Under one umbrella – the LIBSENSE initiative, research and education networks (RENs) and libraries are collaboratively as well as individually intensifying efforts to establish approaches to design and influence policies, infrastructure and services to bolster open science in their respective regions and on the continent.
The West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN), EIFL and COAR will organise a LIBSENSE workshop on June 3, 2020. on “Co-designing policies, repository infrastructures and services and strengthening open science communities in Africa.” The workshop is part of the 15th International Open Repositories Conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa, which is now taking place virtually.
Aimed at repository managers, advocates and other open access and open science stakeholders, the topics for discussion are open access, open science policies and repositories: what works and what doesn’t; repository infrastructure and services: how to build cohesiveness across layers of local, national and regional services; and communities of practice: how to strengthen open science communities in Africa.
African participants will share experiences and lessons learned, discuss how to best design effective Open Access and Research Data Management policies, and how to progress their adoption and implementation. They will also co-design the guiding principles for institutional repositories to follow to build services on top of repositories and cohesiveness across local, national, and regional repository services.
With breakout groups in Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese, the participants will develop a roadmap for strengthening open science communities in Africa.
Visit https://wacren.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xaogzIHXT0mISwQ1S6M9lA to register now.
About LIBSENSE
The Libraries Support for Embedding NRENs services and e-Infrastructure (LIBSENSE) initiative was launched in 2016 to bring the research and education networks (RENs) and academic library communities together to build sustainable and relevant approaches for open access and open science in Africa. LIBSENSE creates an avenue for different stakeholder communities to work together to define priority activities, share knowledge, and develop relevant services together. It is building communities of practice and strengthening local and national services to support open science and research in Africa.
The West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) leads the LIBSENSE initiative in collaboration with sister regional African RENs (ASREN and UbuntuNet Alliance). Other participating partners include several national RENs, libraries, library associations, universities, and research communities in Africa, in conjunction with COAR, EIFL, University of Sheffield, National Institute of Informatics (Japan), GEANT, and OpenAIRE.
LIBSENSE activities aimed at open science have received support from the AfricaConnect3 project, co-funded by the European Union.
