08/05/17

Open access for Palestinian research by 2020

Institutional Repositories in Palestine
版权:Flickr/世界银行/ Dominic Chavez

Speed read

  • Partnership with European universities paves way for accessibility to scientific research in Palestine
  • Four Palestinian universities to receive training on designing and managing digital repositories
  • Europe to finance the project and provide expertise, with potentially wider benefits for Arab world

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[GAZA] A meeting to evaluate a European-Unionfunded3月中旬举行的合作项目使巴勒斯坦大学更接近提高本地生产研究的知名度。

The project — ‛Research Output Management through Open Access Institutional Repositories in Palestinian Higher Education (ROMOR)’ — aims to collect, document and provide access to scientific research produced at universities in Palestine.

它于今年早些时候(1月19日至21日)在奥地利首都举行了三天的会议上开始,并由维也纳技术大学主办,这是欧洲参与的大学之一。其他是英国格拉斯哥和布莱顿大学,以及意大利的帕尔马大学。

The four Palestinian universities are Birzeit University, Al Quds Open University, Palestine Technical University-Kadoorie, and the Islamic University of Gaza. The latter is the institution coordinating the project, and home of its director, assistant professor Rawia Awadallah.

Speaking about the idea behind the project, Rawia toldSciDev.Net它“源于巴勒斯坦大学向世界展示其研究成果的需求。”

As a first step to address the problem of low visibility, a preparatory meeting was held at the end of January at the Faculty of Information Technology at the Islamic University in Gaza. That meeting launched the project’swebsite,其中包括有关培训活动和与建立开放访问存储库有关的材料的信息,这是一种广泛接受的方法,可以保护,传播和提高人们对当地的认识research.

"The website represents an open window to transfer the experience to those interested in the establishment of similar research repositories," says Rawia.

该项目还试图找到解决巴勒斯坦失败的解决方案universities进步全球排名。这是因为与资源不佳的研究人员倾向于将其作品发布在影响力较低的期刊上,这可能不包括在建立良好的搜索引擎中进行研究。语言是另一个障碍,包括在研究摘要方面可能没有阿拉伯语以外的其他语言存在。

“I believe this research will become available through the existence of such repositories, and through requirements to support and develop our [Palestine’s] scientific output.”

Khaled Shaaban, Palestinian Planning Center

该项目将延长至2019年10月的三年。在第一年,重点将是建立参加巴勒斯坦大学通过培训建立和管理存储库的能力。这项努力的结果将成为巴勒斯坦其他大学建立自己的存储库的基石。

The second year will see the application of this training, with each of the four Palestinian universities designing and building its own repository.

In the last year, nine training workshops will be held at the participating universities, after which the process of depositing published research will kick off. Keeping an eye on maintaining the continuity and sustainability of the project will "require the adoption of special policies at the level of universities, such as acknowledging repositories as a basis of career advancement for researchers and university professors," says Rawia.

The role of the European partners during the three years, Rawia explains, is to provide supervision and expertise, ensure that the four repositories are designed according to international standards, and point out any errors at the implementation phase.

她说,欧盟委员会正在提供必要的资金,估计为125万欧元。该项目位于伊拉斯mus+计划在高等教育区的能力建设中。

Khaled Shaaban, academic and researcher at the Palestinian Planning Center, believes "the project will help researchers and students in Palestine to overcome a major obstacle".

He tellsSciDev.Net:“研究人员面临着一个很大的困境,代表着未能获得当代人道主义和应用科学研究(以及其他领域)的当代研究。我相信这项研究将通过此类存储库来获得,并通过支持和发展我们的[Palestine’s] scientific output."

The challenge of low research accessibility and visibility extends across the Arab world, not only in Palestine.

Rawia refers to a2015 study, titled “An Assessment of Institutional Repositories in the Arab World”, which confirmed that research repositories in the Middle East are at the "infancy stage" compared with those in the Western World.

Although there are a number of initiatives in the Arab world to create digital repositories, they lack adherence to the international standards and protection of intellectual property rights — so they require continuous development.

Rawia believes this project on Palestinian repositories will contribute to the effective promotion of scientific research, and increase the quality of that research so it meets international scientific standards.

Speaking about plans for the future, she says: "After the end of the [three-year] project, we hope to develop it further through the transfer of experience to Arab world universities as part of a new project. We dream of creating a [research] bank for research in the Arab world, not only in Palestine."

这件作品由Scidev.net的中东和北非桌子生产。