LIBSENSE Workshop: Arab Region - Progress & Prospective

 Tuesday, 13 October 2020

11:00am – 12:30pm UTC

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRAR82ycL4c

This virtual workshop was held as a continuation and follow-up on the LIBSENSE-III Workshop in Tunisia during April 26-28, 2019. It included speakers from WACREN, EIFL, COAR, ORCID, and ASREN, focusing on LIBSENSE progress, particularly workgroups on policies, infrastructures, and capacity building. The workshop also addressed open science and open data, featuring presentations on Open Access stories from Arab countries, developments of Arabic harvesters, and more.

The workshop targeted repository managers, advocates, and other open access and open science stakeholders, including libraries and library consortia, content and research data providers, and National Research and Education Networks (NRENs).

Agenda

Time (UTC)	Title
11:00-11:10	Welcome & Opening       "Introduction and Highlight on ASREN Role"   - Yousef Torman, Managing Director, ASREN, Jordan
11:10 - 11:20	"LIBSENSE and Open science Initiative"   - Omo Oaiya, CSO, WACREN, Ghana
11:20 - 11:30	"Infrastructure, Capacity Building and Policies Working Groups"  - Iryna Kuchma, Open Access Programme Manager, EIFL, Lithuania
11:30 - 11:40	"Aligning Open Science Infrastructures"  - Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director, COAR, Canada
11:40 - 12:00	"Open access in the Arab Region”:  - Rawia Awadallah, Assistant Professor- Computer Science, The Islamic University of Gaza, Palestine        - Bessem Aamira, IT Manager, CNUDST, Tunisia  - Rachid Ayssi, IT Manager, IMIST-CNRST, Morocco
12:00 - 12:10	"Highlight on The importance of PIDs for Researchers and Institutions"  - Nabil Ksibi, ORCID Engagement Lead, ORCID, South Africa
12:10 - 12:20	"Academic Libraries Future Role in Open Access Era"  - Raed Alzoubi, Library Director, JUST, Jordan
12:20 - 12:30	Discussion, Q&A

About LIBSENSE

The Libraries Support for Embedding NRENs services and e-Infrastructure (LIBSENSE) initiative was launched in 2016 to bring research and education networks (RENs) and academic library communities together to build sustainable and relevant approaches for open access and open science in Africa. LIBSENSE creates an avenue for different stakeholder communities to work together to define priority activities, share knowledge, and develop relevant services. It is building communities of practice and strengthening local and national services to support open science and research in Africa.

The West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) leads the LIBSENSE initiative in collaboration with sister regional African RENs (ASREN and UbuntuNet Alliance). Other participating partners include several national RENs, libraries, library associations, universities, and research communities in Africa, in conjunction with COAR, EIFL, University of Sheffield, National Institute of Informatics (Japan), GÉANT, and OpenAIRE.

LIBSENSE activities aimed at open science have received support from the AfricaConnect3 project, co-funded by the European Union.