1. How Open Access Supports Funding & Copyright Challenges
KGOMOTSO RADIJENG
KNOWLEDGE COMMONS MANAGER
Botswana Institute for Technology Research and Innovation (BITRI)

2. Collection of Data SADC region DOAR and questionnaire
5 institutions from 4 countries responded

3. Collection of Data Questions
How many Open Access databases/ resources are linked in your library website?
Your institution also has a repository; What impact has acceding to OA had on licensing? Has there been any reduction in costs?
How is the usage of OA resources in your repository?
Have your reached the point where you can say you no longer need commercial databases? If not what do you think needs to be done to get there?
What efforts do you think need to be put in place for the nation to go more open access in terms of researchers and academics publishing OA, open data strategies and the use/adoption of available open access resources?

4. Definition of Open Access
Budapest Open Access Initiative (2001) defines open access as: “free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute and/or print, with the possibility to search or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself”

5. Demand for OA
Open access is driven mainly by the need for more access to knowledge
To curb copyright and licensing restrictions
To minimize costs of access to knowledge
To bring the world together in terms of equality in access to knowledge
Public interest – research is usually funded with public funds but ends up in the hands of commercial entities who then sell it back to the public.
Demand by funders to share funded content – so as to avoid funding of similar or the same projects when one could have informed the other

6. Why is OA important Rude awakening for Botswana
Call by government for institutions to share resources
Difficult – licensing terms often do not allow for such arrangements
Small user group – so consortia will not necessarily cut cost significantly
Reality of risk of discontinuing some of our subscriptions due to lack of funds.
Libraries are the first to go in budget cuts even though they support research and learning
The value of open access is apparent

7. Institutional repositories in SADC countries
Country
Number of open repositories
Total number of entries (where the data was collected)
Botswana 3
University of Botswana 1459
Botho University 86
Lesotho 1
National University of Lesotho 1236
Zimbabwe 11
Zimbabwe Open university 320
University of Zimbabwe 3066
Zambia
University of Zambia 4949
Tanzania -
Mozambique
Namibia 2
University of Namibia162
Namibia University of Science and Technology 515
South Africa 39

8. Usage statistics
University of Botswana (2010) – downloads - 1,895,120; Item views - 2,876,007
University of Zambia searches and visits
Botho University download is 338 with 16 citation and the lowest is 12 download with 2 citation
University of Zimbabwe (2005) – page views
National University Lesotho (2014) – page views

9. Linked OA resources University of Zambia - 77
Botho University – 12 (10 open access E-book directories  and 12 open access journals). E-book collection project where they select relevant and good quality open access e-books every semester and add to the library collection, so far 152 OA books indexed
University of Lesotho – 20
University of Zimbabwe - 11

10. Impact of OA
What impact has acceding to OA had on licensing? Has there been any reduction in costs?
OA has assisted a lot in terms of Quantity and not necessarily on cost reduction
OA has helped us free some money for other needs in the library because we are able to access equally good content at no cost at all but we have not reached the point where we can do away with commercial databases
We are still far from seeing a reduction in subscription spending

11. Impact of OA
Can we do away with commercial databases, if not what can be done?
Not yet:
Need for more education and advocacy to researchers and relevant stakeholders, that OA is not synonymous to predatory and is not inferior to commercial publishing.
We still need commercial databases given their "integrity“, we have not reached there yet as far as OA content quality is concerned.
There are some reputable publishers like Elsevier who we cannot do away with for now. These commercial publishers need to increase the amount of open access content they offer.
Commercial database have a wider subject coverage compared to what is available on OA.
Academics still demand access to material in subscription journals.

12. Impact of OA
What efforts do you think needs to be put in place for the nation to go more open access?
Advocacy – with the relevant stakeholders
The library fraternity needs to work with other stakeholders to raise awareness on benefits of OA and OA resources available as well as advocating for a national open access policy.

13. Challenges for the uptake of Open Access
Infrastructure – slow internet connectivity.
However, in Botswana internet connectivity is increasing - BOCRA Annual Report 2017 ( )
Mobile broadband penetration increased from 1,360,236 in March 2016 to 1,404,065 in March an increase of 3% (population 2,333,201)
ADSL subscriptions between March 2016 and March increased by 68.4% from 35,394 subscriptions to 59,590 subscriptions.
Public libraries provide free wifi

14. Challenges for the uptake of Open Access
Lack of national policy framework
Limited understanding of open access by researchers and academics
Limited knowledge on copyright issues by researchers, academics and librarians
Slow uptake by institutions and nations - Leadership listening but not hearing
No burning desires – there does not seem to be enough motivation to push for change
Not much interest by researchers to publish OA and also to publish in their institutional repositories (could this be influenced by institutional policy? Institutions insist on publishing in journals with high impact factor)

15. What to do to go more OA
Policy structures – Government and Institutional
Leadership support - Change of attitudes towards OA publishing
Researchers and academics attitudes toward OA publishing
Connect more to existing OA resources; it will take a while for SADC to self sustain on OA therefore, in the mean time we need to utilize what is already available.
Commercial publishers such as Elservier have also started publishing OA, maybe this will eventually quell the myth that OA is substandard
Governments must invest in good ICT infrastructures
Continuous advocacy

16. Conclusion
OA can reduce subscription costs for libraries but in SADC this is yet to be realised
OA can also alleviate challenges posed by license restrictions as free access means no restrictions
Librarians need to advocate more and educate their users and leaders on the value of OA
More impact studies should be done to demonstrate the OA value for money

17. References
Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority.
Chalabi Lydia and Dahmane Madjid. “Open Access in developing countries: African Open Archives.” Information services & use, 31(3-4): , July 2011
Directory of Open Access Repositories.
Muneja Paul S. and Ndenje-Sichalwe Esther. “Institutional Repository Initiatives in Tanzania: Opportunities and Challenges.” University of Dar es Salaam Journals Vol 11(2), Available at:
Carroll Michael W. “Why Full Open Access Matters.” Available at:

18. THANK YOU