1. Open Access to Research in Malawi Open Access Advocacy Workshop, 29 th October 2009 Kondwani Wella KCN College Librarian, eIFL- Coordinator

2. Outline Introduction Cases Open access IR in Malawi Challenges Opportunities Way forward

3. Introduction Malawi has 2 major universities; several upcoming universities Malawi has 4 major Research Stations (6 sub-stations) Several commissioned research going on –All these generate interesting findings, –Published in international journals –Locked away in offices

4. Opening thoughts!! Is OPEN necessarily ACCESSIBLE? Do information retrieval tools matter at all Is the World Wide Web open?

5. Case 1: Article Published by Bunda Researchers

6. When accessed in Malawi Asked to buy!!!

7. Case 2: National Herbarium Book chapter published in “Poverty in Africa”

8. The cost of the book

9. Case 3: Conference papers Not searchable

10. Full-text from WASHTED website

11. Case 4: Theses and Dissertations Not searchable

13. What do these cases tell us? Malawi has embraced open access? With internet anyone can manage information? Researchers no longer trust librarians? Librarians are not doing their job? There is no collaboration between librarians and researchers?

14. questions??? Why should we buy articles published in Malawi? Is the ‘world’ unfair or we are being unfair to ourselves?

15. Open Access Repositories in Malawi

16. Open access repositories in Malawi Bunda College – Greenstone repository of Malawiana Chancellor College – DSpace Malawiana College of Medicine – DSpace and Greenstone repository Mzuzu University – Greenstone repository MALICO – DATAD theses and dissertations repository

17. Challenges Copyright/Intellectual property law Faculty and researcher buy-in?? Institutional support? Collaboration, partnerships (not there yet) Infrastructure (connectivity) – being addressed by MALICO, MAREN and UbuntuNet Alliance

18. Opportunities Librarians in Malawi have re-trained/trained to embrace new paradigms Open source solutions available Government support for tertiary education, research, science and technology Initiatives to improve connectivity (MALICO, MAREN, Ubuntunet Alliance) Malawi Library and Information Consortium

19. Way forward Strengthen collaboration (Librarians, researchers, policy makers, ICT professionals) Look for funding for capital equipment Strengthen MALICO (resources, secretariat) Build strong partnership between MALICO, MAREN, NRCM etc Build a national repository

20. Questions & Discussion kwella@kcn.unima.mw