Sections
 
Arab States
 Algeria

Introduction

Open Access is a recent movement in Algeria; however, there has already been positive and steady feedback on it from a variety of stakeholders; librarians, academics and researchers - all support and participate in the OA movement. As of 2021, there are 19 Open Access digital repositories registered in OpenDOAR.

Moreover, there are 26 Open Access peer reviewed journals published in Algeria which are indexed in DOAJ. Algerian researchers publish articles in international OA periodicals. For instance, in 2013, there were 43 research articles published with BioMed Central – an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine), pioneer in the OA publishing model, and among them most viewed articles published by researchers from: Agro-Veterinary and Biology, Blida University. The more recent statistics on articles published are not available at this moment.

Enabling Environment

There are 50 Universities, 20 University centers, 10 research centers, 20 écoles nationales supérieures, 10 écoles supérieures, 11 écoles normales supérieures et 2 annexes universitaires in Algeria as stated by the Ministry of High Education and Scientific Research. Universities provide access to Internet and digital libraries to faculty, staff and students. The scientific research and the technological development are managed by the Ministry of High Education and Scientific Research (Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique (MESRS)), through a national Research Administration, which has in charge the management of the National Research fund.

The Algerian government is concerned with more vivid participation in the increasingly globalized knowledge economy and taking necessary steps in this direction. Rapid proliferation of professional periodicals and ICT infrastructure in the region helps the research and academic communities' to access information and knowledge freely or at a lower cost. The country’s Internet broadband capacity is expected to double by the end of this year due to the expansion of mobile Internet connectivity. Changes like these were enabled by many global efforts such as UNESCO through building digital libraries.

According to the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), the Internet usage in Algeria grew from 50,000 users in the year 2000 to about 4,700,000 million users in 2011 and has continued to grow since then. As of 2015 the percentage of Algeria population that now have access to the Internet either from public internet cafes, workplace or their homes is 38.2 percent. Lack of information on Open Access, the concept is new and not popularized enough this implementation is not rapid, lack of clear institutional and national policy on Open Access, difficulty of securing long-term funding and getting commitments from more institutions to join the open access community.

Key Organizations

Centre de Recherche sur L'information Scientifique et Technique (CERIST). Current and planned projects include: Directory of Libraries in Algeria - a directory that lists the libraries and documentation centers in Algeria, and Algerian Portal of University Libraries. Prof. Nadjib BADACHE, Director (CEO) at CERIST.

Communication address: 05, Rue des 3 fréres aissou, Ben Aknoun, Alger. Tel.: (+213) 21912136, Fax: (+213) 21912126; e-mail: badache(at)cerist.dz.

Division Recherche en Sciences de l'information (DRIS) at the Centre de Recherche sur L'information Scientifique et Technique (CERIST), Dr. DAHMANE Madjid, Director of DRIS and responsible for Algerian Scientific Journals. Key success factors include: increased no. of submissions (due to Open Access) that significantly improved visibility, quality and readability of the journals as well encouraging authors to submit their papers.

Project website: http://www.webreview.dz/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=161

Communication address: 03 Rue des frères Aissou Ben Aknoun, 16030 Alger, Tel ./Fax: +213 21912126, e-mail: zd.tsirec.liam(at)enamhadm

Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique . With many Initiatives as setting ArchivAlg - an institutional and multidisciplinary open archive for the scientific production of CERIST researchers.

Communication address: 11 chemin Doudou Mokhtar Ben Aknoun Alger - Algerie – Tel. (213) 21-91-23-23 / (213) 21-91-17-17

Events and Programs

  • The University of Constantine -2 in Algeria participates in International Open Access week 2017. One day workshop on Open Access will be organized on Tuesday October 31.

  • 4th International Conference on Open Access, 24-26 Oct 2020, Library Science and documentation Institute. Constantine, Algeria - Constantine (Algeria)

One of the most important OA journal promoters in Algeria at this time is DGRSDT (National Council of Scientific Research and Technology of Algeria). Since 2015, the DGRSDT has organised workshops and supports Algerian editors in the implementation of open science. Many of those editors don’t have the experience of ensuring the quality and the transparency of the editorial process. Out of 359 Algerian scientific journals listed by the DGRSDT, only 7 are indexed in the DOAJ (or 1.95 %). Most of the scientific journals, supported via institutional memberships, don’t have a website and are only published on paper.