Introduction

Open Access is a new and developing area in Tajikistan. There are no OA journals from the country indexed in DOAJ. However, researchers from Tajikistan are found to publish their articles in International Open Access Journals. For example, 09 OA articles have been published with BioMed Central- an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the Open Access publishing model – by researchers from the Botanical Institute of the Tajik Academy of Sciences, the Republican Centre of Tropical Diseases, the Institute of Zoology and Parasitology, the Tajik-Swiss Health Sector Reform and Family Medicine Support Project and the Republican Centre for Tuberculosis Control among others.

Enabling Environment

Government and educational institutes of Tajikistan are actively engaged in creating an Open Access compliant environment for the present and future local academic community.  One recent example of such continuing advocacy events for Open Access was held on 11 December 2014, when the Technological University of Tajikistan held the first conference “OpenCon 2014 Dushanbe” organized by Information and Education e-journal “ICT4D” with the assistance and support of the Center for Information and Communication Technologies in Dushanbe, AISP and IT companies of Tajikistan, as well as by other event partners. More than 50 students and young researchers participated in the event to discuss issues related to Open Access and Open Data in Tajikistan.

Open Access Policies

Currently, there are no OA policies registered in the Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Archiving Policies (ROARMAP).

Events and Programs

Major Projects and Initiatives

• The Association of University Libraries Tajikistan is a 16-member organization representing university and institutional libraries. It has a partnership with eIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) and INASP. Both INASP and EIFL offer access to resources, training and software to Tajikistan.
• In 2004, INASP organized a seminar at the Academy of Sciences; INASP also negotiates with international publishers for free national licences for selected e-journals and e-books for Tajikistan.
• eIFL has also provided the Tajikistan Association of University Libraries with access to journals and databases. For example, a recent eIFL case study carried out in Tajikistan regarding local library digitization projects for improved literature access revealed that the Rare Book Digital Collections by the Central Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences Tajikistan is an ongoing digitization program that serves to improve electronic access to scientific research. The project included material from four different rare book collections, including a “Language and People'' collection that digitized the 1899 published “Russian-Tajik Dictionary (which was the first linguistic Russian-Tajik Dictionary in Tajik linguistic history).

Other OA Related Activities

2001-2002: Soros Foundation  provided complete scientific journals (hard copy) for Tajikistan libraries.

2005 – 2006: The International Association for the Promotion of Cooperation with Scientists from the New Independent States (NIS) of the Former Soviet Union  (INTAS) executed a project aiming at providing the academic community access to full-text scientific journals.

Since 2006 Tajikistan Academy of Sciences Library has hosted a web link to DOAJ, enabling Open Access to thousands of OA journals. The Academy library users also have access to EBSCO resources via the American Corner (located in the Academy Library). The Academy library also offers access to hard copies of 48 Russian scientific journals.