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Africa
 Ghana

Introduction

The Association of African Universities (AAU), Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana (CARLIGH), INASP and EIFL have been spearheading Open Access initiatives among the academic and researcher community in Ghana and Africa as a whole. AAU and CARLIGH have held the first Open Access workshop in 2009. In July 2011, AAU and CARLIGH held another Open Access Institutional Repository Advocacy workshop (with financial support from EIFL) as a follow up to the first one and to affirm the designation of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) institutional repository as the national Open Access repository.

There are at least three Open Access journals in Ghana: Annals of Tropical Medicine & Public Health published by The Africa Health Research Organization (Ghana) and Medknow Publications (India), West African Journal of Applied Ecology published by the Ecological Laboratory Unit of the University of Ghana and The Ghana Medical Journal published by Ghana Medical Association. The journal of Medical and Biomedical Sciences published in Ghana was recently added to DOAJ (2012).

Researchers from Ghana publish articles in international Open Access journals, for example 184 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 are highly accessed (most viewed) articles published by researchers from Agogo Presbyterian Hospital, Dodowa Health Research Centre, Ghana Health Service, HealthLink Consulting, Hohoe Hospital, International Water Management Institute (West Africa), Keta District Health Management Team, Kintampo Health Research Centre, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, KNUST, Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine, Navrongo Health Research Centre, Northern Region Malaria Project, Population Council, Regent University College of Science and Technology, Tema General Hospital, University of Ghana, University for Development Studies, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and WHO Country Office.

202 articles have been published in Public Library of Science (PLoS) international Open Access journals: PLoS ONE, PLoS Medicine, PLoS Genetics and  PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

As of June 2021, there are 6 OA repositories registered in OpenDOAR.

Enabling Environment

Open Access movement in Ghana is gaining grounds with KNUST, AAU and CARLIGH leading the crusade. Currently CARLIGH have been able to set up Open Access institutional repository platforms in five public Universities and one research institution with qualified personnel and state of the art facilities in place. This therefore has enhanced the image of the country as far as Open Access initiatives are concerned. It worthy to add that all Open Access repositories platforms have support from their parent institutions. The institutions in Ghana are also been urged to sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities and some have already signed it. It is therefore not surprising that BioMed Central, in partnership with Computer Aid International is bringing together researchers, librarians and funding bodies to discuss the benefits of Open Access publishing in an African context (Open Access Africa 2011 conference) from 25 - 26 October 2011 to KNUST. 

Some universities and research institutions might not be creating awareness about the implementation of Open Access institutional repositories and Open Access policies to enable faculty members and staff to mandatory deposit their research papers. This hinders the progress of the Open Access repository developments in the country. There is therefore the need for the university authorities and the country as a whole, to provide the necessary confidence in the Open Access institutional repository developments and adopt Open Access policies to enable researchers and faculty members contribute their research works to repositories and also ensure long-term administrative attention span and commitment to the preservation and maintenance of the Open Access repositories.

There should be more training online about open access for publishers, as well support for student OA advocates who could help to educate fellow students about open access. Liaising with faculty heads and lecturers is also needed for further support.

As of June 2021, there is one institutional OA policy registered in ROARMAP. Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology has a mandatory submission policy. The policy, which was approved by the University, mandates that students, researchers and faculty members deposit their research work, including conference papers, lecture notes and anything of academic and research use into the institutional repository. This will help populate the Open Access repository with the full texts of their research work.

The Freedom of Information bill with the objective of making it mandatory for government agencies to make information freely available to the general public, is in the advanced stage in Parliament and would soon pass into law.

Key Organizations

The vision of CARLIGH is to be an excellent organization in providing recorded knowledge in all formats, to teaching, learning and research activities in Ghana. CARLIGH is governed by a Constitution which was approved by members and came into force in August 2004. The mission of CARLIGH is to employ collective information resources, available technology, and staff capabilities to improve teaching, learning and research including life long learning, in member institutions and by extension in Ghana. 

AAU is the apex organization and forum for consultation, exchange of information and co-operation among institutions of higher learning in Africa. It represents the voice of higher education in Africa on regional and international bodies and supports networking by institutions of higher education in teaching, research, information exchange and dissemination. The AAU, whose headquarters is in Accra, Ghana, was founded in Rabat, Morocco on November 12, 1967, following recommendations made at an earlier conference organized by the UNESCO in Antananarivo, Madagascar in September 1962 for the formation of such an apex organization. The main objectives of the Association are to promote cooperation among higher education institutions in Africa; collect, classify and disseminate information on higher education and research, particularly in Africa; facilitate cooperation between its members and the international academic world; study and publicize and advocate the educational and related needs of African higher education institutions; and facilitate the exchange of information and experience among members of the academic community, and promote best practices. 

The Africa Health Research Organization publishes (together with Medknow Publications) an OA journal Annals of Tropical Medicine & Public Health that provides the forum for exchange of ideas for health professional interested in tropical medicine, public health and social science. Contact: Abubakar Yaro, Editor-In-Chief, PO Box AN6731, Accra North, Ghana, editor(at)atmph.org.

The Ghana Medical Journal is a peer-reviewed OA journal publishing quality manuscripts on all aspects of health, health care and the medical sciences. Contact: David Ofori-Adjei, the Editor-in-Chief, P.O.Box 1596, Accra, Ghana, Tel.: 233-21-670510/665457, Fax: 233-21-670511, editor(at)ghanamedj.org.

The West African Journal of Applied Ecology is an OA journal that has been established by the Ecological Laboratory Unit of the University of Ghana. Contact: Prof S. K. A. Danso, Editor-In-Chief, Director of Ecolab Institution, University of Ghana, Box LG 59, Legon, Accra, Tel.: 233-21-512533, 233-21-500394, Fax: 233-21-512533 dansosk(at)yahoo.co.uk.

Events and Programs

The Infrastructure Sharing & Open Access Working Group of the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), led by Estelle Akofio-Sowah, country manager for Google in Ghana is examining the use of open access infrastructure in Ghana to develop necessary recommendations for policy that will guide the increased roll out of open access infrastructure and its effective management.  

Following the A4AI- Ghana Coalition's quarterly meeting, A4AI designed a half-day workshop in 2014, which focused on infrastructure sharing and open access. Facilitators included representatives of the World Bank and Airtel Nigeria. The workshop examined open access and infrastructure sharing in theory and in practice, including effective infrastructure sharing practices in other countries such as Nigeria.

In January 2012, the Ghana Open Data Initiative (GODI) was launched by the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) in partnership with the Web Foundation (WF), to make Government of Ghana data available to the public for re-use. The project aims to create a sustainable Open Data ecosystem for Ghana. GODI was launched with a 100 data sets categorized as political, legal, organizational, technical, social or economic. The vision of GODI is to develop an open data community involving the Government of Ghana, civil society organizations, industry, academia, citizenry etc.

2012: International  Research Journals is a brand new open-access publisher based in Accra, Ghana.

Every year, KNUST the only institution with a live Open Access institutional repository celebrates the International Open Access Week. This takes place in the university community in October and some of the activities are aired on some major radio stations in the country. Activities related to Open Access include: debates, workshops on Open Access Institutional Repository platforms, seminars and many others. During this time, academic and research community at the University and in Ghana gather to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access institutional repositories; share ideas with colleagues; and inspire wider participation in establishing Open Access institutional repositories as a norm in promoting scholarship and research. Currently the awareness of Open Access is growing due to the yearly celebrated Open Access week.

INASP works with CSIR-INSTI (Council for Scientific and industrial Research- Institute for Scientific and Technological Information) to embed research and proposal writing skills courses into their course curricula. INASP is also working with GINKS (Ghana Information network for Knowledge Sharing) to develop a course on EIPM to be delivered to civil servants at the civil service training center.

Many students are unable to finish their first degrees due to the high cost of higher education in Ghana. Many universities in Ghana lacks access to rich online educational materials to provide an alternative learning module for students who can not afford the standard university education. This poster focuses on how we are using IndieWeb building blocks to help students and educators to create Open Educational resources. Our program provides free personal websites to students and educators to curate and create OERs on their own websites, the community then write or remix these resources to develop collections of community-approved OER. Sadik Shahadu is an inspiring open leader who works to build open educational practices in Ghana. He is the co-founder of Global Open Initiative, a Ghanaian non-profit organization working to promote open data, open access, and the use of open educational resources (OER) across Africa. He is a researcher, a Wikipedian, and a Mozilla Open Leaders X fellow.

23 July, 2014: "Strategies, Tools and Techniques  For Communicating Research to Different Audiences".

28 May, 2014: Workshop "Information Literacy into Curriculum".

25 March, 2014: Systems librarian training Workshop.

EIFL organized the first Institutional Repositories and Open Access workshop in Ghana on 11-13 June 2007 in Accra.

AAU in collaboration with the CARLIGH, EIFL and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT, the Netherlands) organised a two day workshop on Open Access Institutional Repositories Advocacy on the 18-19 July 2011. The workshop was held within the frames of national Open Access Institutional Repositories Advocacy campaign being carried out by CARLIGH, AAU and KIT. The workshop was to enhance the visibility and to improve accessibility to the work of African scholars both within and outside of the continent, and to facilitate the development of relevant copyright regulations. It was attended by about 60 educational representatives from the African Continent. The workshop helped to create an awareness of Open Access institutional repositories and their benefits to researchers, institutions and the various countries. It also significantly boosted the economic, social and educational benefits of making research output available without financial, legal and technical barriers. Furthermore the meeting served as a platform for participants to discuss the policies for the establishment and smooth running of Open Access institutional repositories.

The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has adopted a university-wide open educational resources policy with Creative Commons Attribution as the default license for university material. KNUST’s “Policy for Development and Use of Open Educational Resources (OER)” outlines the purpose, role, and process of OER production at the university, and specifically states that, “Materials produced which do not indicate any specific conditions for sharing will automatically be considered to have been shared under a Creative Commons Attribution license.” KNUST is a partner institution in the African Health OER Network and works closely with the University of Michigan Medical School and Dental School to develop and distribute health OER. KNUST OER is hosted at http://web.knust.edu.gh/oer but is also duplicated for use at the Open.Michigan and OER Africa sites (from Creative Commons news).

Other OA related publications / events:

 

  • 01 December 2014: "Opportunities and Roadblocks: Forging Ahead in Ghana" posted on www.a4ai.org

  • 14 November, 2014: "Open Access in Ghana- A Medical Student Perspective" by Kam Arkinstall published in Biomed Central Blog.

 Open Science and Open Data Related Events

July 2016: Forum on Open Data, Open Science and Open Access to Agricultural Information in Africa in the context of Sustainable Development Goals.

The forum was spearheaded by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN  and was organized in collaboration with:

  • The Institute for Scientific and Technological Information (INSTI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

  • Association of African Universities (AAU)

  • Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA)

  • College of Basic and Applied Sciences (CBAS) of the University of Ghana (UG)

  • Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) Initiative

  • Research4Life

It drew together senior level researchers and officers from a mixture of institutions in Ghana to talk about some of the challenges to OA to agricultural information in Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The forum as a dialogue platform for stakeholders to share knowledge on institutional and national initiatives in Ghana aimed at enhancing the visibility, access and use of agricultural data and science.

Publications

  • Anane-Sarpong, E., T. Wangmo, C. L. Ward, O. Sankoh, M. Tanner, and B. S. Elger. 2018. “‘You Cannot Collect Data Using Your Own Resources and Put It on Open Access’: Perspectives from Africa about Public Health Data-Sharing.” Developing World Bioethics 18(4):394–405. doi: 10.1111/dewb.12159.

  • Atiso, K., D. Adkins, and E. Borteye Mensah. 2017. “Knowledge of Open Access Journals Among Research Scientists in Ghana.” Serials Librarian 73(3–4):327–37. doi: 10.1080/0361526X.2017.1376730.

  • Awuku, Y. A., N. A. Awuku, J. I. Lovi, Y. A. Nartey, and T. E. Abbew. 2018. “Wooden Toothpick Partially Embedded in the Gastric Antrum: A Case Report of an Unusual Finding in Open Access Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.” Ghana Medical Journal 52(2):112–14. doi: 10.4314/gmj.v52i2.8.

  • Gboney, W. K. 2005. “Open Access Transmission System Pricing in a Restructured Power Sector: A Case Study of Ghana.” Pp. 1091–97 in Proceedings of the ASME Power Conference, 2005. Vol. PART B.

  • Martin-Yeboah, E., A. A. Alemna, and E. Adjei. 2018. “Marketing Open Access Institutional Repositories in Ghana: Context and Prospects.” Library Philosophy and Practice 2018.

  • Tambo, E., G. Madjou, C. Khayeka-Wandabwa, E. N. Tekwu, O. A. Olalubi, N. Midzi, L. Bengyella, A. A. Adedeji, and J. Y. Ngogang. 2016. “Can Free Open Access Resources Strengthen Knowledge-Based Emerging Public Health Priorities, Policies and Programs in Africa? [Version 1; Referees: 2 Approved].” F1000Research 5. doi: 10.12688/F1000RESEARCH.8662.1.