1st National Conference organized by Botswana Library Consortium (BLC)

24-25 October 2012, Botswana (venue to be announced soon)

Open Access (OA) Week is organized to raise awareness, celebrate the progress, share benefits and experiences about providing free online access to research results and their use for socio-economic development. To commemorate the Open Access Week, this year the OA Sub-Committee of the Botswana Library Consortium (BLC) is organizing a two-day conference 24-25 October 2012. The Conference intends to bring together universities, research institutes, colleges, government departments, media, societal publishers, funding agencies, and libraries to share ideas on open-access publishing, policies, access to information, economic benefits and advocacy.

The conference organizers are calling for abstracts on a range of sub-themes, but not limited to:

• Open Access and its promotion at institutional and national level
• Open Access advocacy, adoption and promotion in Africa
• Open Access and socio-economic development in Africa
• Open Access repositories at institutional and national level
• Open Access publishing services and software
• Open Access and knowledge management
• Electronic theses and dissertations in an Open Access environment
• Impact of Open Access on digital scholarship
• Copyright or Intellectual property rights in an Open Access environment
• New approaches to conduct and communicate research and alternative publication methods
• Open Access initiatives and benefits in Africa
• Open Access policies & strategies at institutional and national level
• Models of financially sustained funding programs for Open Access
• Role of information professionals in Open access movement
• Infrastructure and resources for Open Access in Africa
• The future of Open Access in Africa
• Building collaborative partnerships for Open Access drives in Africa

Dates

• 30th June 2012: Submission of abstracts
• 28th July 2012: Notification of acceptance of abstracts
• 25th August 2012: Submissions of full papers
• 8th September 2012: Notification of acceptance of full papers