Open access and open science in Tanzania

EIFL Open Access Coordinator for Tanzania, Paul Muneja, left, and colleagues at the STICE2023 Conference organized by the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) with assistance from the Ministry of Education.

EIFL began supporting open access in Tanzania in 2009, working with our partner library consortium, the Consortium of Tanzania Universities and Research Libraries (COTUL).

In 2009, COTUL initiated a series of open access institutional repository sensitization workshops that took place at seven universities. These workshops raised awareness about open access and the role of institutional repositories in increasing the availability and visibility of institutional research output. They led to keen interest in establishing institutional repositories, and soon universities across the country, including University of Dar es Salaam, Mzumbe University, Aga Khan University-Institute for Educational Development, State University of Zanzibar and Sokoine University, had established institutional repositories and were drafting repository guidelines and policies.

Between 2013 and 2021 EIFL received funding from SPIDER (the Swedish Programme for ICT in Developing Regions DSV, Department of Computer and System Sciences, Stockholm University) to work with COTUL on projects to expand open access and open science in Tanzania.

Timeline

2009 - Ongoing

MAIN ACTIVITIES

Raising awareness about open access and open science at Tanzanian universities and research institutions, through workshops and campaigns.
Organizing open access and open science advocacy meetings with leadership and management of universities and research institutions, and government officials.
Setting up open access and open science policy development task forces; supporting the drafting and adoption of policies.
Building technical capacity to develop and launch open access repositories and open access journals.
Auditing and improving open science infrastructure.

Achievements

Built understanding of open access and open science of faculty, librarians, research administrators, researchers and students.

Increased number of institutional open access policies

Six universities adopted institutional open access policies (Ifakara Health Institute; Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences; Mzumbe University; Open University Tanzania; Sokoine University of Agriculture; State University of Zanzibar).
Initiated discussion with the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), about drafting a national open science policy.

Increased availability and visibility of Tanzanian research output

17 institutional open access repositories were established.
The number of items available in 17 institutional open access repositories doubled.
Through COSTECH, improved workflows of the national open access repository which harvests content from institutional repositories.

“Today, researchers in Tanzania are now relying on open access content in repositories, especially when it comes to comparing what has been already researched to avoid duplication of efforts. Very importantly repository content is being used for similarity checks when students submit their theses and dissertations or assignments. Whenever there is a shortage of e-resources, repositories have been reliable sources for accessing local content and also to see what universities are producing.” - Paul Muneja, Librarian at the University of Dar Es Salaam and EIFL Country and Open Access Coordinator in Tanzania.

Built institutional capacity to manage and maintain open access repositories and journals

Increased knowledge and technical capacity of librarians and IT officers in areas including DSpace repository set-up and enhancements, policy administration, metadata standards and managing journal submissions workflows.
Strengthened relationships between IT personnel and library teams.
Improved existing repositories to increase visibility and discoverability of content, enhance user experiences, and ensure that back-up procedures and disaster recovery plans are in place.
- Repositories enabled persistent identifiers, which play a key role in discoverability, accessibility and reproducibility of research.
- They enabled OAI-PMH, which allows communication between servers globally and interoperability with other repositories to exchange metadata of content.
- Repositories registered with the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR).
- Adapted interfaces to improve the user experience on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Built a base for ongoing technical support for institutional repositories