User:Filippo Morsiani/Open access in Mauritius

Open access in Mauritius; As of June 2015, The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) covering free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals in all subjects and many languages lists two Open Access Journals from Mauritius: International Journal of Computer Science Issues published by IJCSI Press and Internet Journal of Medical Update published by Dr. Arun Kumar, Agnihotri A K S Publication.

African Journals Online (AJOL) lists two additional OA journals published in Mauritius: The University of Mauritius Research Journal is an international, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, dedicated to make accessible the latest results of researchers from a broad sweep of subject areas. Archives of Medical and Biomedical Research is the official journal of the International Association of Medical and Biomedical Researchers (IAMBR) and the Society for Free Radical Research Africa (SFRR-Africa). It is an internationally peer reviewed, open access and multidisciplinary journal aimed at publishing original research articles, reviews, case reports, research methods papers, short communications etc. related to all aspects of medical and biomedical sciences.

Researchers from Mauritius publish articles in international Open Access journals, for example, in 2013, eight 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 Department of Health and Medical Sciences and the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Mauritius, Mauritius Institute of Health, Mauritian Sugar Industry Research Institute, Department of Computer Science, University of Technology, Department of Oncology, Queen Victoria Hospital and The Cardiac Trust Fund.

PLoS ONE – an international, peer-reviewed, OA journal published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS) - published 9 articles by researchers from the Ministry of Health and Quality of Life and Mauritian Wildlife Foundation.

There are currently no OA policies registered in ROARMAP.

Enabling Environment
The government of Mauritius recognised early that its Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector is important to future development of the country. The government sees ICT as a tool to support business processes and information flow within and across economic activities, leading to increase in value added at the national level. The government's vision is to make ICT the fifth pillar of the economy (in addition to four current pillars – manufacturing, sugar, tourism and financial sector) and to transform Mauritius into a Regional ICT Hub. This vision is reflected in the National ICT Strategic Plan 2007-2011.

The National Computer Board has recently redefined its strategies to respond more effectively to new national aspirations and its vision is now to be the key enabler in transforming Mauritius into a Cyber island and the regional ICT hub to e-power people, businesses and the public sector by developing and promoting ICT and ICT-related services in Mauritius. Encouraging achievements have been made in significant degree of ICT penetration in society and reasonable levels of skills being imparted in the educational institutions. Mauritius is set to become the first country in the world to have blanket wireless Internet coverage.

There are two publicly funded universities: University of Mauritius and University of Technology. The government of Mauritius aims to develop the country into an international center of excellence in the tertiary education sector. The overall goal of the National Strategic Plan for Education and Training 2008-2020 is to make Mauritius a knowledge hub to serve the region. The strategy is to create an enabling environment for Mauritius to emerge as a regional knowledge hub and a centre for higher learning and excellence.

Major Projects/Initiatives
The International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI) is a referred international OA journal registered with the National Library of the Republic of Mauritius and established to provide assistance in the development of science, fast operative publication and storage of research materials. IJCSI aims at advancing traditional journals by introducing new features/programmes to help scientists to expand in their respective research areas. IJCSI is indexed by Google Scholar, Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE), CiteSeerX, SCIRUS, Docstoc, Scribd, Cornell's University Library, SciRate, ScientificCommons and DBLP. The acceptance rate varies from 25% to 37% of submitted articles. IJCSI editors believe that a contemporary journal should no more restrict itself to simply publishing research papers like traditional journals do and puts lots of efforts in ensuring their authors, reviewers and followers are highly exposed in the scientific community (e.g. via the Interview Programme). Abdelrahman Osman Elfaki from the Management and Science University, Malaysia, in his July 2011 interview said that “OA publication provides a great chance to fill the gap between academic and industry. In computer science, there are many useful research works that are hidden from real practitioners in industry due to the fees that publishers are using. Academicians and practitioners should work together to prove the quality of the research. Thus, OA publication guarantees the research quality.”

The Internet Journal of Medical Update (IJMU) is an international OA journal registered with the Mauritius Society of Authors, launched in January 2006 and published by A K S Publication to provide a multidisciplinary forum for the exchange of current ideas in form of original research works, review articles, case reports, brief communications, and letters to editor among medical professionals. IJMU is indexed in a wide variety of international bibliographic databases and abstracting services including National Library of Medicine LocatorPlus, Directory of OA Journals, Geneva Foundation of Medical Education and Research, IndexCopernicus, African Index Medicus- WHO, African Journals Online, Open J-gate, Ulrich's Periodical Directory, WorldCat OCLC, EBSCO, GALE Cengage, Google Scholar and others. In January 2010, Index Copernicus International released their 2009 IC value for the world's most important scholarly journals and the IJMU received an IC value of 5.03 which is higher than its values of previous years. It is (MASA)'. IJMU has a provision for 'Best Paper' in each issue through a system of online analysis of the visitors' number and also by analysis of reviewers' comment.

Details of Key Organizations
The International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI): Dr Tristan Vanrullen, Chief Editor, Doolar Lane, Mahebourg, Republic of Mauritius, Tel.: +230 911 5482, editor(at)ijcsi.org.

The Internet Journal of Medical Update (IJMU): Dr. Arun Kumar Agnihotri, Editor and Publisher, 4 Malherbes Street, Curepipe, Mauritius, Tel.: +230 6750091; Email: agnihotri_arun(at)hotmail.com.

List of Publications

 * Henry Trotter, Catherine Kell, Michelle Willmers, Eve Gray, Girish Kumar Beeharry & Thomas King (March 2014)"Scholarly Communication at the University of Mauritius: Case Study Report". This work was carried out by the Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.