2019 Open Access Week

The 2019 International Open Access Week  will be held in October 21-27. The week was established by Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and partners in the student committee in 2008. The week present an opportunity for libraries to advocate for action towards making openness the default for research, to raise the visibility of scholarship and accelerate research. The theme 2019 Open Access Week is ''Open for Who? Equity in open Knowledge".

According to the 2019 Open Access Week Advisory Committee, The  theme for 2019  is built on the groundwork laid last year when discussions focused on “Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge.” The 2018 theme highlighted the importance of making a central commitment to equity as we transition toward new systems for sharing knowledge, and the past twelve months have only seen the pace of that transition increase. Because of this, the Open Access Week Advisory Committee decided it was important to focus on equity again in 2019—to deepen our conversations about being inclusive by design and to turn those conversations into action.

As a way of celebrating the week the Okavango Research Institute library will embark on a wholistic examination of the University of Botswana Research Innovation and Scholarship Archive (UBRISA), with particular interest to the Okavango Research Institute community to determine how far the institute has contributed to the repository  with regards to content population. UBRISA is a University of Botswana  repository that is used to showcase the university's scholarly and  intellectual knowledge. It is hosted on DSpace platform that advances open access.

By Mosepele Mabutho