EIFL and partners, Kenya Library & Information Services Consortium (KLISC), Consortium for Tanzania Universities and Research Libraries (COTUL) and Consortium of Uganda University Libraries (CUUL), have launched a two-year project titled ‘Open access policy development in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to make more digital content available’.

The project is funded by Spider, the Swedish Programme for ICT in Developing Regions, located at DSV, Department of Computer and System Sciences which is a part of Stockholm University.

Researchers in Eastern Africa are producing important research that can contribute to development and scholarship. However, much of this is not available online and cannot be read.

There are 64 open access (OA) repositories in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and there are dozens of OA journals being published. Major stakeholders - researchers and students, research administrators, policy makers and librarians - are aware of OA, and there is already a skilled staff to manage OA journals and repositories. But growth of content in the repositories is slow.

​PROJECT TO WORK WITH 16 UNIVERSITIES

To make more digital content openly available, the project will work with 16 research intensive universities in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to develop and adopt open access policies that are needed to speed up depositing of content into repositories.

The project runs until 31 March 2018, and will include the following activities:

• Setting up institutional OA policy task forces;
• Running workshops, webinars and other knowledge sharing and capacity building events for OA advocates, OA repository managers and OA journal publishers;
• Drafting and adopting OA policies; and
• Improving OA institutional repositories and OA journal platforms.

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This project builds on achievements of EIFL’s previous project in the three countries.