the goal of free, immediate, broad and effective dissemination of knowledge to the general public from different perspectives. The goal may be the same but the rationale for the goal often differs and therefore the approach by the different groups to achieving the goal may also differ. To Swartz (2008), freely sharing information and knowledge is a form of social responsibility which should be achieved at all costs, and actually rallies those who believe in the OA movement to march forward and send a strong message against who privatize knowledge that doing so should be a thing of the past. Since information is power (Swartz, 2008), it should be given freely to support human development (Ola, 2014).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS The purpose of this chapter was mainly to present barriers to enhancing OA to information and knowledge and suggest strategies aimed at enhancing access to information and knowledge in African continent. Specifically, the chapter intended to answer three basic questions as follows; 1. What are the opportunities (benefits) of open access to information and knowledge? 2. What are the barriers to enhancing open access to information and knowledge in Africa? 3. What strategies can be adopted to enhance open access to information and knowledge?

METHODOLOGY The study is qualitative in nature (Creswell, 2014) thus this chapter was largely based on an extensive review of the literature.The literature was related to OA to information and knowledge with a focus on the African continent. Data were collected from documentary sources and empirical literature. It is acceptable in qualitative studies to collect data from secondary sources (Khayundi, 2012). Such a method has also been referred to as desktop research. The literature consulted included books, journal articles, conference papers and proceedings, thesis and dissertations. These were searched online and downloaded. Key words such as access to information, open access and, open access publishing, were used to retrieve appropriate content for the study which was presented thematically with research questions as a guide. 271

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BENEFITS OF OPEN ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE Open access offers several benefits for different sectors among communities. According to The Right to Research Coalition (2010), these benefits can be realised by students, researchers, publishers, the public, doctors, patients and small businesses. This section discuss how OA enable different community sector have access to information and knowledge. This community sector includes students, researchers, publishers and general public. Students: Students are beneficiaries of OA to information. Through OA, students have access to the latest research which enhances their educational agenda and capacitate them to perform at work once they have graduated (The Right to Research Coalition, 2010). Through OA, students have unlimited access to the latest information in their field of study, thus giving them the best possible education. On the contrary, limited access occasioned by closed access curtail educators from delivering the latest research material, resulting in academics using available information which may not necessarily be the best for purpose and not the most current. Researchers: OA offers several benefits to researchers. According to Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Europe (2020), researchers and even the institutions they work for derive some benefits from the widest possible audience when their research output is available through OA. Their research output is made freely available to publishers, and they in return get more recognition from exposure afforded by OA (SPARC Europe, 2020). The reality of OA is that more readers can get access to research articles, translating into more citations for their work and more recognition. Researchers are better placed for more collaboration when their research articles reach a wider audience made possible through OA (SPARC Europe, 2020). Publishers: OA enable publishers to make their published material freely available, normally with the 6-12 months period after publication. Some publishers are not for profit making while others are strictly in the business of making financial returns, but these also can embrace OA (The Right to Research Coalition, 2010). Publishing by its nature can be costly so publishers have a way of dealing with costs involved and one such way is to rely on advertisements to cover the production costs. In addition, publishers rely on subsidies from authors and institutions (Heller, Moshiri and Bhargava, 2013). Thus, the nominal costs in the cost of production is borne by authors or sponsoring institutions so that the would-be readers can benefit from OA journal publishing. According to The Right to Research Coalition (2010), a lot of publishers embraced switched from a closed, subscription model to an open one as a strategic business decision to increase their journal’s exposure and impact as well as access to information, and that has proved successful over the years. The public: Free access to scholarly works has some benefits for the society at large. OA makes information for anyone who has access to the Internet. Notably, this is of great advantage to lifelong learners in society (Enago Academy, 2018). For those researchers who believe that access to knowledge is a human right, OA helps them to realise their vision by making information available to satisfy their rights. Since research is largely funded from public coffers in the form of taxes, it is believed by some researchers that citizens should benefit from research output by having free access (Enago Academy, 2018).

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BARRIERS TO OPEN ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND KNOWLDGE IN AFRICA Despite OA being beneficial to different sectors in the economy, there are some barriers to its full attainment especially in the African continent. The said barriers are akin to the Biblical Walls of Jericho which prevented Israelites from capturing their Promised Land of Canaan. The story of the Battle of Jericho in the book of Joshua Chapter six indicate that before the Israelites conquered the city which was walled, they had to march around it once for six straight days while blowing trumpets as Priests carried the Ark of the Covenant. During the seventh day, they marched around the city seven times after which the men gave a powerful roar, and the walls miraculously fell, giving the Israelites access to the City. Without the protective wall, the City was plundered by the Israelites and occupied it, signaling an attainment of the long Promised Land of Canaan. The benefits of OA can only be beneficial if barriers to accessing rich information sources have been removed in order to allow knowledge to be tapped from them. Such barriers are an impediment to the realization of knowledge acquisition arising from the use of freely available information sources. These barriers include poor ICT infrastructure, high cost of publication fees, costly subscription fees, inadequate Internet connectivity and lack of policies supporting OA to information amongst others. The said barriers are discussed in the next section.

Poor ICT Infrastructure OA requires an adequate ICT infrastructure for it to be successfully implemented. Smith (2019) argued that OA publishing and scholarly journals operate in an environment where there is sufficient infrastructure. African countries still have very low ICT Development Index (IDI) scores (Ponelis & Holmner, 2015) this is a major barrier in promoting OA to information and knowledge in the African context. The truth of the matter is that, to make OA to information and knowledge a reality, there should be adequate infrastructure supporting all initiatives of OA to information and knowledge. Internet charges in most African countries are also too high and this has brought about a challenge in the promotion of OA to information and knowledge in the African continent. Arguably, the African continent can only promote OA to information when there is adequate ICT infrastructure. However, Africa still lags behind in terms of ICT infrastructure which makes it difficult to participate in OA environment. The issue of Internet connectivity as well as power supply forms a boundary wall that prevents OA to information and knowledge in Africa to thrive. For example, countries such as Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique among others still experience power cuts which eventually affects the promotion of OA to information and knowledge. The truth of the matter is that, OA requires an environment where internet connectivity is adequate, and this is not in case in most countries in Africa. Masaka (2018) underscored that internet services in many developing countries are very expensive and still inaccessible in some countries which make it difficult to promote OA to information and knowledge. A good example from the authors is in the context of Botswana where access to information is more pronounced in urban areas while the rural area folks are disadvantaged due to the unavailability of ICT infrastructure which facilitates access to the Internet which in turn makes access to online resources possible. One can argue that, if strategies are not put in place to address this challenge, the promotion of OA to information and knowledge will remain an unattainable dream. A study conducted by Oluwasemilore (2013) also revealed various challenges which hinder OA to information and these include lack of awareness of open access publishing, dearth of cross linked e-libraries, inadequate ICT infrastructure, epileptic power supply, inadequate funding of research institutions as well as inhibiting 273

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copyright regime. Ahinon and Havemann (2018) argued that improving the quality of service and the Internet penetration rate in the African continent will help in the dissemination and sharing of information and knowledge within the continent and reduce the digital divide between the urban rich and rural poor.

High Cost of Publication Fees One of the major challenges facing OA to information and knowledge in most African countries is the amount of publication fees required from an author for their publication to be published in an OA journal. This means that authors who cannot afford to pay publication fees will not be able to publish their work. For example, Hunt and Swan (2012) highlighted that in Gold access, there are no charges for the reader, but rather the cost is assigned to the author. Hassan (2018) stated that there are significant challenges facing both researchers and publishers in promoting OA publishing. Tempest (2013) noted that African authors do not have the funding to enable open access which normally affect their participation in OA environment; thus, in many journals in African context, authors are required to pay a certain amount in order for their work to be published. This is one of the major paradoxes facing the promotion of OA to information and knowledge in most African countries. For example, South African based journals such as the South African Journal of Information Management (SAJIM) and South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science require authors to pay publication fees for their work to be published. It is clear therefore that authors who are unable to pay publication fees will not have their works published. This is a barrier towards enhancing and promoting OA to information and knowledge in Africa as knowledge embedded in the findings of paper denied publication can be lost unless an alternative outlet is utilized.

Costly Subscription Fees Libraries and other institutional repositories are required to pay an annual subscription fee to allow their users to have free access to information and knowledge and/or scholarly articles. However, this has placed too much pressure on institutions of higher learning to pay annual subscription fees in order to enable their users to access information and knowledge freely. For countries which still have financial problems, this becomes very difficult for them to enable readers access to scholarly articles free of charge. Wingfield and Millar (2019) observed that some universities cope well with funding OA to information while others struggle to do so. For example, Norrie (2012) reported that the Harvard Library within Harvard University advised its academics to support OA publishing as the university could no longer afford the vast costs of subscription for academic journals. Costly subscription fees are a barrier which hinders OA to information and knowledge in Africa. Habibi (2011) stated that many university libraries in developing countries are struggling to pay academic journal subscription costs due to lack of funds. The same author further noted that this makes it difficult for many universities in Africa continent to access important journals. The outcome is that students from the developing world, and who are poor and vulnerable end up suffering as they cannot have access to important journals, including the knowledge to be derived from engaging with information content in them. In addition, Musakali (2010) adds that many research institutions in Africa cannot afford to subscribe to many scientific journals, making it difficult for scientists to keep up with research. In addition, some institutions cannot afford to promote and share the results of their research output due to lack of funds. Additionally, Ezema and Onyancha (2017) remarked “the development of institutional repositories to drive open access archiving requires huge capital, which many universities may not afford without support from funding bodies such as 274

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government and other local and international organisations interested in funding research.” The same authors further underscored that this become difficult for African countries where the government still pay little attention to both research and scholarship.

Inadequate Internet Connectivity Inadequate Internet connectivity is a hurdle to the realisation OA to knowledge and information in Africa. According to Keakopa (2008), “Internet usage has remained concentrated in some urban areas where access is provided through universities, government ministries and departments, hotels and lodges” in Africa. The availability of ICT facilities, such as the Internet and the use of electronic mail (e-mail) is either limited or non-existing in some rural areas (Keakopa, 2008). Notably, it is through the power of the Internet to distribute information and the generation of knowledge that large amounts of information and knowledge become accessible online. However, Okenwa (2016, p. 4) opines that “this is only possible where there is ubiquitous computing, embedded networking and pervasive Internet. In sub-Saharan Africa, the presence of the Internet is still extremely low”. While OA initiatives advocate for free access to information and knowledge, realizing the initiative remains a problem for African countries where Internet connectivity is largely and comparatively confined to urban areas than rural areas. For example, in the context Botswana, Internet access is still a problem in rural areas which make it difficult to access information and knowledge in open access software’s. Ahmed (2007) observed that the success and/or failure of all OA initiatives can be examined by the availability of adequate telecommunications systems that will enable a country to become part of the Internet environment. It can therefore be stated that, in African countries where Internet connection is still limited, making OA initiative a reality will still remain a serious problem that require serious interventions by those responsible such as governments.

Lack of Awareness of OA One barrier towards OA to information and Knowledge is low awareness in many African countries. Lack of awareness of the importance and benefits of OA is a barrier to the promotion of OA in African countries. Jain (2012) stated that lack of awareness of the benefit of OA publishing is one of the major obstacles facing the Africa continent. Mckay (2011, p. 253) noted that “whilst open access publishing has great potential to benefit African nations economically and increase their visibility on a global stage, currently there is a lack of awareness and some confusion as to the best routes to OA within government, institutes and at researcher level”. A study conducted by Bashorun et al (2016) on “Determinants of Adoption and Use of Open Access Publishing by Academic Staff in Nigeria Universities” revealed that the level of adoption and use of OA is still very low in Nigerian Universities. Arguably, it is through OA that people can easily have access to information and knowledge. Similarly to the situation in Nigeria, in the context of Botswana, Kassahun and Nsala (2015) revealed lack of knowledge and awareness among the academic community on OA. Meanwhile, Rugut (2015) also revealed low level of awareness of the benefits of open access publishing ranging between 31.8% and 1.3% in Kenya. Failure to inform academic staff about the importance and benefits of OA is a limitation to the utilization of OA resources (Rugut, 2015). However, it can arguably be stated that, for African countries to enhance and promote open access to information and knowledge, there is need to promote awareness by institutional repositories on the importance and benefits of OA to various community sectors.

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Sustained Accessibility, Credibility and Trustworthiness of OA Resources One of the challenges facing OA to information and knowledge in African continent is the accessibility of OA publications over time. Most of OA resources can only be accessed for a certain period, then they disappear. That is, they are here one moment, gone the next as described by Mosweu and Ngoepe (2019) who indicate that records generated and communicated through an online environment is liquid and unstable, making its long term availability not guaranteed, thus making its governance a priority. This is also true of information resources posted on the Internet. They can be available today, but be gone the next when one needs to consult them. Tenopir et al (2015, p. 1) stated that “Scholarship depends on trust as a guiding principle and is a cornerstone of research, regardless of the subject field or the age of the researcher”. Arguably, some publishers of OA information are not trustworthy and not even accredited with appropriate regulatory bodies. In the context of South Africa such a body would be the Department of Higher Education and Training. For example, there are several existing journals in countries such as South Africa which are not accredited to Department of Higher Education of South Africa. The question is their credibility and trustworthiness.

Lack of Policies Supporting OA to Information Policies and procedure are important tools in promoting open access to information. It has been identified that without a well-implemented mandatory policy, the levels of Open Access remain very low, however with a well-designed policy they are boosted to approaching 90% (Hunt & Swan, 2012). In a study that sought to answer the question, “what hinders data sharing in African science?” Bezuidenhout and Rappert (2016) observed that there is a lack of institutional policies for data sharing, even guidelines were simply not in place. This is one of the major roadblocks facing African countries in enhancing OA to information and knowledge.

PROPOSED STRATEGIES This chapter proposes a number of strategies geared towards making OA to information and knowledge, especially in the context of Africa a reality. These are presented in the next section.

Advocacy Advocacy is an important tool in enhancing the recognition of the role of information centre as a platform of local development. Additionally, advocacy ensures that information centres such as libraries are given adequate resources to accomplish their work (Garcia-Febo, 2016). Thus the role play by advocacy in the promotion of open access to resources cannot be overstated. Rakemane and Jain (2018) stated that outreach and advocacy can also be used as a platform by libraries, archives and other information centers to revitalize in electronic environment where lot of information exist mainly in electronic environment. Strandmark (2014) underscored that it is important for information management professionals such as librarians, archivists and other custodians of such information to take their collections outside their building. The same author further contended that information management professionals should not always expect their users to come to information centers but rather taking collection to them. Outreach 276

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and advocacy can therefore be used as a strategy by information management professionals to take all OA initiative to the people, hence increasing access to information and knowledge in Africa. The authors of this chapter recommend outreach and advocacy as a strategy for promoting OA to information and knowledge in the African continent.

Collaboration and Partnership Collaboration with other institutions is critical to share and increase accessibility of library resources (Rakemane and Jain, 2018). According to Mosweu (2019), where funding is a challenge as is often the case, heritage institutions such as Libraries, Archives and Museums can ease the burden of financial difficulty by pooling resources together, and facilitate OA to information and knowledge. Ngoepe et al (2014, p. 119) argued that “researchers from different countries can collaborate by sharing and transferring knowledge and making optimal use of resources that will lead to the sustainability of research output”. Similarly, information centers in African continent can collaborate by sharing resources that may enhance OA to information and knowledge in the African continent.

Training and Capacity Building Capacity building is key endeavors to support sustainable development efforts (Heijnen, 2012). It is through capacity building and training that individuals can build abilities, relationships and values that enable them to improve their performance and achieve their development objectives (Ulleberg, 2009). Training of both information managements professional and users can be used a strategy for enhancing OA to information and knowledge in Africa. It can be argued that, it is only when people have adequate skills and knowledge in applying and using OA resources that access to information may be enhanced. Smith (2019) remarked that to address the challenges facing African continent in OA there is need for capacity building.

Conducting Open Data Day The conduction of OA day in African countries can be used as a strategy to promote OA to information and knowledge. Information Centre such as libraries should play a pivotal role in advocating for open data day that will be used as a platform for raising awareness on OA resources. This can be done in African countries whereby institutional repositories come together in one icon and hold an OA Day. Currently, there are organisations that support institutions with intend to hold open data-related events. African countries can use this as an opportunity to work with institutions with interest in supporting OA and open data. One of the organisations that support open release of information is The Open Knowledge Foundation which offers mini-grant ranging between $200 and $300 USD to help and support groups organising Open Data Day events. The Open Knowledge Foundation is a global, non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. The mandate of The Open Knowledge Foundation as indicated in their website is to; •

Support, encourage and coordinate an international network of individuals passionate about openness and active in making, training and advocating for OA to information.

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• •

Advocate for open release of key information, particularly at national or large scale, and monitor the level of openness worldwide. Help people learn about openness and gain data skills, and partner with change-making organizations aligned with our key themes to help them use open data to accelerate their work, creating positive change towards our goals, stories and case studies helping nurture and support efforts to open up data and see it used for positive change.

Improvement of ICT Infrastructure Inadequate ICT has been identified as a challenge to enhancing OA to information and knowledge. African countries should therefore seriously improve their ICT infrastructure in order to improve OA to information and knowledge. To use Botswana as an example, Radijeng (2010) avers that the Government of Botswana has committed to improving ICT policies to improve infrastructure and connectivity. With such infrastructure in place, connectivity becomes easier and access to information through the Internet superhighway becomes even easier, thus paving way for easy OA to information and knowledge. Specifically, the National Broadband Strategy identifies ICTs as a catalyst for economic development, which should benefit every citizen and other sectors as they participate in today’s growing digital economy (Ministry of Transport and Communications, 2018). The strategy was developed with reference to the National ICT Policy of 2007 (Maitlamo), the country’s Vision 2016, the UNESCO and ITU Broadband Commission aspirations. With the improved ICT infrastructure, the e-Government, e-Education, e-Health, and e-Commerce programmes, among others, will be successfully implemented as they require high capacity and uninterruptable ICT infrastructure and connectivity (Ministry of Transport and Communications, 2018). This will in turn enable ICTs to facilitate economic and social development.

Develop and Implement Policies Supporting OA to Information Lack of policies supporting OA to information have been proved to be a hurdle in promoting OA to information and knowledge in the global sphere. It is therefore recommended that both governments and knowledge based organisations should develop and implement such policies in order to promote sustainable and free access to information and knowledge. UNESCO realised this weakness, provides interventions towards influencing positive change in policy development (UNESCO, 2011). UNESCO is thus committed to providing policy advice and related capacity development at country level to facilitate policy development. The result of the intervention are expected to be evidence-based policy information available for the development of public policies and programmes relating to OA. The outcomes would include an enabling environment for OA in Member States and the impact would be increased access to information and knowledge through ICTs (UNESCO, 2011).

CONCLUSION OA plays a pivotal role in enhancing access to information and knowledge, mainly scholarly research. However, it is evident from the literature that there are several barriers towards enhancing OA to information and knowledge in African continent. The said, such barriers are akin to the Biblical Walls of Jericho which prevented Israelites from capturing their Promised Land of Canaan after their escape 278

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from the clutches of the Pharos of Biblical Egypt. These barriers, amongst others, include poor ICT infrastructure, high cost of publication fees, absence of OA policies and procedures to promote OA, lack of awareness of OA resources and costly of subscription fees. The thesis of this chapter is that strategies such as collaboration and partnerships, advocacy, capacity building and development of policies and procedures that promote OA to information resources should be adopted to improve access to information and knowledge in the context of Africa. The chapter further argues that, African countries should seriously improve ICT infrastructure to enhance OA to information and knowledge. Basically, this chapter advocates for humans to freely share information and knowledge through OA such that there is free unrestricted access to use and reuse of peer reviewed literature off the Internet (Ola, 2019) to help advance human development and propel Africa from the global periphery to the global hub. In promoting OA to information and knowledge, Ola (2019) posits that sharing the output of research findings can be a matter of life or death, success or failure. According to Ola (2015, p. 28), writing in the context of Nigeria, “the current copyright system is restrictive by default, the open culture seeks ways to change that default”, thus making OA a reality for everyone.

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Mosweu, T., & Ngoepe, M. (2019). Here one moment, gone the next: A framework for liquid communication generated through social media platforms in the Botswana public sector. South African Journal of Information Management, 21(1). Advance online publication. doi:10.4102ajim.v21i1.1080 Mudry, K. (2014). Open Access: The importance of open information. Retrieved 25 July, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kiera_Mudry/publication/285236148_Open_Access_The_Importance_of_Open_Information/links/565cd07a08ae1ef92981f93a.pdf Munikwa, C. P. (2018). Awareness and use of Open Access resources by researchers of the University of Zululand (PhD Thesis). University of Zululand. Musakali, J. J. (2010). Bridging the digital divide through open access. Retrieved 30 January, 2020, from https://www.scidev.net/global/publishing/opinion/bridging-the-digital-divide-through-open-access.html Mutsvunguma, G. (2019). Institutional repositories as platforms for open access in South African universities: the case of University of KwaZulu-Natal (PhD Thesis). University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Nariani, R., & Fernandez, L. (2012). Open Access Publishing: What Authors Want. College of research and libraries. College & Research Libraries, 203(2), 182–194. doi:10.5860/crl-203 Ngoepe, M., Maluleka, J., & Onyancha, O. B. (2014). Research collaboration in the archives and records management field across and beyond universities in Africa: An informetric analysis. Mousaion, 32(3), 119–135. doi:10.25159/0027-2639/1678 Ngulube, P. (2018). Overcoming the difficulties associated with using conceptual and theoretical frameworks in Heritage Studies. Retrieved 20 January, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320471290_Overcoming_the_Difficulties_Associated_with_Using_Conceptual_and_Theoretical_Frameworks_in_Heritage_Studies Norrie, J. (2012). Harvard: journal subscription fees are prohibitive. Retrieved 31 July, 2020 from https:// theconversation.com/harvard-journal-subscription-fees-are-prohibitive-6659 Okenwa, O. (2016). Open Access, Scholarly Publishing and Knowledge Production in Sub-Saharan Africa: Opportunities and Challenges. Retrieved 30 July, 2020, from www.cordesrsia.org Ola, K. (2015). Evolution and Future Trends of Copyright in Nigeria. In Copyright Perspectives: Past Present and Prospect. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-15913-3_7 Ola, K. (2019). Theories of Open Access. Retrieved 23 July, 2019, from https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/333164518_Theories_of_Open_Access Oluwasemilore, I. A. (2013). Issues and Challenges in the Development of Open Access Publishing and Scholarly Communications in Nigeria. Retrieved 23 December, 2019, from https://digitalscholarship. unlv.edu/aaas_pacific_conf/2013/june17/1/ Pavan, C., & Barbosa, M. (2018). Article Processing Charge (APC) for Publishing Open Access Articles: the Brazilian Scenario. Retrieved 23 July, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327345537_Article_processing_charge_APC_for_publishing_open_access_articles_the_Brazilian_scenario

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Ponelis, S. R., & Holmner, M. A. (2015). ICT in Africa: Building a better life for all. Information Technology for Development, 21(1), 1–11. doi:10.1080/02681102.2014.985521 Radijeng, K. (2010). Open access in institutions of higher learning in Botswana. Retrieved 23 July, 2020, from https://www.ifla.org/past-wlic/2010/138-radijeng-en.pdf Rakemane, D., & Jain, P. (2018). Revitalization Strategies for Libraries, Archives, and other Information Centers. Library and Information Association of Zambia Journal, 3(1-2), 41-51. Smith, I. (2019). Guest Post: Overview of the African Open Access landscape, with a focus on Scholarly Publishing. Retrieved 23 January, 2020, from https://blog.doaj.org/2019/10/11/guest-post-overview-ofthe-african-open-access-landscape-with-a-focus-on-scholarly-publishing/ SPARC Europe. (2020). Key OA benefits. Retrieved 23 January, 2020, from https://sparceurope.org/ what-we-do/open-access/oa-benefits/ Suber, P. (2004). Open Access Defined. Retrieved 25 July, 2020, from https://openaccess.pitt.edu/openaccess-defined Suber, P. (2010). Open access overview: Focusing on open access to peer reviewed research articles and their preprints. Retrieved 25 July, 2020 from: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm Tempest, D. (2013). Open access in Africa-changes and challenges. Retrieved 23 January, 2020, from https://www.elsevier.com/connect/open-access-in-africa-changes-and-challenges Tennant, J. P., Waldner, F., Jacques, D. C., Masuzzo, P., Collister, L. B., & Hartgerink, C. H. (2016). The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review. Retrieved 25 July, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4837983/ Tenopir, C., Levine, K., Allard, S., Christian, L., Volentine, R., Boehm, R., & Watkinson, A. (2015). Trustworthiness and authority of scholarly information in a digital age: Results of an international questionnaire. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(10), 2344–2361. doi:10.1002/asi.23598 Ulleberg, I. (2009). The role and impact of NGOs in capacity development: From replacing the state to reinvigorating education. Paris: International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). UNESCO. (2011). UNESCO Open Access Strategy. Retrieved 30 July, 2020 from http://www.unesco. org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/images/GOAP/OAF2011/2.1_Mishra.pdf United Nations. (2015). United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved 23 September, 2019, from https://www.un.org/en/udhrbook/pdf/udhr_booklet_en_web.pdfWingfield Velmurugan, C. (2011). Open Access Resources and Its Significance – An Introduction. In Proceeding of National Conference on Networking of Libraries, Resources, Technologies and Users in the Knowledge Society (SALIS 2011). National Engineering College, Kovilpatti. Wingfield, B., & Millar, B. (2019). The open access research model is hurting academics in poorer countries. Retrieved 20 January, 2020, from https://qz.com/africa/1593271/open-access-researchpublishing-hurts-academics-in-poor-countries/

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Africa: means the continent of Africa Barrier: obstacle that prevents access to information and knowledge Information: facts about something or someone communicated or learnt Knowledge: the fact or condition of knowing something from practice or theoretical experience. Open access: the practice of making information freely accessible to users without a cost Strategy: a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim. Sustainable development: development that does not cause harm to the environment and that last for as long as human interact with it.

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Research Data Sharing and Reuse Through Open Data:

Assessing Researcher Awareness and Perceptions at the Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI) Abel Christopher M’kulama The University of Zambia, Zambia Akakandelwa Akakandelwa The University of Zambia, Zambia

ABSTRACT Research data management is considered a critical step in the research process among researchers. Researchers are required to submit RDM plans with details about data storage, data sharing, and reuse procedures when submitting research proposals for grants. This chapter presents findings of an investigation into the perceptions and practices of ZARI researchers towards research data management. Mixed methods research using a self-administered questionnaire was adopted for data collection. Fifty-one researchers were sampled and recruited for participation into the study. The study established that the majority of the researchers were not depositing their research data in central repositories; data was kept on individual’s devices and was therefore not readily available for sharing. The major challenges being faced by researchers included lack of a policy, lack of a repository, and inadequate knowledge in RDM. The study concludes that research data at ZARI was not being professionally managed. The study recommends for formulation of policies, establishment of repository and staff training.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5018-2.ch015

Copyright © 2021, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

 Research Data Sharing and Reuse Through Open Data

INTRODUCTION Research data management (RDM) has emerged as a major step in the research process. RDM is considered important because it facilitates for data sharing, data repurposing and data reuse. These activates are critical in promoting research collaboration and development of fresh ideas among researchers. With increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in research, researchers are generating huge volumes of research datasets, at very high speeds and the data is being generated in varying formats. According to Cox and Pinfield (2013) the rapid and voluminous generation of research datasets creates challenges for researchers and the research community in general. Research institutions struggle to find the best possible ways of managing the research data that their researchers generate and work with. Additionally, researchers are faced with the challenge of developing data plans and providing open access to data. Many funding organisations are requiring submission of research data plans as well as proof of providing open access to the research data generated from the projects (Corti et al, 2014). Concerns of unreliability of storage technologies and technological obsolescence also raise questions as to how best to store and manage the research datasets generated by researchers so that the data can be preserved long term. Making sure that the datasets meet the required data security measures and adheres to ethical standards and controls required by international research authorities such as anonymisation of personal information also makes handling of research data challenging. Additionally, research data is challenging because the activities of managing research data such as reformatting the data into usable formats, transferring data from one storage media to another, assigning metadata to datasets as well as preserving the data so that the data can be accessed and cited correctly are never easy for researchers (Cox, Pinfield & Smith, 2014). These and many more challenges necessitate the need for research institutions to promptly establish professional research data services to assist researchers with the management of research data.

BACKGROUND Research data has been defined by Corti et al (2014: Viii) as “any research material resulting from primary data collection or generation, qualitative or quantitative or derived from existing sources intended to be analysed in the course of a research project”. Research data can be “numerical, textual, digitized materials, images, recordings or model of scripts”. Research data is actually collected, observed, or created, for purposes of analysis to produce original research results. Research data varies: it can be laboratory notebooks, field notebooks and documents which contain text. The data can also be numerical, descriptive, visual or tactile. It can be raw, cleaned or processed. Usually, all the data is included as research data even though much of it is currently being created in digital format. The management of research data is commonly referred to as research data management (RDM). RDM is defined as “the organisation of data, from its entry to the research cycle through to the dissemination and archiving of valuable results” (Whyte & Tedds, 2011:1). The activities involved in research data management include: “design and creation of data, storage, security, preservation, retrieval, sharing, and reuse” of data (Cox & Pinfield, 2013). RDM is complex, often requiring collaborative input from different stakeholders in institutions. In essence RDM “requires technical capabilities, ethical considerations, legal and governance frameworks” (Cox & Pinfield, 2013:1-2).

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The management of research data is categorized into two basic types namely “data management” and “digital curation”. Data management is carried out “during the active phase of the data life cycle”; that is when researchers are generating and making use of the data themselves. Digital curation is the management of research data during and after the research life cycle phase and involves digital storing and preservation as well as providing access to the data (Witt, 2010). As already mentioned RDM is important and has manifold benefits to the research community and the public at large. Fry et al (2009: iii) summarises the importance of RDM as follows: maximises investment in data collection; broader access where costs would be prohibitive for individual researchers/institutions; potential for new discoveries from existing data, especially where data are aggregated and integrated; reduced duplication of data collection costs and increased transparency of the scientific record; increased research impact and reduced time-lag in realising those impacts; new collaborations and new knowledge-based industries. With the importance of RDM in mind, the research community has also witnessed the emergence and growth of the open movement. This movement includes open access, open government, open data and open education. All aimed at transparency and free access to data and knowledge. The basic principle behind the open movement is to make publicly funded research (research papers and research data) freely accessible to the general public with the exception of Internet access (Suber, 2012). Because public research is funded through public funds by tax payers; it is therefore logical that tax payers enjoy free access to research outputs. In addition, funding organisations and governments particularly the Unites States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom have mandated open access to data and information generated via pubic funding. International funding organisations also require submission of research data management plans (DMPs) when submitting research proposals for grants. The research DMPs must detail how research data will be managed during the course of the project and after the project has been finalised. They also describe how research data will be made available for other researchers to access and potentially re-use the data. According to Tenopir et al (2011) researchers have embraced the open access movement and are willing to share their research data through open access platforms. However, researchers’ efforts are hampered by various challenges. Some of the challenges include lack of awareness about research data repositories and the requirements of open access; lack of knowledge about research data ownership and the requirements for data description and preservation (Linde et al, 2015). Researchers need to understand the benefits of participating in research data sharing and reuse, as well as understand the requirements of funding organisations for them to benefit from open access to research data. Therefore, this research investigated research data sharing and reuse through open access to research data in Zambia, a case of ZARI.

BACKGROUND TO THE ZARI The Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI) is Zambia’s largest specialised agriculture research department in the Ministry of Agriculture. ZARI’s objective are to “…develop and adapt crop, soil and plant protection technologies and to provide a high quality, appropriate and cost-effective service to farmers”. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, ZARI is expected to carry out research and develop 286

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crop technologies and offer cost effective services to farmers in Zambia. Thus the mission of ZARI is to contribute to the welfare of the Zambian people through the provision of technologies and knowledge that enhance household food security and equitable income-generating opportunities for the farming community and agricultural enterprises while ensuring the maintenance of the natural resource base. This renders the activities of ZARI critical in ensuring that Zambia achieves the sustainable development goals (SDGS), particularly goal number two (2) which seeks to “end hunger in all its forms by 2030 and to achieve food security” using sustainable agricultural means. ZARI consisting of ten (10) research stations doted around the ten provinces of Zambia with the headquarters situated in the capital city, Lusaka, Chilanga District at the Mt. Makulu Central Research Station. The stations are: Copperbelt Research Station, Kabwe Research Station, Longe Research Station, Mansa Research Station, Misamfu Regional Research Station, Mochipapa Research Station, Mongu Research Station, Msekera Research Station and Namushakende Research Station. ZARI has the following specialised departments: Soil science, Phytosanitary, Biometrics, etc. ZARI’s research activities are funded by the Government of Zambia with assistance from international funding organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the World Bank to mention only a few. ZARI is thus a research intensive institution whose activities involve generation, analysis and use of research data of various kinds and formats. To this end no research has been conducted to unearth the management of research data that researchers at the ZARI generate, or to understand their behaviours or practices with regards to research data in line with the growing calls for open access to research data. This study thus investigated research data management practices of researchers at ZARI as well as assessed their awareness, knowledge and perceptions towards research data sharing and reuse.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The need to make research data open access has emerged as a major issue of discussion among researchers. Research funding organizations increasingly require researchers to share data so that it can be reused and audited for accountability. In the western world, governments require open access to data and information generated using public funds so that citizens can access and use it for free. As such researchers are expected to develop research data management plans detailing how and when their research data can be accessed, shared and reused by other research or indeed the public (Borgman, 2015). Open access to research data has capabilities of strengthening research and the society at large. Since its establishment ZARI generates research data, however, there exists no documentation about the curation, reuse and sharing of the data generated at the institute. As open access to knowledge becomes widespread, it is still unknown how researchers at the ZARI have embraced open access to research to research data. Therefore, this research investigated research data management practices of researchers at the ZARI; it also assessed the awareness, knowledge and perceptions regarding research data sharing and reuse and to ascertained the challenges being experienced by researchers.

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OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY The purpose of this study was to investigate the research data management practices of researchers at the ZARI with the view to determine their awareness, knowledge, and perceptions towards open access to research data. The following were the specific objectives of the study: 1. 2. 3. 4.

To determine researcher awareness and knowledge of RDM To establish the research data management practices of researchers To determine researchers perceptions towards research data sharing and reuse Ascertain the challenges researchers face with research data management

REVIEW OF PAST LITERATURE The review of past literature covers four major themes in line with the specific objectives of the study. The literature covers awareness and knowledge levels of researchers regarding RDM and open access to research data; research data management practices; perceptions towards research data sharing and reuse, and finally, the challenges researchers face with regards to data sharing and reuse. The review was based on the above themes to help the researchers compare and relate the current research to the other relevant research in the field. Open access to knowledge (research papers and research datasets) is important and cannot be overemphasised. Open access to research data facilitates collaborative research, encourages innovation and advances the research agenda (Linde et al, 2015). Research data sharing and reuse at institutional level prepares researchers with the necessary knowledge and skills to comply with the open access requirements set by international funding organizations. Moreover, open access to research data increases the visibility and accessibility of the research activities being undertaken in a research institution as curated research data can be cited and acknowledged in the same manner as research papers. Patel (2016:227) summarises the manifold ways in which open access to research data benefits the research community and the society: • • • • •

Reuse: data can be reused by other researchers and applied in various other contexts. Citation: the data collectors and analysts also get credit and acknowledgement through data citation. Trust: the authenticity and objectivity of the data will be reaffirmed by usage. Data citation will also increase the trust in the data set as source and attribution become clear. Transparency: data sharing brings transparency in the research process and data collection methods. Time-saving: it saves a lot of time of the researchers, so they can focus on newer avenues of research instead of collecting data from scratch.

Gurin, Manley and Ariss (2015) add that open access to research data provides: “critical information on natural resources, government operations, public services, and population demographics. Research data actually influences decision making and policy formulation at national and international levels.

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AWARENESS AND KNOWLEDGE OF DATA SHARING Understanding the awareness and knowledge of researchers about research data management is important in understanding researchers’ behaviours towards research data sharing and reuse. Awareness and knowledge about research data management and the requirements for open access to research data are critical indicators to whether researchers will share and reuse data or not. Aydinoglu et al (2017) studied the perception of researchers towards research data management in Turkey and found that researchers were well aware of RDM. However, it was noted that even though researchers were aware of RDM, it did not necessarily have a bearing on their willingness to share research data with other groups. The study also found that researchers in Turkey expressed a lack of technical skills and knowledge to practice research data management. Sharmar and Qin (2015) studied graduate students awareness and knowledge of research data management with a “focus on technical aspects such as the familiarity and use of tools and technologies along with their participation and familiarity with data standards and policies. The study established that there was a lack of knowledge about RDM among graduate students: “graduate students lack awareness of data management policies, technologies, and practices when it comes to storing, accessing, and sharing data”. Van Tuyl and Michalek (2015) interviewed Carnegie-Mellon faculty on research data management awareness. The study revealed that the majority of faculty were aware. Actually, it was established that 64 percent of the entire faculty and 95 percent of the engineering faculty were aware of the United States’ grant agency data management plan requirements. However, the study also revealed that the faculty’s research practices were not always consistent with best research data management practices. An earlier similar study by Akers and Doty (2013) of Emory University faculty and established that over 80 percent of the basic science faculty were somewhat or very aware of federal agency data management requirements. These studies revealed a broad awareness of data-sharing mandates and requirements and a growing acceptance, with some reservations and caveats, of the value of data sharing. However, data management needs differ greatly by discipline and these disciplinary differences are significant and represent a set of key challenges for libraries in pulling together consistent and successful data management services. In Africa, RDM is new and still developing. According to Kahn et al (2014) “the requirement” for establishing research data services “have not yet been mandated” in many African countries. However, there is growing recognition that management of research data is an important endeavour. For example South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF) emphasizes the need for researchers and research institutions in South Africa to ensure professional management of research data. However, most African countries do not have RDM policies and mandates that adequately address or require public institutions to manage research data.

RESEARCH DATA SHARING To be able to share research data, the data must be managed, stored, and curated (Wouters & Haak, 2017). This implies that research institutions must establish research data management services and provide data repositories where researchers can deposit and access the data. According to Penfield and Cox (2013) the library has been identified as the ideal place for the provision of such services and library and information professions should help researchers to describe and organize the data.

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A research carried out by Tenopir et al (2011; 2015) on scientist’s research data practices showed an acceptance by researchers to engage in data-sharing activities. However, the survey also revealed an increase in perceived risk in sharing research data among researchers. Pham-Kanter et al (2014) also surveyed over 3,000 life scientists in two surveys, one in 2000 and another in 2013 with the aim of assessing data sharing practices. The study found a dramatic shift in the type of data sharing that was being practiced, from a focus on a peer-to-peer data-sharing environment to a sharing model focused on disciplinary and institutional repositories. A follow-up study to the 2013 study with the same objectives found that recently enacted data-sharing policies and newly introduced sharing infrastructure and tools had a significant effect on encouraging data-sharing among researchers (Pham-Kanter et al, 2014). Thus while having knowledge and right attitude is important, it important to ensure that right facilities and policies are enacted to guide the management and sharing of research data. Patterton (2016) investigated the research data management practices of 48 emerging researchers at the South African Research Council in South Africa and found that researchers were knowledgeable about RDM and made use of the various technologies and tools to manage research data. It was also revealed that emerging researchers shared data particularly with their supervisors, research groups and researchers who had helped them.

RESEARCH DATA MANAGEMENT PRACTICES Research data management practices refer to researchers’ actions, attitudes and interests regarding research data storage, sharing and reuse (Akers et al, 2013). It is important to understand research data practices of researchers from different fields of specialization. But also in order to ensure that the right kind of support is provided to researchers. Johnston and Jeffrys (2014) interviewed graduate students and a faculty member in a civil engineering research group and, from these interviews and observations, developed a blueprint for an instructional program in the library to support engineering data management practices. Bangani and Moyo (2019) using the survey method invested the data sharing practices of researchers in South African universities. The study involved 129 researchers from different disciplines across South Africa. The major discovery of the study regarding research data management practices of searchers in South Africa was that researchers preferred to use data produced by other researchers rather than sharing their own research data. For example, the study found that only 51% of the researchers expressed willingness to share research data while more than 76% indicated that they were using data from other sources.

CHALLENGES TO RESEARCH DATA SHARING While research data sharing and reuse presents numerous benefits to the research community and the society, various challenges hamper free and open sharing and reuse of research data. Thus open access (sharing research data) continues to be a conundrum: an intricate and difficult problem. Some of the challenges of sharing research data include: lack of awareness and knowledge data sharing and reuse; lack of technical skills; lack of policies; lack of technical infrastructures; and lack of legal, financial and security systems (Figueiredo, 2017; Federer et al, 2015; Ng’eno, 2018). Figueiredo (2017:1) categorized the challenges of sharing and reusing research data into “ethical/legal, cultural, financial, and/or technical levels”. Ethical and legal challenges pattern to difficulties of anonymize or “de-identifying research data in line with the legal and ethical requirements as well as possibly re-identifying the data for reuse”. This 290

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is particularly challenging when dealing with patient data or clinical trials data. Cultural challenges are triggered by “the fear that competitors can come upon new findings first and that … data can be misused or misinterpreted”. Lastly, financial and technical challenges refer mainly to challenges associated with investing in technologies that help to solve challenges of ethical fears, legal and security fears which in most cases have a financial cost. Weller and Monroe-Gulick (2014) examined the differences in research methodologies, data storage practices, and research challenges across subject disciplines, and recommended that research data services be developed in a targeted manner to different disciplines as a measure to mitigate challenges in research data sharing. The assumption being that different disciplines face different challenges. Federer et al, (2015) in a study of data sharing and reuse in biomedical sciences found significant differences between the attitudes and practices of researchers from different disciplines, including their motivations for sharing, their reasons for not sharing, and the amount of work required to prepare their data. The study recommends addressing the unique concerns of diverse research communities is important to encouraging researchers to share and reuse data. Challenges to research data sharing have also been categorized into individual and institutional factors. For example, Kim and Stanton’s (2016) examined of 1,317 scientists to determine the extent to which institutional and individual factors influenced data-sharing behaviours. It was discovered that different disciplines may have different data-sharing requirements and expectation and that it is important to investigate how both disciplinary and individual factors influence data practices. The other challenges identified with regards to research data sharing and reuse is the variety in data types. Whitmire’s et al (2015) investigated Oregon State University (OSU) and found that researchers generate a wide variety of data types, and that practices vary widely between different disciplines and colleges. It was also noticed in the study that faculty were not utilizing the campus-wide storage infrastructure, but opted to maintain personal storage servers in surprising numbers.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This was a descriptive study. A self-administered structured questionnaire was distributed to 70 researchers at the ZARI headquarters to collect. The questionnaire consisted of predominantly close-ended questions with a few open-ended questions to solicit for additional data. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics in SPSS version 23 and qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis techniques.

RESEARCH FINDINGS The main objective of this study was to investigate the research data management practices and perceptions of researchers towards open access to research data at the ZARI. Specific objectives of the study were a) to determine the current RDM practices of researchers; b) to find out the awareness and knowledge levels of the researchers, and c) ascertain their perceptions towards research data sharing and reuse. Of the 70 copies of the questionnaire administered only 51 copies were successfully collected representing 73% response rate across all departments at ZARI. The response rate could have been higher than this, however at the time of questionnaire distribution, some researchers had left the station due to leave, or were out of the station due to various reasons. 291

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Biographic Characteristics of respondents Seventy-five questionnaires were distributed to the ZARI staff and 51 questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 68.0%. Table 1 shows that 56.9% (29) were females and 43.1% (22) were males. In terms of highest academic qualification, 5% had doctoral degrees, 55% had master’s degrees and 35% had bachelor’s degrees as their highest qualification. Furthermore, 60.8% (31) were agricultural research officers, 23.5% (12) were senior agricultural research officers, 13.7% (7) were technical research assistants, and one respondent was a principal agricultural research officer. Table 1. Demographic characteristics of respondents Variable Gender

Academic qualifications

Rank

Values

Frequency

Percentage

Female

29

56.9

Male

22

43.1

Bachelors’ degree

18

35.0

Masters’ degree

28

55.0

Doctoral degree

5

5.0

Agricultural research officer

31

60.8

Senior agricultural research officer

12

23.5

Technical research assistant

7

13.7

Principal agricultural research officer

1

2.0

Researchers’ Awareness and Knowledge of RDM The study established the extent to which the respondents were involved in data collection, creation, storage and analysis of data. The findings established that 80.4% (41) of the respondents were involved in the collection, creation, storage and analysis of data while 19.6% (10) were not involved. Respondents were further asked to indicate their sources of awareness about research data sharing and reuse. Table 2 reveals that the major sources of awareness of research data sharing and reuse were colleagues (35.3%), personal research (25.5%), conferences and seminars (13.7%), and postgraduate studies (25.5%). Table 2. Source of awareness about research data sharing and reuse Frequency

Table N

Colleagues

18

35.3

Personal Research

13

25.5

Conferences and seminars

7

13.7

Postgraduate studies (PhD and Masters)

13

25.5

Total

51

100.0

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The Research Data Management Practices Among Researchers The second objective of the study was to establish the research data management practices of the researchers at ZARI. In order to achieve this objectives: respondents were asked a) to indicate the sources of the funding of their research data collection activities; b) how they collected raw/original data; who was responsible for managing their data; how they converted raw data or original data into a structured electronic form; the types of supporting documentation they kept to allow others outside their research group to understand and use the research data or to replicate the methodologies that produced the data; and to estimate the total size of research data they were keeping. The findings are presented below. Table 3 reveals that 74.5% (35) of the respondents were funded by external funding organizations (such as the World Bank, JAICA, University of Maryland, etc.); 59.6% (28) were supported by internal funding, 12.8% (6) were supported by private funded (mainly self-funding). Table 3. Sources of funding for respondents’ data collection Frequency

Table N %

External funding organization (e.g. World Bank

35

74.5%

Internal funding (Unit/Department within ZARI)

28

59.6%

Private funding (e.g. self)

6

12.8%

Table 4 reveals that 76.5% (39) of the respondents collected data using paper and pencils, 60.8% (31) of the respondents used specimen and physical (water, cells, tissues, etc.), 23.5% (12) of the respondents used direct electronic input, and 19.6% (10) used images, events, and observations. Table 4. How did you collect raw/original data? Frequency

Table N %

Paper and pencil

39

76.5%

Specimen and physical (water, cells, tissue etc.)

31

60.8%

Direct electronic input

12

23.5%

Images, events, observations

10

19.6%

When respondents were asked to indicate who was responsible for managing their data, 84.3% (43) managed their own data, 31.4% (16) mentioned the project manager, 5.6% (3) mentioned graduate students, 35.3% (18) mentioned a designated person in the research group, 23.5% (12) mentioned that data was managed by a research assistant, 9.8% (5) mentioned an external research collaborator, 9.8% (5) mentioned an IT staff/department, and 5.9% (3) mentioned other unspecified persons. Respondents were asked how they converted raw data or original data into a structured electronic form. The results were: manual data entry/transcription (89.6%), data conversion into structured electronic formats (8.3%), scan of paper form (8.3%), and optical character recognition (6.3%) (Table 6). Two respondents indicated that they did not input data into structured electronic form.

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Table 5. Who is responsible for managing your data? Frequency

Table N %

Yourself

43

84.3%

Project manager

16

31.4%

Graduate students

3

5.9%

Designated person in research group

18

35.3%

Research assistant

12

23.5%

External research collaborator

5

9.8%

IT staff/department

5

9.8%

Other please specify

3

5.9%

Table 6. How did you convert raw data? Frequency

Table N %

Manual data entry/transcription

43

89.6%

Data conversion into structured electronic formats

4

8.3%

Scan of paper form (PDF)

4

8.3%

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

3

6.3%

I don’t put data into structured electronic form/database

2

4.2%

Providing metadata and other accompanying documents about research data is important in ensuring that research data is accessible, retrievable and reusable by others without difficult. Thus to determine whether scientists at ZARI provide any documentation or metadata to accompany the research data, we asked researchers to indicate the method they use. Table 7 shows that the types supporting documentation respondents kept to allow others outside their research group to understand and use the research data or to replicate the methodologies that produced the data. Forty-two (82.4%) kept description of methodology/ protocol, 27 (52.9%) kept questionnaires/interviews text, 10 (19.6%) kept instrument metadata (model, calibration), 7 (13.7%) kept data dictionary/coding manual, 7 (13.7%) kept data citations, 5 (9.8%) kept additional metadata, 4 (7.8%) kept programming to replicate analysis, one respondent kept other unspecified documentation, and one respondent did not keep any data documentation. Respondents were asked to estimate the total size of research data they were keeping. Table 8 shows that 22 (43.1%) respondents were keeping less than 10GB, four (7.8%) were keeping between 10 and 100GB data, three respondents were keeping between 100GB and 4TB, two respondents were keeping more than 4TB of data. Twenty respondents did not know how much data they were keeping. Table 9 reveals that respondents stored their working data/electronics files in external hard drives (portable storage/flash drives) (88.2%), computer hard drives (78.4%), physical hardcopies (51%), cloud storage (25.5%), department lab server (9.8%), CDs/DVDs/Tape (9.8%), data repository (9.8%), hard drive of the instrument which generates the data (7.8%), and IITs server (3.9%).

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Table 7. What type of supporting documentation? Frequency Description of methodology/protocol

42

Table N % 82.4%

Questionnaire/interview text

27

52.9%

Instrument metadata (model, calibration)

10

19.6%

Data dictionary/coding manual

7

13.7%

Data citations

7

13.7%

Additional Metadata

5

9.8%

Programming to replicate analysis

4

7.8%

Other specify

1

2.0%

I do not keep any data documentation

1

2.0%

Table 8. Total size of research data kept Frequency

Percent

Less than 10GB (small USB stick is 8GB)

22

43.1

Between 10 and 100GB (Portable Pocket Drive)

4

7.8

Between 100GB and 4TB (Large External Hard Drive)

3

5.9

More than 4TB (Server)

2

3.9

I don’t know

20

39.2

Total

51

100.0

Table 9. Where respondents store their working dataset/electronic files Frequency

Table N%

External hard drive/Portable storage/Flash drive (USB)

45

88.2%

Computer hard drive

40

78.4%

Physical hardcopy retained

26

51.0%

Cloud storage

13

25.5%

Department or lab server

5

9.8%

CDs/DVDs/Tape

5

9.8%

Data Repository

5

9.8%

Hard drive of the instrument which generates the data

4

7.8%

Other (please specify)

2

3.9%

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Data Protection Practices of Researchers The study further investigated security measures researchers undertake to protect electronic research data. Table 10 reveals that 72.5% of the respondents used passwords to protect electronic data; 7.8% of the respondents encrypted their electronic data; 5.9% of the respondents de-identified their data; and 3.9% used other unidentified measures to secure their data. Ten (19.6%) respondents reported that they were not securing their data. Table 10. How do you secure your electronic data? Frequency

Table N %

Password protected

37

72.5%

Data is not secured

10

19.6%

Data is encrypted

4

7.8%

Data is de-identified

3

5.9%

Other

2

3.9%

The respondents were further asked to indicate how often they created backup copies of electronic research data. Figure 1 below shows that 13.7% of the respondents made backups of their data on a daily basis; 13.7% of the respondents did this on a weekly basis; 21.6% of the respondents did this on a monthly basis; 39.2% of the respondents did this on an ad hoc basis; and 11.8% of the respondents never made backup copies of their data. Figure 1. Frequency of Backups

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Respondents were further asked to indicate where they stored the backup copies of their data. Figure 2 below shows that respondents used mainly computer hard drives (73.0%), external hard drives such as flash disks (67.0%), cloud storage such as Drop box, Google drive and MS OneDrive (29.0%), and hard drives of the instruments which were used to generate the data (8.0%), and others (4.0%) CDs, DVDs and tapes. Figure 2. Storage facilities for respondents’ backup copies

The study further sought to establish the kinds of software respondents used when collaborating with others in research. Table 11 reveals the 52.9% of the respondents used Ms Word to track changes; 51.0% used DropBox to share folders; 49.0% used Google Documents; 15.7% used referencing software. Four (7.8%) respondents reported that they were not using any software when collaborating with other researchers. Table 11. Software or programs used by respondents when collaborating with others Frequency

Table N %

MS Word (track changes, etc.)

27

52.9%

DropBox (Shared Folders)

26

51.0%

Google Documents

25

49.0%

Referencing

8

15.7%

None

4

7.8%

Total

51

100.0%

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Respondents were asked to indicate how they dealt with different versions of their working data files. Table 12 shows that 62.7% of the respondents saved multiple files and updated them with different names; 27.5% used software like DropBox which automatically updates documents; 5.9% used versioning control programs; 13.7% used only one dataset version; 17.6% used no versioning control programs but were willing to learn more about it. Table 12. How respondents dealt with different versions of their working data files Frequency Save multiple files and update the files with different names/naming convention

32

Table N % 62.7%

Use DropBox which automatically saves changes in the data files

14

27.5%

Have not used versioning control, but are keen to learn

9

17.6%

Only use one dataset version.

7

13.7%

Use versioning control program

3

5.9%

Total

51

100.0%

Respondents were asked to indicate where they stored their datasets after completion of their research projects. Table 13 shows that 78.4% stored their datasets on computer hard drives; 56.9% used external hard drives; 31.4% used cloud storage facilities; 29.4% stored their data sets as hardcopies in cabinets and boxes; 19.6% used departmental computer laboratory severs; 9.8% stored their datasets on hard drives of the instruments that were used to generate the data; 2.0% used CDs, DVDs, and tapes; 2.0% used unspecified storage facilities. One respondent reported that he/she was not keeping copies his/her datasets. Table 13. Where respondents stored their datasets at the conclusion of their research project Frequency

Table N %

Computer hard drive

40

78.4%

External hard drive/Portable storage/Flash drive

29

56.9%

Cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, MS One Drive, etc.)

16

31.4%

Physical hardcopy retained (in boxes, cabinets, etc.)

15

29.4%

Department or lab server

10

19.6%

Hard drive of the instrument which generates the data

5

9.8%

CDs/DVDs/Tape

1

2.0%

Do not keep a copy of the datasets

1

2.0%

Other unspecified storage facilities

1

2.0%

Respondents were asked to indicate how long they retained their research data for preservations purposes after completion of their research projects. Table 14 reveals that; 66.7% retained their data indefinitely; 9.8% of the respondents retained their data for one year; 9.8% retained their data for five years 9.8% did not know how long they were retaining their data after completion of their research projects.

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Table 14. Data retention period for preservation purposes Frequency

Percent

Indefinitely

34

80.4

1 Year

5

9.8

5 years

5

9.8

I don’t know

7

9.8

Other please specify

0

0.0

Total

51

100.0

Researchers’ Perceptions Towards Research Data Sharing and Reuse The third objective of the study was to determine researchers’ perceptions towards research data sharing and reuse. Respondents were asked whether they would consider archiving data in a data repository. The findings revealed that 70.6% of the respondents agreed that they would consider archiving their data in an open access research data repository while 29.4% of the respondents had no knowledge of the existence of data repositories but were keen to learn more about them. In a follow up question on how the respondents show their research data with others, 92.2% indicated that they shared their research with others by email; 82.4% of the respondents physically handed over their data using USBs, CDs, and portable laser drivers; 19.6% used data repositories (with controlled access); 11.8% provided a link to their data on their academic websites; 7.8% shared their data on open access data depositories; and two (3.9%) respondents that their shared but did not specify how they were doing it. One respondent indicated that he/she had not been sharing his/her data but was willing to learn about the available options of doing it. One respondent preferred not to share his or data (Table 15). Table 15. How respondents shared their research data with others Frequency

Table N %

Email data files

47

92.2%

Physically hand over data (USB, CD, Portable laser drive)

42

82.4%

Data repository, controlled access

10

19.6%

Link to data on academic website

6

11.8%

Data repository, open-access (anonymous dataset available to public)

4

7.8%

Other (please specify)

2

3.9%

I have not been sharing my data so far, but would like to learn more about different options

1

2.0%

I prefer not to share my data

1

2.0%

Respondents were further asked to what extent they would agree to share their research data for reuse. Table 16 reveals that 43.1% of the respondents strongly agreed, 23.5% agreed, 25.5% were not sure, 2.0% disagreed, and 2.0% strongly disagreed. Two respondents did not state their response.

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Table 16. The extent to which researchers were willing to research data for reuse Frequency

Percent

Strongly Agree

22

43.1

Agree

12

23.5

Not sure

13

25.5

Disagreed

1

2.0

Strongly Disagree

1

2.0

Total

49

96.1

Not stated

2

3.9

Total

51

100

The Challenges Researchers Face with Research Data Management The fourth objective of this study was to determine the challenges researchers face with research data management. Figure 3 below presents the major challenges researchers faced regarding data management. The challenges are lack of a dedicated digital data repository for researchers to use (75%), organising data into a presentable and useful way (69%), unsure about copyright and licensing (67%), and lacking time to depsoit data (52%). The other challanges included were lack of support, lack of a research data policy and lack of technical support. Regarding lack of Polcy as a challenge, one of the partiipants stated the following: …we do not have a policy that specifically deals with how to deal with data at ZARI. Hence everyone deals with his or her data. I think having a policy would help in ensuring that the data is managed in a uniform way. Figure 3. Challenges being faced by respondents regarding data management

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DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS The purpose of this study was to investigate the research data management practices of researchers at the ZARI with the view to determine their awareness, knowledge, and perceptions towards open access to research data. The following were the specific objectives of the study: to determine researcher awareness and knowledge of RDM; to establish the research data management practices of researchers; to determine researchers perceptions towards research data sharing and reuse; and to ascertain the challenges researchers face with research data management. This section presents a discussion of the findings.

Awareness and Knowledge About Research Data Management This study has established that researchers at the ZARI were generally aware of the concept of research data management. This finding is different from the findings of Chigwada, Chiparusha and Kasiroori (2017) who observed a lack of knowledge and skills among researchers in Zimbwean research institutions. The findings further indicate that most of the researchers’ knowledge and awareness of data management, research data sharing and reuse was obtained from colleagues, personal research conferences and postgraduate studies. There was a lack of institutional or in-house training programmes on data management. Therefore, researchers may not have receiving sufficient knowledge and training on data management, research data sharing and reuse. However, despite the high levels of awareness about the concept of research data management, the researchers were not knowledgeable about research data management plans as they seem not to have encountered situations where they were required to submit a research data management plan along with research proposals. This situation could arise from a lack of data management policy Zambian Government institutions. Thus there is a need for ZARI to establish a research data management policy. Furthermore, there is need to generally raise awareness about the concept of open access to research data among all researchers at the ZARI.

Research Data Practices Method Used to Store and Manage Research Data Research data management practices refer to researchers’ actions, attitudes and interests regarding research data storage, sharing and reuse (Akers et al, 2013). Regarding research data storage, the research has revealed that the majority of the researchers at ZARI stored their own data as ZARI does not have a central digital repository for the management of research data that is generated by researchers. Thus the main storage method that researchers at the ZARI use is external hard drives and computer hard drives. Unfortunately, these are not effective data storage methods as they are susceptible to theft, breaking down and obsolescence. This implies that there is very little or no application of effective research data storage mechanisms at the ZARI. The data that researchers generate is exposed to various risks such as theft, loss or duplication of research efforts. This can be attributed to the lack of data management policy and lack of dedicated staff and infrastructure to management research data at ZARI. The study has also established that most of the data was manually entered into individual researchers’ computers. Furthermore, most ZARI researchers kept descriptions of methodology including questionnaires and interviews as supporting documentation to allow others outside their research groups to 301

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understand and use their research data or to replicate their studies. However, very few researchers kept data dictionary/coding manuals, data citations, additional metadata and programming. This makes it difficult for other researchers outside their research groups to reuse or duplicate their researches.

Data security and Retention Practices This study also established that researchers heavily relied on passwords as a major data security measure. Very few used data encryption and other advanced security methods. Furthermore, although most of the researchers made backup copies of their research data this was done on an ad hoc basis. The backup copies being kept on several individual internal and external storage devices. Furthermore, a considerably number of respondents (29.4%) still relied on physical hardcopies kept in cabinets and boxes, as backup copies. The ZARI management should come up with policy and regulations that mandate conversion of data collected or stored on physical copies into digital format for easy data curation. Further, findings have revealed that there was a lack of standard regulation regarding data retention. Lack of external central data backup storage facility severely compromised the security of research data and its preservation and retention for future use. Most researchers retained their research data in individual cabinets or personal electronic storage devices indefinitely whiles others retained their data for a period ranging from one to five years. The standard practice is that all raw data should be kept for a minimum of 3-years after study completion. Lack of policy on data retention compromised the availability and preservation of data for future use as most of the storage devices belonged to individuals.

Willingness to Share and Reuse Research Data Regarding researcher’s perceptions towards research data sharing, the study revealed that the majority of researchers either strongly agreed or agreed to share their research data. The findings of this study are similar with findings by Linde (2015) who also found that researchers at “Blekinge Institute of Technology” in Sweden were willing to share their data with others so that the data could be repurposed and reused. However, while researches are willing to share research data, most researchers lack the necessary skills to do so. It was observed that researchers either did not know that they were required to develop research data management plans, had little knowledge about the need for data storage and preservation, and the need to make their data openly accessible (Tenopir et al, 2015; Shen, 2015). Regarding research data reuse, the majority of researchers at ZARI either strongly agreed or agreed to participate in research data reuse. This appears to be the norm among researchers. Shen (2015) and Ceci (1988) for instanced observed that researchers are generally willing to reuse research data generated by others. The fact that researchers in Zambia express willingness to participate in research data sharing and reuse activities is a good sign for developing research data management services in Zambia as recruiting researchers to contribute towards research data collection development will be easier.

Challenges in Participating in Research Data Sharing and Reuse The findings of this study have revealed that researchers at the Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI) are facing challenges in RDM, data sharing and data reuse. The major challenges identified were the lack of a central digital data repository for researchers to deposit and access the data; the difficulties of organising data in a way that is presentable and useful’; lack of awareness about copyright 302

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and licensing as researchers are unsure about data ownership once it has been deposit in a repository. The other challenges were lack of time to depost data in open access repositories and costs of sharing research data. The findings of this study are in conformity with the findings of previous studies. For instance, Unal and Serap (2011) studying research data management practice of researchers in Turkey identified low data literacy levels, lack of awarenes and knwledge as major challenges inhibiting research data management, research sharing and reuse among many researchers. Chigwada, Chiparausha and Kasiroori (2017) in Zimbabwe identified lack of infractructure, lack of financial support and absence of research data management policies as major challenges to RDM. There is therefore a critical need for research institutions like ZARI to provide training programs for their researchers in RDM and other related issues like copyright and licensing of research data. ZARI will do well to establish and RDM policy and to invest in the establishment of a central research data repository.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION Research data management is a new concept in Zambia and to most Zambian researchers in various research institutions. While most researchers at ZARI indicated that they have been exposed to the concept of research data management the practical skills required to perform research data storage, data sharing and reusing research data lack. The lack of a centralised digital research data repository at the ZARI is a sign that research data management is practically non-extant at the research institution hence almost all the researchers keep the data on their personal computer hard drives and external hard drives. These practices are not effective and are susceptible to data theft and loss. There is a need for ZARI, being the country’s centre for agricultural research, to speedily work on establishing research data management policy and training programmes to equip their scientists and information professionals with skills and knowledge on RDM. Given the fact that ZARI’s research activities are 75% funded by research funding agencies, there is need for ZARI to train its researchers in all aspects of RDM so that the institution can adhere to the of the demands of funding agencies regarding making research data open access and available for sharing and reuse.

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About the Contributors

Priti Jain is a Professor of Information and Knowledge Management in the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of Botswana. She holds BA (Hons) and LLB degrees from Meerut University, India, a Master’s in Library and Information Studies from the University of Botswana, and a DLit et Phil (Doctor of Literature and Philosophy) from Unisa, South Africa. In her 17 years’ working experience in Library and information world, Priti has written extensively in referred journals and has presented sever al papers in international conferences. She serves on five editorial boards in international journals. She is engaged in various community initiatives. She teaches and researches in knowledge management and information Science courses. Her current areas of research interest are: Knowledge management, Open access, Institutional Repositories, and Digital Scholarship.   Nathan Mnjama is a Professor in the Department of Library and Information Studies, University of Botswana with specialization in Archives and Records Management. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History from University of Nairobi, a Postgraduate Diploma in Archives and Records Management from University of Ghana, a Post Graduate Diploma in History from Girton College, Cambridge and a PhD in Archival Studies from University College, London. Prof Mnjama has worked as an archivist and records manager at the Kenya National Archives and was responsible for the location and copying of Kenyan archives from the UK between 1980 and 1985. He has considerable experience in teaching and delivery of archives and records management programmes having lectured at the School of Information Sciences, Moi University Kenya prior to joining the Department of Library and Information Studies University of Botswana where he has been instrumental in the design of archives and records management programmes since 1996. Prof Mnjama is a well-known speaker and presenter in archives and records management forums in East and Southern Africa. He has published extensively in the field of archives and records management in Africa.  Mnjama has participated in several records management initiatives organized by the International Records Management Trust aimed at improving archives and records keeping practices in Africa. O. Oladokun is an Associate Professor in the Department of Library and Information Studies, University of Botswana teaching information organization courses in cataloguing, classification, indexing and abstracting, among others. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Education) degree of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), a Master of Library Studies, University of Ibadan, Master of Information Science (MIS), University of Pretoria, and PhD, University of Botswana. He has previously worked as a Senior Librarian, Principal Librarian, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso. He was also a Senior Librarian and Manager, Learning Commons, University of Botswana before joining the Department of Library and Information Studies, University of Botswana. ***



About the Contributors

Gbolagade Adekanmbi is currently an Associate Professor of Distance Education at the Botswana Open University, located in Gaborone. He obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Adult Education and Language Arts, a Master’s Degree in Adult Education (Industrial Education) and a PhD in Adult Education all from University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He taught courses in Adult Education, Industrial Education, Literacy and Distance Education at the University of Ibadan, before joining the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) University of Botswana where he rose to the level of Deputy Director, Academic Programming. Prof. Adekanmbi has published widely and has made scholarly presentations at various international conferences. His research interests include trends in continuing, distance and higher education in subSaharan Africa.  Tella Adeyinka is an Associate Professor at the Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria and is currently a visiting researcher in the Department of Information Science at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, South Africa. Before this time, Tella has been a Research Fellow in this same department. Tella was a Commonwealth scholar who finished his Ph.D. at the University of Botswana in September 2009. Tella is a Three times winner of Dr. TM Salishu Most Published Librarian Award by the Nigerian Library Association (2015, 2017 and 2018), and a 2007 winner of CODESRIA’s small grant for thesis writing for the PhD students’ category. He has authored many articles in high impact Web of Science/Scopus rated journals. Akakandelwa Akakandelwa is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Zambia. He holds a PhD in Political and Social Science from University of Antwerp, Belgium. His research interests include Informetrics, Information Seeking behaviour, Open Access Publishing, E-governance, Information Retrieval and Cataloguing and Classification. Musediq Tunji Bashorun is a Senior-Lecturer in the Department of Library and Information Science, University of Ilorin, Nigeria. He holds a PhD in Library and Information Studies from University of Botswana, Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) obtained from University of Ibadan and a Bachelor of Science in Biology/Education from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. He is a chartered and registered Librarian with Librarians’ Registration Council of Nigeria. Bashorun has published several research articles in refereed journals, book chapters and attended conferences/workshops at home and abroad. His areas of specialization include Webo-metrics, research methodology, Bibliometrics, Publishing, Knowledge Management, Reference source and services, User studies, Informatics, ICT, E-resources and a promoter of Open Access Initiatives. Bashorun is currently on sabbatical leave at Umaru Musa Yar’adua University, Katsina State, Nigeria. Tuesday Bwalya is Lecturer I in the Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Zambia. He holds a Master’s Degree in Information Science from Northeast Normal University, China. In addition, Mr. Bwalya has received training in India and Belgium in Library Automation with Free and Open Source Library Management Systems such as Koha and ABCD. His research interests include Free and Open Source Software, Open Access Publishing, Database Systems, Web Development, Records management, Cataloguing and Classification.

352

About the Contributors

Emmanuel Frank Elia is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Information Studies Unit at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He obtained a Master of Arts Degree in Information Studies from the University of Dar es Salaam and a PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), South Africa. His current research areas of interest are ICT4D, media, information packaging, climate change, indigenous knowledge, and information behaviour. Abubakar Hajarat is a Senior Librarian at Kwara State College of Education, Ilorin. She holds Nigerian Certificate of Education, Bachelor’s Degree in Library & Information Sciencobtained from University of Ado-Ekiti and a Maste’sr Degree in Library & Information Science obtained from University of Ilorin. Abubakar has published several research articles in refereed journals and book chapters. Her research interest includes e-library, user studies, digital documentation and Information Technology. Ruth G. Hoskins is an Associate Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She received her PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is the Dean of Teaching and Learning in the College of Humanities. She teaches in the areas of Information Management and Information Behaviour and Ethics. Her research areas include, school libraries, social media and academic libraries, open access and publishing developments. Abel Chrisopher M’kulama is a lecturer in the Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Zambia (UNZA). He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Library and Information Studies from UNZA and a Master of Science degree in Information Management from the University of Sheffield in the UK. His research interests include: Open Access, Knowledge management, Intellectual Property, Information Literacy, Information Governance, Records Management and Research Data Management. Olefhile Mosweu is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He holds a Doctoral degree in Information Science from the University of South Africa, BA (English and History), Post Graduate Diploma in Education and Master’s Degree in Archives and Records Management obtained from the University of Botswana, a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Amity University, India, and a Diploma in Human Resources Management from Botswana Open University. He has worked in the public sector of Botswana as an archives and records management professional and authored several book chapters and articles in reputable publishing houses. He is an editorial member of the Journal of the South African Society of Archivists. He is a member of the Records and Information Association of Botswana, South African Society of Archivists, and the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives. His research interests are archival education, digital records management, knowledge management and the impact of Industry 4.0 on records management. He was a Research Assistant and member of Team Africa in the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems project (InterPARES Trust) between 2013 and 2018.

353

About the Contributors

Jamiu Oladele Muahammed is an Assistant Lecturer. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Education (Economics), University of Ilorin, a Diploma in Computer Desktop Publishing obtained from Software Computer College, Maiguduguri, a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science and a Master of Educational Management (Economics Education), both from University of Ibadan. He is a certified Librarian of Nigeria (LRCN). He had worked in several organisations including Al-Ibadan College of Education, Boluwaji, Ibadan, Federal Government Girls’ College, Monguno, Borno State. Muhammed has published many research articles and book chapters in both International and local refereed journals. His areas of research include ICT, library management, social media and library practices. Wole Michael Olatokun, a UNESCO Fellow, holds master and doctorate degrees in Information Science obtained from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is currently the Director at Africa Regional Centre for Information Science, University of Ibadan and an honorary Professor at the University of Kwazulu-Natal and the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Professor Olatokun has taught and conducted research in the areas related to information science, systems and technology in Nigeria and Botswana for over two decades. His research interests include: Analysis of National ICT Policy Issues, Social Informatics, Information Ethics, Gender and ICT, Knowledge Management, e-Government, and Indigenous Knowledge. Ojinga Gideon Omiunu is a doctoral student at the Africa Regional Centre for Information Science (ARCIS), University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He has a Bachelor. Tech in Agricultural Economics and Extension (LAUTECH), Master in Agricultural Economics (University of Ibadan) and a Master in Information Science (University of Ibadan). His research areas are information and ICT use for sectoral and national development; social informatics; intellectual capital management; knowledge management; information retrieval; information needs, sources and use; digital preservation and marketing; information and ICT literacy; information entrepreneur; economics of information; information society dynamics; cyber security; information systems; information ethics; research and development in information science; etc. He is also involved in providing training on research methods, data analysis, management consultancy, information retrieval skills, business plans and development strategy, among others. He also serves as reviewer to several local and international journals and as a research consultant. Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha is a Research Professor at the Department of Information Science, University of South Africa. Prof. Onyancha was the former Chair of the Department of Information Science, University of South Africa, from July 2011 to September 2015. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Information Science from Moi University Kenya, a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Zululand and a PhD in Library and Information Science from the University of Zululand. His areas of research include Informetrics/ Scientometrics/ Bibliometrics/ Webometrics/ Altmetrics, Information Resource Management (IRM), Management of Information Services, Knowledge management and organisation, and ICTs in LIS education and training.

354

About the Contributors

Gbolagade Oyelabi holds a BSc in Mathematics at the University of Ilorin, a Master of Science Degree in Mathematics from the University of Ibadan and PhD in Mathematics Education obtained from Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria. He was formerly the Head of Department of General Education, School of Education, Federal College of Education (Special), Akinmoorin, where he currently teaches. He teaches various courses in Mathematics and has published several books and book chapters for the students in tertiary institutions. Donald Rakemane is currently working as Records Manager in the Office of District Commissioner, Botswana. He holds a Master’s Degree Archives and Records Management and a Bachelors’ Degree in Library and Information Studies all obtained from University of Botswana. He has previously worked at Elsimate Institute as lecturer in archives and records management. He is a member of the Records and Information Association of Botswana (RIAB) as well a member of the Eastern and Southern Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA). His areas of research interest are: electronic records management, marketing of archival services, access to archival material, ICT applications in information centers and Cloud Computing. Thatayaone Segaetsho is a Conservator working in the University of Botswana Library Services. He holds Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Library and Information Studies obtained at University of Botswana in 2017, BSc (Chemistry)-University of Botswana (UB), Post Graduate Diploma (Conservation) and Masters of Arts (Conservation) both obtained at Camberwell College of Arts in the UK. Dr Segaetsho is currently the Chairperson International Council of Museums (ICOM) -Botswana, Secretariat (2019-Current) University of Botswana Sustainable Development Goals Hub (UB SDGs HUB) Committee, Secretariat of Africa China Research Group (ACRG) (June 2015-Current) at University of Botswana. He was a member of the Organizing Committee for The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA): Reference and Information Services Section (RISS) 2015 satellite meeting Gaborone. Dr Segaetsho is currently responsible for running a Preservation programme established in 2010 under Special Collections Unit in the UB-Library. His research interests are in the broad areas of preservation and conservation of archives and library materials, digital preservation and open access. Liah Shonhe is a PhD candidate at Dalian University of Technology in China. She holds a Master’s Degree in Archives and Records Management and a Bachelor’s Degree in Library and Information Studies all obtained from the University of Botswana. Liah has worked as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Library and Information Studies and at the Communication and Study Skills Unit at the University of Botswana. Her research interests are knowledge/information management, bibliometrics analysis, mobile technologies, ICTs & education, digital libraries, EDRMS, staff motivation, organizational culture, open data sharing, gender issues in information access and change management. She is currently the Vice-President of the Records and Information Association of Botswana (RIAB) and a member of the Botswana Library Association (BLA).

355

About the Contributors

Proscovia Svärd is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Science, Technology and Media, Department of Information Systems and Technology, Forum for Digitalization, Mid Sweden University. She is also a Research Fellow at the Department of Information Science, University of South Africa (Unisa) in Pretoria. She carried out her Post-doctoral Research at the School of Interdisciplinary Research and Postgraduate Studies, University of South Africa, between 2016-2017. She has worked as an Archivist at the Nordic Africa Research Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, Research Administrator for the Program on Post-Conflict Transition, the State and Civil Society, Project-Co-ordinator for a Nordic Documentation Project on the Liberation Struggles in Southern Africa (www.liberationafrica.se). She completed her PhD at the University of Amsterdam. She has a Licentiate Degree in Computer and Systems Sciences, BA and MA in Archives and Information Science from Mid Sweden University, Sweden and a BSc in Media and Information Science obtained from Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research interests include; enterprise content management, records management, information culture, e-government development, public sector information (PSI), long-term preservation of digital information, truth and reconciliation commissions and their documentation processes, the role of archives in enhancing accountability and transparency in government institutions, information access and the link to democracy and development.  She is the author of a book entitled “Enterprise Content Management, Records Management and Information Culture Amidst e-Government Development. Mass M. Tapfuma is a Post-doctoral fellow in the Information Studies Department, University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is also a lecturer at the National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe in the Department of Publishing Studies. She holds a BEd degree in Educational Administration Planning and Policy Studies from the Zimbabwe Open University, MSc degree in Library and Information Science from the National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe and PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her research areas include, Print Culture, Open Access publishing, sustainable book development, academic libraries and Indigenous knowledge systems.

356

357

Index

A Academic Libraries 8, 19, 39-40, 121, 126, 128, 132133, 136, 140, 143-144, 146, 150-151, 154-155, 190, 202, 222, 229, 237, 241, 280 Access 1-10, 12-39, 41-45, 47-69, 71-81, 83-85, 8795, 97-106, 109-126, 128-129, 131-132, 134148, 150, 153-179, 182-190, 194-208, 210-211, 213-226, 228-242, 244-246, 249, 251, 257-259, 261-263, 265-267, 269-291, 299, 301-303, 305 Access to Information 1-2, 5-9, 24, 37-38, 47, 50-52, 55, 59, 78-79, 81, 90, 92-94, 98, 103, 119-121, 126, 128, 131-132, 134-135, 172, 184, 222, 229, 245, 257, 267-280, 283 Adaptation Strategies 47 Adoption 15, 17, 37, 54-55, 57, 86, 114, 140, 144-147, 149, 154-155, 168, 174, 177, 187, 189, 191, 201, 221, 227-229, 234-241, 247, 275, 279 Africa 1, 3, 8-22, 28, 39, 43, 47-49, 51-52, 58, 60-61, 63-72, 74-76, 78, 100-101, 103-106, 109-114, 116, 122-124, 126, 128, 132-133, 135-136, 139-141, 144, 147, 156-168, 170-185, 188-191, 201, 205, 209-219, 221, 223, 228, 234, 236-237, 239-240, 242, 258, 260, 267-268, 271, 273-277, 279-283, 289-290, 304 Agriculture 47-49, 166, 211, 213, 244-247, 249-254, 256-266, 284, 286 Archives 3, 13-14, 17, 19, 32, 75, 79, 82, 85, 90-92, 95-98, 100-101, 103-106, 109-117, 119, 121, 128, 135-136, 157, 190, 201, 225, 229, 233, 241, 268, 276-277, 280-282

B Barrier 57, 161, 171, 182, 224-225, 234, 236, 273275, 283 Bibliometrics 244-245, 250-251, 262, 265-266 British Library 100-102, 105-106, 109-112, 116 Budapest Open Access Initiative 3, 19, 31, 41, 73, 159,

190, 210, 218, 240, 270

C Climate Change 23, 37, 47-63, 70, 99, 142, 212, 258 Climate Change Adaptation 47-49, 51-52, 54, 56-57, 59, 63 Climate Change Information 47-48, 50-53, 56, 58, 61, 63 COVID-19 40, 45, 166, 174, 177-178 Critical Information Literacy 81, 86, 98

D Data Repositories 10, 244, 257-259, 262, 265, 286, 289, 299, 304 Data Sharing 27, 135, 244-247, 249, 253, 257, 262, 276, 279, 284-292, 299, 301-305 Development 1, 3, 5-9, 12-26, 28-29, 32-35, 37-63, 65-79, 81-84, 87, 93-95, 97-99, 104-105, 114, 116, 120, 122-128, 132, 134, 136-140, 142, 146147, 150, 153-155, 160-166, 169-170, 172-182, 184-185, 189, 201, 205, 210-212, 217-218, 222, 224, 226, 228-231, 236-240, 245-247, 249-250, 257, 259-261, 263-268, 271, 273-274, 276-283, 285, 287, 302, 304-305 Digital Archive 118, 137 Digital Curation 118, 137, 286, 303, 305-306 Digital Divide 13, 36, 95, 105, 114, 147-148, 176, 222, 237, 242, 268, 274, 279, 281 Digital Preservation 118-119, 121-122, 124-138 Digital Repositories 139, 145, 226, 234 Digital Stewardship 118 Digitization of Archives 100, 104-105

E Economic Sustainability 5, 24, 38-39 E-Learning 10, 18, 40, 136, 161, 163, 167-168, 170,  

Index

178, 181-182 Endangered Archives 100-101, 105-106, 109-112, 114-117, 121, 136 Endangered Archives Programme 100-101, 105-106, 109-112, 115-116

Internet Access 13, 33, 47, 50, 105, 171-172, 200, 215, 275, 286

J

F

Journalist 48-60, 63 Journalists’ Internet Use 51-52

FAIR Principles 244, 247-249, 264

K

G

Knowledge 1-3, 5-10, 14-23, 27, 30-33, 38, 41, 44-45, 49-50, 52-56, 58-61, 63, 65-66, 68-72, 74, 78-87, 91, 93, 95, 98, 103, 113-114, 119-120, 122-123, 126, 131, 134-135, 137-138, 140, 142-143, 146148, 155-156, 161, 170, 172-174, 176, 180-182, 184-186, 188, 190, 200, 202, 205-208, 210-212, 214, 217-219, 222-224, 228, 230, 232-233, 236, 240, 246-247, 254, 262, 265, 267-284, 286-292, 299, 301-303 Knowledge Management 1-2, 19-20, 22-23, 156, 218 Knowledge-Based Economy 2, 8, 22, 44

Gold Open Access Model 65, 77 Governments 10, 13-14, 17-18, 25, 27, 30, 34-35, 56, 66, 71, 78, 80, 93, 113-114, 128, 134, 160, 166, 170, 175-176, 188, 190, 216, 238, 246-247, 258, 262, 275, 278, 286-287 Green Open Access Model 77

H Hybrid Open Access Model 77

I Information 1-9, 12-13, 15-20, 22, 24-27, 30-31, 33, 36-41, 47-52, 54-66, 68-69, 71-76, 78-105, 109110, 112-126, 128, 131-132, 134-138, 141-142, 146-147, 149, 154-161, 163, 171-173, 175, 179, 182, 184-185, 188-193, 199-205, 210-213, 216, 218-220, 222-224, 226, 228-231, 233, 235-242, 245-247, 249, 257-258, 263, 265, 267-283, 285289, 303-305 Information Access 18, 79, 83-84, 88-90, 95, 98, 184, 228 Information and Knowledge 1-3, 16-17, 22, 50, 54, 56, 65, 114, 131, 156, 184, 218, 222, 267-279, 283 Information Institutions 78-82, 87-89, 92-94, 98 Information Literacy 52, 58, 60, 76, 78-81, 83-99, 304 Information Seeking 47, 60, 62 Institutional Repositories 4, 6, 9, 13-14, 17, 40, 102, 118-119, 122, 134-136, 139-141, 145-147, 149, 153-158, 186, 189, 191, 201-202, 210, 218, 220, 225-226, 229-230, 232-234, 239-241, 274-275, 277, 281, 290, 304 Internet 2-3, 13-15, 17, 25, 30-31, 33, 36, 39-40, 42, 4748, 50-53, 55, 57-61, 63, 69, 71, 80, 87, 101-103, 105, 113, 116-117, 119-120, 141, 144, 159, 161, 168-173, 176, 182-183, 187, 195, 197, 199-200, 205-206, 213, 215, 217, 222-225, 228, 231-232, 235-238, 252, 267-268, 272-276, 278-279, 286 358

L Library 1-2, 4, 6, 10, 18-22, 24, 26, 33, 36, 39-41, 43-44, 75-76, 79, 83-84, 88-92, 94-95, 97-98, 100-106, 109-110, 112, 115-117, 119, 123-127, 129-131, 133-139, 144, 146, 149-151, 153-159, 176, 193, 201-202, 206, 210-211, 213, 219-221, 223, 226, 229, 231, 235-237, 239-242, 265-266, 268-269, 274, 277, 280, 282, 289-290, 303-305

M MooCs 24, 26-27, 29, 43, 163, 166-167, 170, 172, 174, 180

N Nigeria 2, 8, 15, 18, 24, 29, 34, 41, 43, 51, 57-58, 60, 63-64, 73, 75, 115, 124, 161, 163-165, 168, 170, 173, 175, 178, 180-181, 184-185, 189-192, 200-202, 212, 216, 221, 223, 226, 228, 230, 232, 234-238, 240-242, 275, 279, 281

O Online Information 22, 51, 59, 63, 94, 265 Open Access (OA) 6, 19, 24-25, 30, 40, 64-65, 117119, 139-141, 159, 183-184, 202, 205, 220, 257, 267-268

Index

Open Access Initiatives 9, 12, 17, 20, 104, 115, 123, 158, 183, 201-202, 204-205, 221-222, 224, 234, 239, 242, 279-280 Open Access Journals (OAJ) 220 Open Access Movement 3, 6, 9-10, 16-17, 30, 64, 242, 286 Open Access Opportunities 183, 195, 203 Open Access Publishing (OAP) 220 Open Access Repositories 10, 14-15, 17, 21, 65, 100, 114, 117, 147, 176, 189, 234, 303 Open and Distance Learning (ODL) 24-25, 28, 33, 39, 42, 45, 160-161 Open Data 6-7, 10, 12, 21, 24, 26-27, 42-43, 45, 123124, 132, 135-136, 244-254, 256-266, 277-278, 284, 286, 304-305 Open Educational Resources 6-7, 22, 28, 31, 35, 41, 44-45, 160-161, 173-174, 178-183 Open Educational Resources (Oers) 160 Open Universities 42, 160-161, 166, 170, 177, 179-182 Opportunity 8-9, 27-28, 34-35, 50, 65, 84, 96, 105, 109, 121, 132-134, 140-141, 146-147, 177, 183, 185-186, 191, 195, 198, 200, 204, 222, 224, 235237, 254, 277

P Peer Review 18, 58, 92, 120, 142-143, 148, 211-212, 216, 221, 236-237 Political Sustainability 24, 39, 41 Post-Truth 78-83, 86-89, 91-99 Predatory Open Access Journals 15, 64, 69-71, 77, 203 Predatory Publishing 15, 18, 20, 64, 66, 72-75, 77, 216-217 Preservation 2, 87, 93, 100-101, 104-105, 110-114, 117122, 124-138, 142, 146, 280, 285-286, 299, 302 Public Universities 139-141, 149-150, 153-154, 166168, 179, 201, 210, 218, 240 Publisher 4, 32-33, 65, 77, 97, 120, 127, 143, 151152, 155, 187, 207, 212-213, 216, 221, 228, 230, 268-269

Q Quality Education 6-7, 26, 28, 37-40, 64-67, 71, 77, 120, 134, 161, 172, 175, 177

R Research 1-4, 6-10, 13-21, 25-28, 30-33, 36, 38-47, 54, 59-62, 65-78, 80-81, 88-90, 92-93, 95-97, 100, 102-103, 105, 118-128, 131, 133-138, 140-

151, 153-159, 161, 166, 170-171, 173, 175-176, 178-181, 183-195, 197-208, 210-218, 220-232, 234-246, 248-254, 256-259, 261-269, 271-282, 284-306 Research Data 2, 10, 122-123, 135, 244, 251, 257-259, 262-263, 265, 284-296, 298-306 Research Data Management (RDM) 284-285 Research Dissemination 45, 135, 240 Research Impact 19, 102, 120-121, 125, 131, 201, 203, 227-228, 239-240, 243, 286 Research Students 183-185, 191-195, 197-198, 200, 204 Research Transformation 221-222, 226-229, 236, 238-239, 243 Research Visibility 139, 188

S Scholarly Communication 2-3, 7, 21-22, 25-26, 30, 40-41, 44-46, 75, 140-142, 144-145, 147-149, 154-156, 158-159, 184, 189, 198, 201-202, 205207, 210, 214, 216, 220, 222, 224, 226, 229, 240, 242, 305 Scholarly Publishing 14, 19, 21, 70, 73, 140-144, 147148, 154, 156-159, 184, 186, 190, 205, 212, 214, 216, 219, 224, 236, 272, 281-282 SDGs 1, 5-9, 15, 18, 20, 23-24, 26, 29, 37-38, 40, 42, 45, 49-50, 54, 56-57, 59, 64-72, 78-79, 95, 99, 120, 125, 128, 132, 134, 160-161, 164-165, 167, 177, 181, 245, 267, 287 Social Sustainability 5, 24, 38-39, 43, 46 Strategy 5, 8, 18, 45, 52, 65, 69, 71, 90, 103, 123, 125, 137, 146, 165, 167, 174, 277-278, 282-283 Sub-Saharan Africa 21, 48-49, 51, 61, 74, 157, 160-164, 166, 170-173, 175-178, 180, 182, 205, 209-217, 219, 275, 281 Sustainable Development 1-3, 5-9, 13, 16-18, 20-26, 28-29, 33, 35, 37-40, 42-61, 63-65, 67, 69, 73-79, 81, 93-95, 98-99, 120, 122, 128, 137, 140, 142, 155, 160-161, 164-165, 169-170, 176-178, 180182, 211, 222, 244-246, 257, 259-261, 267-268, 277, 283, 287, 304 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1, 5, 8-9, 20, 23-24, 26, 29, 37, 40, 42, 45, 49, 64, 78-79, 95, 99, 128, 160, 181, 245, 267, 287 Sustainable Information Practices 82, 99

T Tanzania journalists 47, 50-53 Technology 3, 9-10, 12-13, 30-31, 35, 40-41, 50-55, 359

Index

57, 60, 74-75, 78-81, 90, 93-95, 97, 103-104, 110-114, 118-119, 122-123, 125-126, 128, 130, 132-135, 137, 140, 146-147, 149, 157, 159, 161163, 166-167, 169-178, 182, 184-185, 188-190, 199-203, 212-213, 219, 222, 226, 236-240, 242, 244, 250, 257, 259, 263-264, 266, 268-269, 279, 282, 302, 305

U UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) 78-79, 95, 99 UN Sustainable Goals and Sweden 78 UNESCO 1, 6-7, 9-10, 14, 17, 22, 25, 28, 33-34, 3738, 45, 63-65, 67, 76, 79, 86, 95, 98, 102, 117, 123-124, 137, 161-163, 178-179, 181-182, 231, 234, 242, 278, 282

360

University libraries 139, 144-145, 147, 153, 156, 158-159, 274 University of Botswana 1, 24, 41-43, 100, 118, 121122, 124-130, 132-134, 136-137, 166-167, 181

W Web of Science 140-141, 159, 250

Z Zambia 48, 63, 115, 205, 211, 218, 273, 282, 284, 286-287, 302-303 Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (ZARI) 284 Zimbabwe 51, 139-142, 144, 147, 149, 153-155, 157, 273, 303