Introduction

Researchers from Rwanda publish articles in international Open Access journals, for example, 46 articles have been published with BioMed Central – an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the Open Access publishing model – and among them there are highly accessed articles by researchers from Butare University Teaching Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, National University of Rwanda, German Development Cooperation (GIZ), Health Programme, National Malaria Control Programme/Malaria Unit, Center for Treatment and Research on AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis and other Epidemics, Ministry of Health, Programme National Intégré de Lutte contre le Paludisme, RTI International, Rwanda-Zambia HIV-1 Research Group, Rwinkwavu Hospital, Partners in Health, Université Nationale du Rwanda.

In 2013, 56 articles were published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Open Access journals: PLoS ONE , PLoS Medicine and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

As of June 2021, six OA journals published in Rwanda are indexed in the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD) : Rwandan journal of education , Rwanda medical journal , Rwanda journal of social and applied sciences and Rwanda journal of health sciences . In addition to these four journals, AJOL currently also lists Rwanda Journal .

OMICS Group International currently lists 4 OA articles published in Rwanda. OMICS Group International was established in 2007 with the sole aim of making the information in Sciences and Technology "Open Access" and making it freely and openly accessible to research scholars, students, libraries, educational institutes, research centers and other OA stakeholders. OMICS Group also organizes 300 international conferences annually across the globe, where knowledge transfer takes place through debates, round table discussions, poster présentations, workshops, symposia and exhibitions.

International OA Policy registries such as ROARMAP indicate the need to establish and implement OA policies at the national as well as institutional levels in order to accelerate the OA movement in Rwanda and ensure that all publicly funded research in Rwanda becomes freely and openly available. The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) currently lists one OA repository from Rwanda: University of Rwanda Repository . The repository is built to save, share and search the institution's digital research materials, including an increasing number of conference papers, images, peer-reviewed scholarly articles, pre-prints, technical reports, thèses, working papers, course notes and more. The interface is in English.

Events and Programs

10 May, 2013: Rwanda National Institute of Statistics (NISR) launched NADA (National Data Archive) at the "Open Access to Statistical Data" Workshop held in Kigali. The workshop was attended by the Director General of NISR, data users, and Representatives from UN Rwanda, African Development Bank and OECD. NADA was presented as the Platform for disseminating Survey and census microdata. During the same workshop, NISR also launched Tools for disseminating time-series data, including Statistical Data Portal and StatAlert . NISR is also working to further promote the use of NADA through hosting microdata outreach workshops and engaging more users.

Publications

Byiringiro, F. 2013. “Open Access, Knowledge Sharing and Sustainable Scholarly Communication: ‘A New Core of Research Development.’” Rwanda Medical Journal 70(2):25–26.
Iyandemye, J., and M. P. Thomas. 2019. “Low Income Countries Have the Highest Percentages of Open Access Publication: A Systematic Computational Analysis of the Biomedical Literature.” PLoS ONE 14(7). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220229 .