In 2011-2013 EIFL provided financial support to 34 projects that implemented national and institutional open access (OA) advocacy campaigns to reach out to research communities and OA publishing initiatives.

Through small grants and support from their own institutions, the projects engaged in a wide variety of campaigns and activities, including: holding workshops, creating websites, building institutional OA repositories, creating e-learning courses, and implementing OA publishing platforms.

The case studies resulting from the projects reveal impressive first-time achievements and will help increase the availability of research literature in developing and transition countries.

Learn more about the key achievements for this institutional OA campaign in Kenya below. You can access the full case study (strategies, tactics and tools, success stories and lessons learnt) by clicking on the download button.

About the project in Kenya

OA was first introduced to Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) Library  through a workshop entitled, “The Benefits of OA for Research Dissemination, Usage, Visibility and Impact” funded by EIFL in August 2010. One of the outcomes of the workshop was the creation of an all inclusive committee with a mandate to write an OA institutional policy. The committee was chaired by Professor Kamau Ngamau, the Dean of Faculty of Agriculture. The JKUAT OA policy was adopted on the 22nd of June 2012 and the OA Institutional Repository (IR) was set up. With this policy in place, the library decided that the next step should be to raise awareness of both the OA policy and the OA IR.

Key achievements

• The JKUAT OA IR was publicly launched by the Vice-Chancellor;
• The Board of Postgraduate Studies was enthusiastic about this initiative and have already sent 479 copies of thesis and dissertations which are in the process of being uploaded to OA IR;
• OA IR became a part of the University performance contract for the year 2012-2013 thereby ensuring that there is a commitment to achieving the stated goals.
• A variety of successful awareness raising activities were conducted: one-on-one sessions were held with a total of 19 Chairmen of Departments; a team of students demonstrated the IR to Chairmen of three major departments; and a two-day workshop was attended by 79 administrators and faculty members.