Are you participating in OAWeek 2021? (You can update this later)

Yes--definitely!

First name

Agnes

Last name

Chikonzo

Organization/institution name

University of Zimbabwe

Type of institution

Academic Institution

What's your position?

Librarian

What's the level of OA awareness where you are?

Medium

What are your goals for OA Week?

To increase the uptake and acceptance of open scholarship by researchers/academics at the University of Zimbabwe. It is our hope that the Open Access Roundtable will create ripple effects which lead to the growth of UZ Institutional Repository content.

This activity is pertinent because the online publishing industry has seen the emergence of Open Access publishing which has created an avenue for “predatory” open access publishers. The Library therefore has a voluntary mandate to create awareness of Open Access “Predatory” publishers so that researchers publish in credible open access journals.

The Open Access Roundtable is aimed at researchers at the University of Zimbabwe. Specifically, the activity will include faculty deans and their chairperson. Our aim is for the faculty administrators to embrace the Open access movement; they will then cascade to the rest of the University research community.

Engaging the research community through the roundtable will help researchers create new avenues for collaboration by making their research widely accessible and visible via open access platforms like Institutional Repositories and Open Access Journals.

The University community and the nation at large will benefit from the uptake of open access publishing by researchers and academic through enhanced free access to scholarly information

How did you hear of the OA Week site?

Through INASP