Stimulating Open Access repositories among African universities
The Open Access Repositories Capacity Strengthening Programme (OA-IRCSP) is a joint initiative of the Association of African Universities (AAU) headquatered in Ghana, and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in the Netherlands. The aim of this initiative is to stimulate and strengthen the capacity of establishing intellectual output repositories based on open access principles among African universities.
Objectives & Target Audience
The primary purpose of the programme is to provide a platform for experts and information stakeholders to effectively share knowledge, skills and resources for strengthening capacity in scholarly communication, particularly among academic institutions in Africa.
- The programme entails the development of an Institutional Repository Toolkit [http://www.ir-africa.info/toolkit] and accompanying training modules.
- Training workshops are conducted for targeted audiences on repository establishment and management.
- The target audience of the programme are academic and other institutions in Africa that provide development-related information for researchers, students or development professionals.
Toolkit: roadmap to establish a digital repository
The toolkit provides a roadmap for establishing and operating a digital repository in your institution. It is a compilation of concepts, tools and links to resources, all organized in logical steps reflecting the key stages in a repository development project.
The content is presented in such a way that you are introduced to concepts and approaches in combination with links for further reading.
Register and participate in developing toolkit
Please register as a user on the www.ir-africa website. Registered members are encouraged to actively participate in developing toolkit content by posting comments on the articles or sending suggestions!
Ongoing Activity
The programme is designed to be an ongoing activity, i.e. the toolkit will be provided in customizable versions to accomodate different needs of academic and other institutions. In the future, the toolkit will e.g. include information on digitization techniques to address the issue of making older, printed research output also available in digital format.
