Open science’s riches still largely unexploited

The advantages of the open science movement in democratising education, strengthening the continental education and science systems, enhancing economic development, and addressing the many challenges of Africa are well-recognised.

In fact, harnessing digital technologies is critical for Africa not only in adapting to this useful global paradigm but also in making the continent a beneficiary of the evolving Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

There are examples of open science initiatives in Africa but in general they appear to be limited and very weak compared to the rest of the world.

Africa’s limited participation has been heavily influenced by factors related to inadequate infrastructure (unreliable power supply, slow and unstable connectivity, and low internet bandwidth), poor financing, lack of research databases and journals, lack of qualified human resources and data management capacities.

Africa’s open science landscape has also been beset by a lack of political commitment, absence of enabling policies and strategies, incentives and limited intra-African and global collaboration.

The last decade has seen a variety of efforts promoting open science movement within the Ethiopian higher education sector. This includes efforts directed at the creation of infrastructure and platforms, open access publishing, and setting out appropriate policy directions.

However, the full realisation of many of the individual initiatives still awaits meaningful interventions at all levels, including higher education institutions.

Infrastructure and platforms

The earliest platform created to support the open science movement in Ethiopia is arguably the Ethiopian Education and Research Network (EthERNet) which was initiated in 2001 as part of a national capacity building programme that included projects such as SchoolNet and WoredaNet. The objective was to provide connectivity and specialised applications for educational institutes and for local governments.

Through the ministry of science and higher education (MoSHE), EthERNet provides significant support for public and private higher education institutions to share information and resources and make available their outputs.

Similar efforts have also led to the establishment of a national repository platform known as the National Digital Repository of Ethiopia (NADRE) and open institutional repositories at universities. The nation’s flagship Addis Ababa University has been at the forefront of such efforts by launching the first institutional open access repository for theses and dissertations in 2007.

However, many other universities are still trailing behind. Until 2020 only about 13 public universities have developed institutional repositories, and only four institutional repositories are said to be openly available owing to policy and technical issues.

Open access publishing

A national platform using Open Journal Systems (OJS) was launched in 2014 with the objective of improving the visibility and accessibility of Ethiopian journals and delivering free content to users. Known as the Ethiopian Journals Online (EJOL), the project was first launched with six journals.

The launch of this project was accompanied by various awareness efforts, workshops and training directed at relevant stakeholders who had to be introduced to the basics of open access and open research data, open access publishing and Open Journal Systems. However, achievements remain limited.

Currently EJOL hosts 34 journals from 10 universities and institutions with 228 issues and 1,144 full text articles for download. Apart from the limited number of freely accessible articles, the number of journals that use the EJOL platform is below 50% of all available journals in the country.

Another prominent platform that Ethiopian journals use is the African Journals Online (AJOL) that provides an online system for accessing African-published, open, and subscription-based, peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

AJOL currently hosts 526 journals from 32 countries, covering a wide array of academic disciplines. It accommodates 256 open access journals, and 180,186 full-text articles, of which 120,750 are open access. Among the 32 countries that are featured on AJOL, Ethiopia ranks third with its 30 journals, next to Nigeria (222 journals) and South Africa (96), and closely followed by Kenya (29) and Ghana (28).

Despite this encouraging move, the current level of participation still requires significant improvement given the fact that the number of journals using the AJOL platform is still below 50% of the available journals in the country. What is more, from those participating only a handful of journals offer full open and free access to their articles.

Policy frameworks

In June 2019, Ethiopia succeeded in developing a national open access policy issued by MoSHE making it the first country on the continent to have a national, ministerial policy. The policy requires universities under MoSHE to ensure that all publications resulting from publicly-funded research and conducted by staff and students at these universities are deposited in the National Digital Repository of Ethiopia or NADRE and are made openly accessible.

MoSHE provides support to NADRE as the aggregated national repository. Individual universities must develop institutional repositories, ensure that their libraries make such resources available, inform and advise authors about the available options and in general encourage open science practices.

In addition, the policy identifies ‘openness’ as one major criteria for assessment and evaluation of research proposals. However, policy development at the levels of institutions is still progressing at snail’s pace. Among 51 public universities only four have so far developed their own open access policies.

The 2020 national ICT Policy for higher education and technical and vocational education and training institutions also identifies Open Educational Resources (OER) as one of the 13 policy focus areas identified in enhancing teaching learning, research, and community service activities in the sector.

The policy recognises the advantages of OER in offering inclusive opportunities and access to high-quality education in teaching and learning and research, and encourages the use, creation, and publication of OERs across the sector. It also encourages mechanisms to support the development, acquisition, and adaptation of quality OER in teaching learning and research.

A rare example of similar initiatives at continental level, Ethiopia’s recently launched Digital Ethiopia 2025 Plan and its sectoral companion, Digital Skills Country Action Plan 2030 for higher education and technical and vocational education and training institutions, are expected to enhance the further growth of the open science movement by creating the necessary environment and policy direction for the growth of the movement in the higher education sector.

Addressing inhibitors and challenges

Although the open science movement could be regarded as one major means of enhancing research and research-publishing practices in Africa, much remains to be desired in terms of exploiting its potential.

The foregoing depicts that despite the encouraging policy directions and some practical efforts both at national and sectoral levels, the performance of Ethiopian higher education as regards the open science movement still leaves much to be desired.

In terms of long-term strategies Ethiopia needs to take advantage by strengthening its initiatives as regards improved political commitment, mainstreaming, and promoting open access policies, development of clear strategies, fostering and creating incentive schemes, developing the needed infrastructure, and removing barriers to open science.

Another area of concern is the limited participation of universities in the design of policies and strategies and availing their outputs as per the dictates of the new policy direction on open access. This is suggestive of the need for a more organised effort toward creating improved awareness and planned operations.

With an encouraging policy environment and increasing traction, the open science movement is gaining, Ethiopian higher education institutions should hasten to seize the new opportunities created.

In fact, universities should be at the forefront of efforts in supporting the new initiatives and creating innovative ways of enhancing the movement.

This article is an expanded version of the article ‘Partaking in the global open science movement: Efforts and challenges in Ethiopian higher education’ that appeared in the journal IAU Horizons (May 2021, 26:7, pp24-25.)

Wondwosen Tamrat is an associate professor and founding president of St Mary’s University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a collaborating scholar of the Programme for Research on Private Higher Education at the State University of New York at Albany, United States, and coordinator of the private higher education sub-cluster of the Continental Education Strategy for Africa. He may be reached at preswond@smuc.edu.et or wondwosen@gmail.com.