User:Filippo Morsiani/Open access in Lesotho

Open Access in Lesotho is supported by national institutions in Lesotho such as the National University of Lesotho Library which maintains an open access repository and Lesotho based researchers publish articles in international open access journals.

Government support
The Parliament of Lesotho together with parliamentarians from 27 African countries, as well as the Pan African Parliament, the East African Legislative Assembly, ECOWAS and the SADC Parliamentary Forum have signed the Kigali Declaration in March 2009. They recalled their governments’ commitment to the World Summit on the Information Society, considered the critical role of information in development, and highlighted a significant role that parliaments must play in promoting an equitable information society, through the enactment of legislation that supports transparency, accountability and openness. They underscored the need for information exchange, and agreed upon establishing a repository of policy, legislation, and regulations of each country in the areas of Information and Communications Technologies, in line with the African Information Society Initiative (AISI).

In September 2011 Lesotho Legal Information Institute was launched (LesothoLII), described as an internet based law reporting facility. In his keynote speech at the launching, Chief Justice Mahapela Lehohla said the launching of LesothoLII is a birth of a new tool that will change the way justice has been delivered. He said the country has been empowered to publish its own judgements, legislation, bills, government gazettes, inquiry reports, green and white papers and a lot of other legal information for free access by broader members of the community. The Lesotho Legal Information Institute has been supported and funded by the African Legal Information Institute that has also been the force behind the creation national law reporting facilities across the continent.

Science and technology has officially been identified as a priority area for higher education in the country. And the value of higher education is noted in both the National Indicative Plan and Country Strategy Paper (2008-2013) as well as the Poverty Reduction Strategy (2005) (MCRI Report).

National University of Lesotho Library
The National University of Lesotho Library has signed the Budapest Open Access Initiative, a major declaration in support of Open Access. Professor Mafa M. Sejanamane, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the National University of Lesotho, has signed the second major declaration in support of Open Access, the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

In 2011 the National University of Lesotho has established the first institutional repository in the country. It is the only Lesotho based open access digital repository registered in OpenDOAR. The National University of Lesotho Institutional Repository (NULIR) is described as "the institutional repository of the National University of Lesotho which provides access to the research output of staff and students." The repository interface is in English.

Lesotho based researchers
Lesotho based researchers publish articles in international open access journals, for example, in 2013, five articles (all of them highly accessed) have been published with BioMed Central – an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the Open Access publishing model – by researchers from Médecins Sans Frontières, National AIDS Commission, National University of Lesotho, The Matrix Support Group, Scott Hospital (Morija), UNDP, and HIV/AIDS Practice, United States Peace Corps. PLoS ONE – an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS) has published seven articles by researchers from Médecins Sans Frontières, Morija.

As of June 2015, African Journals Online (AJOL) lists one open access journal published in Lesotho, the Review of Southern African Studies a multidisciplinary journal of Arts, Social and Behavioural Sciences.

There are currently no open access policies registered in ROARMAP.

Potential barriers
According to the UNESCO Global Open Access Portal, there are several barriers to open access in Lesotho:


 * There are 21 tertiary-level public institutions and 15 private tertiary institutions and the National University of Lesotho, established in 1975, is the only university in the country.
 * Lack of national laws and policies enabling public access to information. Open Access to information is often seen as too a technical issue and therefore has often been removed from policy discussions. Lack of an enabling environment, appropriate legislative and policy tools slow down Open Access developments in the country.
 * Lack of capacities and poor information and communications technology infrastructure. Many organizations still lack capacities to provide Open Access to research results – they lack IT support and infrastructure. Non-digital materials need to be digitized and it is difficult to get funding for digitization.

Open access week
With the support from the UNESCO Cluster Office for Southern Africa, Lesotho for the first time celebrated International Open Access Week from the 24 to 30 October 2011. Celebrations sensitized the community that comprises academics, students, librarians, researchers, policy makers and ICT professionals and others who have a role to play in making knowledge freely available. The National University of Lesotho Library was the host and organiser of the event and show-cased its achievements in the Open Access endeavours, showed experience with other relevant libraries to set up a network of sustainable Open Access projects in the country.

Open Access week celebrations have continued in the successive year. On 22–23 October 2013 the Lesotho Library Consortium (LELICO) celebrated International Open Access Week with discussions centered on the global theme "Open Access: Redefining Impact”. A series of workshops were hosted on the subject of "Advancing faculty-driven open access policies and practices among the faculties of National University of Lesotho and Lesotho College of Education". The workshops were held in two universities and two towns, the National University of Lesotho in Roma and Lesotho College of Education in Maseru.

Open access workshops
The Open Access and Institutional Repository: New Models for Scholarly Communication workshop was organized by EIFL on the 24–25 April 2007 at State Library, Maseru.

Journal editors from Lesotho attended the Regional Workshop on the Benefits of Open Access for Research Dissemination, Usage, Visibility and Impact in November 2010 and identified several needs as priorities in scholarly journal publishing. These were: increasing scholarly publishing in developing countries; building capacity to grow Open Access in this region; analysing the cost and benefits of publishing a journal and subsequent business models for journals; identifying possible publishing platforms; and creating regional alliances to deliver and scale up scholarly publishing.

As a follow-up, the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), in collaboration with UNESCO, presented a workshop on Open Access publishing on the 18 and 19 August 2011 in Pretoria, South Africa, for journal editors from Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland. During this two-day workshop, the focus was on presentations by external editors sharing their experiences in: challenges and problems facing journal editors today, issues to consider in becoming an Open Access journal, estimating the resource requirements for operating the journal and developing a business plan, and developing a business model for a journal. The second day included an introduction and overview of Open Journal Systems (OJS) and a demonstration of the OJS and its features, factors in adopting and switching over to OJS, such as key decisions, troubleshooting and implementations of different publishing solutions.

On 26–27 November 2014 at the OER Workshop in Lesotho Greig, representing OER Africa, ran an “Introduction to OER” workshop for participants from various higher education institutions in Lesotho. The workshop was organized by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC). It was hosted by the Institute of Extra Mural Studies, National University of Lesotho in Maseru. Among other topics, the 30 workshop participants discussed and debated issues relating to open access publishing. Institutions represented included the Lesotho College of Education, National University of Lesotho, Lesotho Agricultural College, Ministry of Education and Training and Lerotholi Polytechnic.