PART FOUR: Sudan, South Africa This is the fourth of a five-part series that looks at Open Access repository development in twelve African countries in celebration of Open Access Week Oct. 24-30, 2011. The first part (Botswana, Ethiopia and Ghana) may be found here: http://duraspace.org/dspace-africa-growing-open-access-knowledge-an... Parts two and three (Kenya, Malawi; Mozambique, Senegal) may be found here: http://duraspace.org/dspace-open-access-repository-development-afri...; http://duraspace.org/dspace-open-access-repository-development-africa-mozambique-senegal-0.

The series is co-authored by Iryna Kuchma, Open Access Programme manager, EIFL (http://www.eifl.net/) and EIFL-OA country coordinators: Netsanet Animut, Addis Ababa University and Chair of the Consortium of Ethiopian Academic and Research Libraries, Charles Banda, Copperbelt University, Zambia, Aissa Mitha Issak, Universidade Pedagógica, Mozambique, Gloria Kadyamatimba, Chinhoyi University of Technology Library, Zimbabwe, Richard B. Lamptey, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, Fredrick Kiwuwa Lugya, Makerere University Library, Uganda, Reason Baathuli Nfila, University of Botswana Library, Rosemary Otando, University Nairobi, Kenya, Kondwani Wella, Kamuzu College of Nursing, University of Malawi and Carol Minton Morris, DuraSpace.

Sudan

Open Access to Arabic launguage resources

The first Sudanese Institutional Repository was released on October 10, 2011 and is now available at http://oascir.uofk.edu/. DSpace@ScienceUofKrepository is the result of the EIFL-funded OASCIR (Open Access Scientific Institutional Repository) project  which included carrying out an Open Access awareness-raising campaign at the Faculty of Science, University of Khartoum and setting up an institutional repository.
 
DSpace@ScienceUofK goes live with more than175 records in its database. Most of them areavailable in full-text. In the coming weeks there will be an effort to increase the  content in the repository. Additional functionality–such as an Arabic interface–is still being developed for the repository and will be available shortly.
 
(From DSpace@ScienceUofK is now LIVE OASCIR project blog http://uofkoascir.blogspot.com/2011/10/dspacescienceuofk-is-now-liv...)
 

South Africa

Open Access advocacy in service to  to shared knowledge

South Africa is a leading African country in terms of Open Access (OA) policies on the governmental level and grass-roots OA initiatives in universities and research organizations.
 
All 11 traditional universities (or at least their departments), two universities of technology (Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Durban University of Technology), three comprehensive universities (University of Johannesburg, University of South Africa and University of Zululand) and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have set up OA repositories.
 
University of Pretoria and University of Johannesburg have adopted OA policies (mandates) to ensure that results of researches funded by institutions are made freely available.
 
University of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University host the largest IR collections in the country: UPSpace (http://repository.up.ac.za/, 14,108 records) + University of Pretoria Electronic Theses and Dissertations (http://upetd.up.ac.za/UPeTD.htm, 6,592 records); and SUNScholar Repository (http://scholar.sun.ac.za/, 15,053 records).
 
Stellenbosch University has also joined this international cohort of open access advocates and has signed the Berlin Declaration confirming its commitment to openly sharing its research output. During the past year the University has made considerable progress in terms of opening access to information. The University is actively preserving its research output (research articles, theses, dissertations, etc.) via its institutional repository, SUNScholar. The University’s commitment has grown in leaps and bounds culminating in ‘publishing’ journal titles in open access forums using open source software. 
 
Stellenbosch University has also set up an IR wiki  http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/index.php/SUNScholar/IR – a useful resource of best practice recommendations for repository managers.
 
"IRSpace" is an informal community of those who are interested in advancing the case of OA and IRs in South Africa and Africa. Communication channel: Irtalk discussion list   http://lists.lib.sun.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/irtalk and DuraSpace – The South African Dspace/DuraSpace Workgroup discussion list http://lists.lib.sun.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/duraspace.
 
IRSpace http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=013518019117943970829%3Atlw8-sayn_q – Search South African & African research repositories: is an IR harvester for African research institutions.