In 2011-2013 EIFL provided financial support to 34 projects that implemented national and institutional open access (OA) advocacy campaigns to reach out to research communities and OA publishing initiatives.

Through small grants and support from their own institutions, the projects engaged in a wide variety of campaigns and activities, including: holding workshops, creating websites, building institutional OA repositories, creating e-learning courses, and implementing OA publishing platforms.

The case studies resulting from the projects reveal impressive first-time achievements and will help increase the availability of research literature in developing and transition countries.

Learn more about the key achievements for this institutional OA campaign in Zimbabwe below. You can access the full case study (strategies, tactics and tools, success stories and lessons learnt) by clicking on the download button.

About the project in Zimbabwe

The University of Zimbabwe has a student population of approximately 12,000 students and the University Library serves all these students and also the academic staff and support staff, estimated at 2000. A significant number of the students are coming from the rural areas which are disadvantaged communities.

The Mission of the University is “Enabling our clients and customers to make meaningful contributions to sustainable development in Zimbabwe. To this end we provide high quality education, training and advisory services on a needs oriented basis. We guarantee the above by maintaining excellence in Teaching, Learning, Research and Service to the community”.

In line with the above, and being the engine and heart for scholarly information, the University of Zimbabwe Libraries is very clear of its pivotal role in the university structure. The Library’s mission statement is explicit in its acknowledgement of the role it is expected to play, that is “Provide access to scholarly information resources required to meet the learning, teaching and research needs of the University of Zimbabwe”.

OA activities at the University of Zimbabwe Libraries are coordinated through an OA Initiatives Committee and it reports to the Library Management Committee. Its members are drawn from Sub-Librarians, Faculty Librarians and Assistant Librarians.

The University library has over the years taken a lead in embracing OA issues and also in making its contents available through OA. The UZ Library OA Initiatives Committee realized that advocacy was needed to ensure adoption of a campus wide OA policy.

Key achievements

• The Vice Chancellor has agreed that the UZ Electronic Theses and Dissertation Database should be openly available since UZ is now a member of Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD).
• The university community has fully embraced the OA concept.
• Over 300 participants, from 6 of the 10 Faculties at UZ, attended OA workshops.
• After attending an OA seminar, faculty librarians felt confident enough to approach researchers and advocate for OA.
• An OA policy is being written, a draft should be available by June 2012.
• OA resources portal has been included on the UZ Library e-resources web page.
• Several researchers saw an increase in usage and global visibility of the articles deposited in the UZ OA repository (e.g. Mr. E. Chapanga's, Faculty of Arts OA champion person).