Introduction

The Centre National Pour la Recherche Scientifique et Technique (CNRST) - (National Center for Scientific and Technological Research) has joined SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) on behalf of Morocco in 2010 - the first African country. As of 2021, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists 27 Open Access journals.

Researchers from Morocco publish articles in international Open Access journals, for example, in 2013, 124 research articles have been published with BioMed Central – an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the Open Access publishing- articles highly viewed are from Hassan II University Hospital, University Military Hospital of Instruction, National Institute of Instruction, University Mohammed V Souissi, Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, El Ayachi hospital, University Hospital of Rabat-Sale. The BioMed Central support members of the Faculté de Médecine et Pharmacie - Université de Rabat, Casablanca, Morocco. The recent statistics on research articles are unavailable at this point.

As of March 2021, three OA repositories are registered in OpenDOAR. No mandates are registered in ROARMAP.

Enabling Environment

The Moroccan kingdom has embarked upon an ambitious initiative: Maroc Numéric 2013, a five-year national program designed to help the kingdom to bridge the digital divide to provide its citizens with high-speed Internet, bringing the administration closer to the needs of the user through an ambitious e-government programme, and encouraging the computerization of SMEs. The Moroccan government, stakeholders, and banking institutions signed an agreement to implement the strategy. Digitization of unique collections of Moroccan heritage such as manuscripts, monographs, maps, and Journals and magazines are already embarked.

According to statistics provided by ITU (International Telecommunication Union) on 2011, there are roughly, 13,213,000 million internet subscribers with a penetration rate of 41.3 percent. 2015 statistics show that 57.08 percent of the population were active users of the internet.

The National Library of Morocco has elaborated a national policy to preserve, promote and disseminate the Moroccan cultural heritage among the members of the national community and beyond, and promote research about this heritage. This initiative falls within the framework of Maroc Numéric 2013, a five-year national program designed to help Morocco bridge the digital divide, namely providing citizens with high-speed Internet, bringing the administration closer to the needs of the user through an ambitious e-government programme, and encouraging the computerization of SMEs. The Moroccan government, stakeholders, and banking institutions signed an agreement to implement the strategy.

Some of the open access projects undertaken in Morocco were:

e-Omed project - The Open Digital Space for the Mediterranean (Espace Numérique Ouvert pour la Méditerranée, e-Omed) project, initiated in March 2009 by the Moroccan Virtual Campus (MVC) and the Foundation Université Numérique Ingénierie et Technologie (UNIT) in France and supported by UNESCO. It aims to build a digital Library in countries across the Mediterranean sea through a comprehensive framework of educational resources and facilitating co-production, exchanges and localization of educational content and pedagogical practices in the region. (News here)

Majaliss - UNESCO’s Digital Library - the Digital Library of classical Arabic literature, offers a modern platform for sharing hundreds of freely classical works of Arabic literature and provides access through Internet and digital format to the cultural heritage of the Arab world. The Majaliss project is a result of regional cooperation between experts and academics in Arabic literature, IT researchers and local associations and It is sponsored by the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO).

Maghreb Virtual Science Library (MVSL) project with funding authorized by the U.S. Congress, the Civilian Research & Development Foundation (CRDF) is collaborating with Institut Marocain de I’Information Scientifique et Technique (IMIST) to enable convenient access to digital library resources, disseminate Moroccan research outcomes, and build new international collaborations.

Toubk@l, le catalogue national des thèses et mémoires (The national catalog of theses and dissertations)  is an initiative of the Institut Marocain de I’Information Scientifique et Technique (IMIST) with a national in scope, and is part of a government policy agenda to promote Moroccan research and development. The platform is the result of collaboration between different parties: Moroccan researchers, national higher education institutions and IMIST.

In October 2010, the EUR-OCEANS Council adopted an OA mandate that applies to its 29 member institutions in 15 countries. The 15 countries are Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Morocco, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. (Results of EUR-OCEANS vote on the adoption of an Open Access policy).

Key Organizations

Al Akhawayn University. Some of the current and planned projects include: digitization of Moroccan Heritag

Communication address: Avenue Hassan II, Ilframe, Morocco, Dr. Abdelhamid Lotfi, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Al Akhawayn University, Tel.: (+212) 0535862171, e-mail: A.Lotfi(at)aui.ma.

Bibliothèque Nationale du Royaume du Maroc,

Communication address: Avenue Ibn Khaldoun, Agdal Rabat, Tel.: (+212) 537771890, (+212) 537272300, Fax: (+212) 5 37 77 74 30.

Institut Marocain de I’Information Scientifique et Technique (IMIST)- initiated Toubk@l, le catalogue national des thèses et mémoires (The national catalog of theses and dissertations)

Communication address:, CNRST-IMIST Angle Allal Al Fassi et Avenue des FAR, Hay Ryad, BP 8027, 10102 Rabat, Morocco, Tel.: (+212) 05 37.56.99.00, Fax: (+212) 05 37.56.99.01

Events and Programs

●     Workshop sur la Création et l'Indexation des Revues Numériques, October 25, 2019 from 10am to 11am, Morocco, Organized by Bibliothèque Universitaire Mohammed Sekkat , Université Hassan II de Casablanca, Type: workshop

●     Workshop sur l'édition numérique, October 25, 2019 all day, Morocco, Organized by Lrhoul Hane, Type: atelier, de, formation

●     Critères d'indexation des Revues en Libre Accès dans le DOAJ ( Directory of Open Access Journals), October 24, 2019 from 11am to 12pm, Morocco, Organized by IMIST- CNRST, Type: workshop

●     4-5 May, 2015: "Open Data, Big Data: what values, what issues?" 5th Conference held in Rabat, Morocco

●     14-15 May, 2012:  GrandIR took part in the 'Atélier sur les archives ouvertes' organized in Monastir, Tunisia, by EIFL for promotion and dissemination of Open Access and Open Archives in the Maghreb countries. This workshop was held in the framework of the European Tempus ISTeMag Project for improving access to Scientific and Technical Information in the Maghreb universities. Led by the Université Libre de Bruxelles, this project features twelve universities and research centres in Tunisie, Algeria and Morocco among its partners. As a consequence, the Open Archives workshop in Monastir was well attended by over 30 Maghrebi librarians, developers, research officers, project coordinators and policymakers from all three countries.

●     In November of 2010, UNESCO’s International Basic Sciences Programme (IBSP) sponsored a weeklong School on Digital Libraries in Rabat, Morocco, which included hands-on training for librarians and technology specialists involved in implementing Open Access repositories.

●     The UNESCO Office in Rabat held an international workshop entitled “Implementing a Maghreb Digital Library for Education, Science & Culture'' Rabat, Morocco from 25th to 27th of January, 2007, with major funding from UNESCO, US-NSF and the Moroccan Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research.

Publications

●      2014: "Open Access: Enhancing the Visibility of Moroccan Medical Research" by Hanae Lrhoul, Ahmed Bachr, Othman Benammar and Byadi Bouchra

●      Lotfi, Abdelhamid. "Towards a Moroccan Digital Library" White Paper submitted for the Digital Library for the Maghreb Workshop held in Washington, DC, January 24-25, 2011

●      Naim, Kamran and Charles Dunlap, "Maghreb Virtual Science Library: Solving National Challenges To Meet Regional Needs", White Paper submitted for the Digital Library for the Maghreb Workshop Held in Washington, DC, January 24-25, 2011.

●      Benaissa, N., and S. Belouali. 2020. “Open Access Publishing and Ethical Issues in the Moroccan Context.” Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering 684 LNEE:541–47. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-53187-4_59.

●      El Bairi, K., M. Amrani, and S. Afqir. 2017. “The Human Cancer Pathology Atlas: An Open-Access Source for More than 900,000 Kaplan-Meier Plots and 5 Million Cancer Tissue Images.” Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy 96:1438–39. doi: 10.1016/j.biopha.2017.10.063.

●      Fehrenbach, U., F. Helten, D. Scherer, and H. Rhinane. 2015. Open Access to Knowledge.

●      Mahyoub, S., H. Rhinane, A. Fadil, M. Mansour, M. Saleh, and F. Al-Nahmi. 2020. “Using of Open Access Remote Sensing Data in Google Earth Engine Platform for Mapping Built-up Area in Marrakech City, Morocco.” in Proceedings - 2020 IEEE International Conference of Moroccan Geomatics, MORGEO 2020.

●      Taj, A. M., J. C. Sombria, A. Gaga, A. Abouhilal, and A. Malaoui. 2021. “Conception and Implementation of an IoT System for Remote Practical Works in Open Access University’s Electronic Laboratories.” International Journal of Online and Biomedical Engineering 17(2):19–36. doi: 10.3991/ijoe.v17i02.19755.