UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA OPEN ACCESS MANDATE — The Story of How They Engaged the Campus Community

“We Build the Road By Walking It” was the slogan for a very tentative beginning to bring awareness about Open Access on campus which quickly gained momentum as the campus community became enthusiastic about it. On May 2009, the Senate of the University of Pretoria adopted a policy for mandatory submission of research papers by its staff, students and other affiliates. http://www.library.up.ac.za/openup/mandates.htm.

To read about the first African open access institutional mandate and how they accomplished this please go to the following link: http://www.library.up.ac.za/openup/docs/UPmandateAfrica.pdf.

Additional Open Access Activates on Campus:

As part of its OA Day celebrations ( http://www.library.up.ac.za/openup/oaday.htm) the University of Pretoria Library Services launched its list of Accredited Open Access Journals ­ South Africa (AOAJSA) ( http://www.library.up.ac.za/aoajsa.htm

Web of Science Science Citation Index Expanded
Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index
Web of Science Arts & Humanities Citation Index
IBSS Journal List
DoE List of Accredited South African Journals

In South Africa university researchers will not publish in open access journals unless they are also seen to be reputable and the publication fee is affordable.  Accreditation by the DoE is viewed a basic indicator of a journal’s reputation and publishing in one of these journals will earn the university and the researcher some money.

University of Pretoria also decided to use the annual OA Day to review the progress that we are making with open access and have created an OA Scorecard (http://www.library.up.ac.za/openup/scorecard.htm).