Ms. Irene Onyancha

Chief, Library and Information Management ServicesICT, Science and Technology Division (ISTD)

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

The Role of United Nation Economic Commission For Africa

on Open Access in Africa

UNECA

ECA

OutlineContext – ECA’s vision and programmes Focus on ICT, Science and Technology Division (ISTD)Open Access activities at ECA

Open Access Publishing – ECA Institutional Repository• IR project • Lessons Learnt

Development of E-learning & Open Educational ResourcesOpen Access to GeoData & information

Facilitating Open Access & ICT development to member statesAccess Scientific and Socio-economic Information in Africa (ASKIA) programme

Lessons Learnt

ECA

ECA’s mandate & vision

The Economic Commission of Africa:established 1958one of the UN Secretariat's five regional commissions 5 Sub-Regional Offices (SROs)

to promote economic and social development, foster intra-regional integration, and promote international cooperation for Africa's development

to promote economic and social development, foster intra-regional integration, and promote international cooperation for Africa's development

ECA

ECA’s Work Programme

•Regional Integration, Trade and Infrastructure •Meeting the MDGs•Promote good governance & popular participation •ICTs, Science and Technology for Development•Statistics and Statistical Development

Focus on:

Responsible for:• United Nations programme on “harnessing information for development”;• Is an integrated information service:

• to promote accessibility and availability of quality information on African development • To assist member states build national capacities in the use of ICTs for accelerated and sustainable development

ICT, S&TDivision

ECA

ICT, Science & Technology Division (ISTD)..Work programme in 4 strategic areas of intervention:

Promoting ICTs for development and implementing the African Information Society Initiative (AISI);Promoting Science and Technology for development;Strengthening Geographic Information for sustainable developmentKnowledge, Library and Information Management services

ISTD provides these services at 2 levels:to the Commissionto member states

Open Access activities are integrated across the ITSD work programme

Open Access activities are integrated across the ITSD work programme

ECA

Publishing at ECA:

ECA’s knowledge is presented in: Flagship publicationsConference proceedings, Resolutions & Speeches Technical publications, policy briefs, mission reports, annual reports working papers other grey literature

all which outline important research or decisions that have been made on the economic and social developmental aspects in Africa

ECA

The status of ECA Publications 2 years AgoThe status of ECA Publications 2 years Ago

Divisional Collections

Catalogued collection

Electronic copies

Staff computers

ECA Web sites

Library shelves

Library basement

ECA publications

ECA

Open Access Publishing at ECA: The ECA Institutional Repository

Established in 2009:..is an electronic publishing means of collecting, managing and preserving the institutional memory of ECA. It also offerstimely dissemination of this wealth of knowledge outlining important socio- economic research and decisions in Africa….. -Green Road to Open Access -

ECA IR

ECA

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR

Defining the projectImplementing the IR projectPopulating the IRAccessing Items in the IRLessons Learnt

The golden road to Open Access (OA) is to publish in Gold OA journals (free for the user online).

The green road to OA is to publish in conventional (non-OA) journals and to make the articles OA (free for the user online)

by self-archiving them in the author's institutional repository.

ECA

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR

Defining the Institutional Repository ProjectBuild on project 2007Project documents: Concept note, proposal and Business PlanFunding

Preliminary activitiesSetting up a project teamContracting a Service Provider for the IR platform developmentPurchase of

• equipment servers, computers & scanners• storage and archival materials

ECA

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR

Project activities & work flowCataloging, indexing & reviewing, scanning ECA publications collection development

• Printed publication • Digital collection• Institutional policies promoting OA at ECA

Online platform development• Software selection & development of systems requirement• Customization

– Controlled Vocabularies (UNBIS thesaurus & SC, Geo terms, authors, serials)

– AGRIS AP metadata (submission & export)• New modules (MQM, CUA and Document Streaming)

ECA

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR

Importing MARC21 metadata from the ILS A crosswalk between MARC21 and AGRIS AP (Qualified DC)Development import tool

Communities and Collections development12 communities and 21 collection based on the ECA’s work programme 1 community and 5 collections for ECA sub-regional offices

Uploading digital filesAll digital files saved with the accession number of the metadata records17,000 metadata records & 10,000 files uploaded

ECA

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR

Available at http://repository.uneca.org

ECA

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR

ECA

Accessing content in the ECA IR

ECA

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR

Searching Simple SearchAdvanced search using the AGRIS AP fieldsSubject search

BrowsingDspace features (title, date & Communities and collections) Subject keyword browse (UNBIS thesaurus)Thematic collections of ECA conferences & Flagship publications

HarvestingOAI-PMH (simple DC)

Expose metadata using AGRIS AP for specialized harvesters

ECA

Open Access Publishing at ECA: IR impact

IR access statistics/month Top 10 countries

ECA

Other Open Access activities

Open Educations Resources & E-learning

Open Access to Geo-information

ECA

Open Access Education Resources (OER)

& E-learning Academy of ICT Essentials for Government Leaders in Africa

8 Modules on ICT4D topics including; ICT policies, e-government, network security, ICT trends:

The Linkage between ICT Applications and Development ICT for Development Policy, Process and Governance e-Government Applications Network and Information Security and Privacy etc.

3 new modules are planned as follows: ICTs and Regional Integration (Module 9), ICT for Disaster Risk Reduction (Module 10) Climate Change and ICTs (Module 11)

ECA

Open Access Resources: OER & E-learning

African e-learning initiative (http://www.uneca.org/elearnafrica

ECA

Open Access publishing at ECA: GeoData

Online Metadata Clearinghouse Registry ServicesECA offers “country spaces” for hosting of metadata clearinghouse nodes at http://geoinfo.uneca.org:8080/geonetwork

Development of interoperability standards for datasets through regional and international consultations to promote open geodata architecture for mutual and remote access to geodata and geo services. http://www.uneca.org/istd/default.htm

Development of data sharing policiesPolicy & guidelines development during the biennium 2012-2013 period

Setting up policies at Regional (ARSDI) and National (NSDI) levels

ECA

Support to member states

Dual role as regional arm of the UN & part of the regional institutional landscape

Provides a vantage position to harness resources and make unique contribution to assist member States' efforts to

address their development challenges

ECA

Modalities and services to support its member States:

Policy analysis and advocacy formulation of national ICT policies, commonly known as NICIs

• Over 43 countries had adopted their NICIs by end of 2010, • On going implementation of sectoral strategies in key priority

sectors such as e-government, education, health

facilitate implementation of the WSIS Geneva declaration on Open Access

Enhancing Partnerships based on comparative advantage and pooling of resources

• Ex. Govt of Finland: Technology in Government in Africa Awards• Carnegie Foundation & IFLA for ICADLA conference in 2009

ECA

Technical Assistanceon-demand regional advisory servicestraining workshops and seminars

fellowship and internship programmes

Communication and Knowledge sharing CoP platforms: Teamworks knowledge sharing platform in partnership with UNDP Sharing Best Practices

Statutory meetings Committee on Development Information Science and Technology-CODIST

• KLIS reinstated as a Committee of CODIST• Open Access workshop pre-event on • OPEN ACCESS Africa 2013?????

ECA

ASKIA Programme Promoting Open Access to

member statesAccess to Scientific/Socio-economic Information in Africa

(ASKIA)

defines a framework for bringing together a variety of scientific and socio-economic and associated information to the African scientific community;

Identifies 5 strategic areas of intervention working in synergy

Initial project cost of $370k. ECA library has raised $50k and seeking further funding

ECA

ASKIA Online portal

• a one stop shop to all knowledge types from/on Africa

• contextualized access to information services

• Biblios, maps, news, stat. data etc.

Strategic intervention 1

Using a Web Ccontent Management System (Web 2) Hosting

ASKIA Federated Search Engine, Online Communities of Practice (CoP) for Library and information Managers across the continent; E-Forums; RSS feeds for news and events on science and socio-economic development issues from the continent; Directories of African scientists and researchers etc.; Databases on Open source tools and Information Management standards and; the ASKIA blog to promote exchange of best practices.

ECA

Different competing online sources Bioline, BMC,DOAJ, PMC, AJOL, Scirus, Research4Life, Google etc.

The federates search engine is a one stop window facilitating searching across different knowledge bases, including Open Access and commercial databases & Journals source for scientific and socio-economic, content on and from Africa generated abroad in the region

Facilitate discovery and collation and contextual rendering of content including bibliographies, geo-data, news, blogs, statistical data,

ASKIA Federated Search

•facilitate the collation of different knowledge types on/from Africa

•enable discovery, access to free and subscribed to information resources

•through a single search

Strategic intervention 2

ECA

Ex. Federated Search Engine

ECA

Ex. Contextual rendering of results

ECA

Strategic intervention 3

Repository on African maps & geodata

•formerly ECA Map Reference Section

•access to thousands of maps at the ECA Library and other Nationals Libraries

• Values added services e.g. theses and dissertations

Country profiles: news, maps, biblos etc.

• Mirrors of ECA IR at UN Depository Libraries

Strategic intervention 4

Knowledge hub & information services

New emerging technologies to deliver services:e.g Social media and mobile technology proliferation in AfricaBetter connectivity with the Fibre cable around Africa completed

ECA

• IR development Pilot for 10 libraries • partnership with BioMed Central

• partnerships with donors & DP • fellowship and internships

programme • Scanning equipments and

workstations

Strengthening member states capacities to document local knowledge

Strategic intervention 5

Why the Open Access Package by Biomed Central:Piloting in science & technology related public institutionsRelatively high cost of infrastructure development to set up repositoriesLack of required skills and technical know-how to set-up and maintain the IRHosted solution offers immediate availability and visibility of IRConcentrate on populating the IR

Other models of technical assistance for other institutions

ECA

DATAD/ASKIA

Maps & Geo Data

ScientificDatabases

University A

University B

E-Journals

Community Corner •Members information•E-forums•Blog- Best practices •RSS feeds

Information Resources on the Internet

ASKIA: http://www.uneca.org/askia

Service A

University Theses

Tools & standards

WWW

E-Learning

E-Registries

CoPs

Service B

Country Specific Maps, Media, Documents

E-Directories

Library OPACs

Research4Life

ASKIA Online Platform

ASKIAFederated

Search

Data Harvester

Service C

Media stories on African development Digital Maps

of Africa

Service D

ECA

Lessons Learnt Need to share best practices on IR development between member states libraries;Need to bring coherence in various Open Access activities across the continent;Development partners need to assess comparative advantage and pool resources to support OA activities;Poor access to ECA knowledge by member states due to connectivity problems – replication of IR at SROs & UN DL;Need to incorporate sustainability strategies in project planning and implementation;Due to limited funding, proper project planning is critical in the implementation of OA activities in the African Libraries

ECA

THANK YOU!!!

ECA

Special Thanks

BioMed CentralDirector, ISTD: Ms. Aida Opoku-MensahMr. Abebe Chakol