On September 13 and 14, key stakeholders in Nigerian science and scholarly communities meet to chart a course for increased awareness of the open science infrastructure, practices, and cultural transformation needed to catalyse the institutional changes required to amplify the contribution of researchers to national development and the global knowledge economy.
The central aim of the 2nd edition of the LIBSENSE Open Science Symposium in Nigeria is to enhance the infrastructure and avenues for publishing and disseminating Nigerian research. This includes a specific emphasis on elevating its visibility and impact in alignment with the broader goals of participating organisations such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). These organisations are instrumental in promoting open access, ensuring publication quality and bolstering the infrastructure necessary for global accessibility of academic works.
The Conference of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVCNU), the Association of University Librarians in Nigerian Universities (AULNU) and the Eko-Konnect Research and Education Initiative will spearhead the collaborative two-day effort aimed at a unified approach to exploit open science to advance research and education in Nigeria.
The CVCNU will leverage its leadership role within this stakeholder mix to facilitate the awareness and adoption of open science infrastructures and approaches for the visibility of Nigerian scholarship.
Increasing and improving research visibility in our institutions of higher learning can no longer be left to individual researchers alone; a community of actors cutting across several operating verticals is now vital to such a move. This multi-stakeholder engagement aims to promote this kind of thought”, Prof. Yakubu Ochefu, Sec-Gen, CVCNU Nigeria.
The event will cover critical open science matters, including policy awareness, an open research commons and feature break-out sessions on capacity building, infrastructure, funding and governance.
In his remarks ahead of the Workshop, Prof. Jibril Alhassan, the Chair for AULNU, which has colocated its bi-annual meeting with the symposium, said his library body is looking to “identify bottlenecks militating against the effective functioning of institutional repositories in Nigeria to address the problems and ensure their’ interoperability. The overarching aim is to facilitate the gradual integration of these repositories at a global level.”
For his part, the CEO of Eko-Konnect, Owen Iyoha, expressed the hope that the Symposium will enlighten the research and education community to open science best practices, leading to increased buy-in.
Register for the LIBSENSE Open Science Symposium here.
