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TEMPLATE DESIGN © 2007 www.PosterPresentations.com ISSUES AND CHALLENGES TO DEVELOPMENT OF OPEN ACCESS INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES IN ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS IN NIGERIA Gideon Emcee Christian International Development Research Center (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada Introduction An Open Access Institutional Repository is a digital archive developed by an institution for the purpose of disseminating research outputs and other information emanating from the institution. With about 92 universities, Nigeria boasts of more Universities than any other country in Africa. Yet, none of these institutions have been able to develop an institutional repository. This prompts a reasonable inquiry as to what constraints have prevented a country with so many academic institutions and so much research outputs from developing open access institutional repositories. This presentation seeks to highlight issues and challenges to the development of open access institutional repositories in Nigeria as well as the views and awareness of open access institutional repositories among scholars and researchers in the target institution surveyed in the course of my field research in the country. Objectives . Importance of Institutional Repository in Nigeria Constraints to the development of institutional repositories in Nigeria Contact information Gideon Emcee Christian Research Intern Communities and Information Society in Africa (ACACIA) International Development Research Center (IDRC) 150 Kent Street Ottawa, ON, Canada K1P 0B2 T: (+1-613) 236-6163 M (+1-613) 265-1300 F: (+1-613) 238-7230 E: [email protected] Institutional repositories provide universities in developing countries with a good avenue to disseminate their intellectual output to the outside world. However, notwithstanding increased research outputs from universities in Nigeria, there is still absence of open access institutional repositories in the country. The situation in Nigeria is to a great extent attributable to lack of awareness of open access among other factors highlighted in this presentation. The issues of awareness could be rightly tackled through open access workshops and seminars to educate academics and researchers in the region. State of Open Access Repository in Africa Repository name Country Recs. Software 1. African Higher Education Research Online S/Africa 165 Unknown 2. CSIR Research Space S/Africa 821 DSpace 3. DSpace at the University of Namibia Library Namibia Dspace 4. DUT IR S/Africa 150 DSpace 5. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Database S/Africa 846 ETD-db 6. Institutional Research Repository – Uni. of Pretoria S/Africa 2390 DSpace 7. Rhodes eResearch Repository S/Africa 219 EPrints 8. Stellenbosch University Institutional Repository S/Africa 189 DSpace 9. UCT Computer Science Research Document Archive S/Africa 194 EPrints 10. Uganda Scholarly Digital Library at Makerere Uganda 55 DSpace 11. Uni. of Pretoria Electronic Theses and Dissertations S/Africa 2070 ETD-db 12. University of Zimbabwe Institutional Repository Zimbabwe 212 DSpace 13. UWC Theses and Dissertations S/Africa 479 Unknown 14. UJDigispace S/Africa 405 DSpace 15. Unisa ETD S/Africa Unknown Participants at an Open Access Workshop in Nigeria Awareness of Open Access 1. Highlight the current state of open access institutional repository in academic and research institutions particularly in Nigeria and generally in Africa. 2. Establish a basis for understanding the current state of open access institutional repositories in academic and research institutions in Nigeria. 3. Identify the issues and challenges hindering the development of open access institutional repositories in academic and research institutions in Nigeria. 4. Highlight primary and practical solutions to major issues affecting the development of open access institutional repositories in Nigeria. Methodology The presentation is based on the result of a survey conducted at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. The survey was conducted via questionnaires distributed among 100 scholars, researchers and graduate students. A total number of 72 participants responded to the questionnaire. Conclusion
