User:Filippo Morsiani/Open access in Uzbekistan

Open Access in Uzbekistan; Currently, there are no OA journals from the country indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). 01 OA journal is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD). However, researchers from Uzbekistan are found to publish their articles in International Open Access Journals. For example, 07 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 Scientific Centre of Plant Production "Botanika" of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Tashkent Pediatric Medical Institute and Central Asia Epidemiology Network, the Research Institute of Epidemiology, Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, the Scientific Center for Emergency Medicine and the Isaev Institute among others.

Enabling Environment
EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries)  has been working in Uzbekistan since 1999 and has supported the creation of the EIFL Uzbekistan Consortium. Through this partnership, libraries in Uzbekistan are able to provide access to a wide range of scholarly e-resources. EIFL  is a not-for-profit organization that works with libraries to enable Open Access to knowledge in developing and transition economy countries in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America. The Open Access Seminar which took place on 06 June, 2013 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan is an example of EIFL’s ongoing activities to promote and advocate for Open Access publishing in the country to promote visibility to and impact of the local research output.

Furthermore, INASP negotiates with international publishers for free national licenses for selected e- journals and e-books for Uzbekistan.

Open Access Policies
There are currently no Open Access policies registered in the Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP).

Past and Future OA related Activities

On 26 February 2014, an educational seminar “Open Electronic Information Resources for Education” took place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The seminar was organized by the Republican information-library center of the State Committee of Communication, Information and Telecommunication Technologies of Uzbekistan and the World Bank County Office in Uzbekistan. One of the key potential barriers to the progress of the Open Access movement in the country is the lack of skilled IT professionals who are trained to operate digital knowledge repositories. Currently, there are found to be no national/ institutional OA repositories operating. Identifying this setback, the seminar was aimed at familiarizing workers of information-library and information-resource centers with open information resources from various educational sources. The seminar participants were briefed about Open Access to electronic information resources movement, goal of which is to provide Open Access to resources to ensure development of science and humanity. The main advantages of Open Access were discussed, namely: the marked increase in knowledge of scientific researches and development, the ability to avoid duplication of researches, the increase in scientific cooperation, quality of researches due to comparison of large volume of knowledge of the subject etc. During the seminar, the participants also considered the introduction of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs)  in information-library and information-resource centers and access to scientific and cultural materials, among other topics of discussion. The seminar gave the next impulse to taking forward the Open Access movement through the power of ICT in activity of information and library establishments, to creation of Open Access digital libraries and in this way to stimulate a step-by-step development of on-line Open Access to scientific knowledge. The main goal of the seminar was an overall powerful and effective stimulation among authors in granting free and Open Access to their research work. In order to achieve this, several areas for capacity building were identified:
 * To stimulate local researchers/recipients of grants to publish the works according to the principles of the Open Access movement by organizing more workshops and training events.
 * To develop ways to assess the quality of Open access research output and to provide methods of quality assurance for good scientific practice;
 * High quality IT infrastructure that supports Open Access resources by development of software for content delivery and creation of metadata.