User:Filippo Morsiani/Open access in Rwanda

Open Access in Rwanda is supported through four open access journals, the University of Rwanda Repository and the National Data Archive (NADA). Rwanda based researchers also publish in international open access journals

Rwanda based researchers
Researchers from Rwanda publish articles in international open access journals, for example in 2013 46 articles were published with BioMed Central and among them there are highly accessed articles by researchers from Butare University Teaching Hospital, the Faculty of Medicine at the National University of Rwanda, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) Health Programme, the National Malaria Control Programme Malaria Unit, the Center for Treatment and Research on AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis and other Epidemics, as well as the Ministry of Health, the Programme National Intégré de Lutte contre le Paludisme, RTI International, the Rwanda-Zambia HIV-1 Research Group, the Rwinkwavu Hospital, Partners in Health, and the Université Nationale du Rwanda.

In 2013, 56 articles have been published in Public Library of Science (PLoS) Open Access journals: PLoS ONE, PLoS Medicine and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Rwandan open access journals
As of June 2015 four open access journals published in Rwanda are indexed in the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD): the Rwandan journal of education, the Rwanda medical journal, the Rwanda journal of social and applied sciences and the Rwanda journal of health sciences. In addition to these four journals, AJOL currently also lists Rwanda Journal.

Open access policies
International open access policy registries such as ROARMAP indicate the need to establish and implement open access policies at the national as well as institutional levels in order to accelerate the open access movement in Rwanda and ensure that all publicly funded research in Rwanda becomes freely and openly available.

Open access repositories
The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) currently lists one open access repository from Rwanda, by the University of Rwanda Repository. The repository is built to save, share and search the institution's digital research materials, including an increasing number of conference papers, images, peer-reviewed scholarly articles, pre-prints, technical reports, thèses, working papers, course notes and more. The interface is in English.

The National Data Archive (NADA)
On 10 May 2013 the Rwanda National Institute of Statistics (NISR) launched the National Data Archive (NADA) at the "Open Access to Statistical Data" Workshop held in Kigali. The workshop was attended by the Director General of NISR, data users, and representatives from UN Rwanda, the African Development Bank and the OECD. NADA was presented as the platform for disseminating survey and census microdata. During the same workshop, NISR also launched tools for disseminating time-series data, including the Statistical Data Portal and StatAlert. NISR is also working to further promote the use of NADA through hosting microdata outreach workshops and engaging more users.