User:Filippo Morsiani/Open access in Jordan

Open Access in Jordan; There are currently nine Open Access journals are indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). These include the International Arab Journal of e-Technology, International Arab Journal of e-Technology, International Journal of ACM Jordan, International Journal of Advances in Soft Computing and Its Applications, International Journal of Open Problems in Computer Science and Mathematics, Jordan Journal of Biological Sciences, Jordan Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and Smile Dental Journal.

Researchers from Jordan publish articles in international OA periodicals. For instance, in 2013, there have been 79 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 Department of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Jordan University of Science and Technology, World Health Organization/Jordan Country Office, Department of Pathology and Animal Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Department of Pediatric Surgery, Jordan University Hospital.

Currently, there are no OA mandates registered in ROARMAP.

Enabling Environment
Open Access movement in Jordan is gaining grounds with Academic and libraries. However, implementation has been limited by lack of policy at institution level. The Internet usage in Jordan has grown from 127,300 users in the year 2000 to about 1,741,900 million users in 2011. This implies that the current percentage of population that now have access to the Internet either from public internet cafes, workplace or their homes is 26.8 percent has been limited by lack of policy at institution level.

Major Projects/Initiatives
The Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA) is an organization that promotes Open Content and Open Access in Jordan- will launch a web repository for Arabic Open Educational Resources (OER) Platform with the support of Creative Commons as one of the winning projects of its Catalyst Grants. The platform provides free sharing of online educational resources. A joint collaboration between communities in Jordan and Lebanon will also result in the launch of CC Jordan and CC Lebanon websites soon.

Meedan- a non-profit social technology company which aims to increase dialogue and exchange between Arabic and English speakers released the first publicly available open licensed Arabic/English Translation Memory. The new translation memory, called MeedanMemory, is a translation memory that is focused on Arabic and English to be released under an Open Access license, contains around one million words in aligned Arabic and English sentence pairs released under the Open Database License, which permits the use, copy and distribution of the translation memory, produce work using it, and to modify, transform and build upon the translation memory. It can be downloaded at: Meedan-Memory

The International Arab Journal of Information Technology (IAJIT) is an Open Access with an Open Access Policy, indexed and refereed journal that is published biannually in English. IAJIT is the official e-technology journal of the Colleges of Computing and Information Society (CCIS), stemming from the Association of Arab Universities and published by Arab Open University Jordan. IAJIT is indexed by EBSCO, DOAJ, ULRICHSWEB, Open J-gate, and Cabell Publishing.

Jordan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (JJPS), is a bi-annual reviewed publication that focuses on current topics of interest in pharmaceutical sciences and indexed in PSOAR.

Creative Commons (CC) Jordan is pushing towards a wider adoption of with multiple CC-licensed project flourishing in the country: the latest "Made in Jordan" short animation Once Upon a Star released by Curlstone Production and the 7iber's Postcard Contest are only a couple of examples of Jordanian CC-licensed works.

Key Organizations

 * Deanship of Academic Research, University of Jordan (DAR) - is funding research projects conducted by faculty members and other university, Publishing original research proposals, studies, books, translations and manuscripts, Issuing “Dirasat”, a refereed set of journals published in seven different fields, and Issuing refereed OA journals in cooperation with the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research”: Jordan Journal for Agricultural Sciences, Jordan Journal for Business Administration, Jordan Journal for History and Archaeology, Jordan Journal for Pharmaceutical Sciences, Jordan Journal for Social Sciences, and Jordan Medical Journal.


 * The International Arab Journal of Information Technology (IAJIT)
 * Arab Open University

OA-Related Activities

 * The Journal of Open Archaeology Data and PRIME: Incentivising Open Data Archiving, World Archaeological Congress 7, Dead Sea, Jordan, January 18, 2013.