Open Science Infrastructures for Library and Information Professionals

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari

I presented the paper titled Open Science Infrastructures for Library and Information Professionals at the Mandatory Workshop on Data, Linked Data and Visualization organized by the Librarians’ Registration Council of Nigeria (LRCN), July 22- 26, 2024 at the E-Library of the Federal College of Education, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria. Download the presentation here.

Promoting Nigerian Research With Open Science: Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for Research Publication

 Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari

The 2023 Eko-Konnect Users conference that held between January 24-26, 2023 virtually had distinguished scholars, professionals and representatives of relevant government agencies discussed topics relating to the central theme, Promoting Nigerian Research With Open Science. 

I spoke on the topic, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for Research Publication, in the Session 4 of the event, Maximising Persistent Identifiers For Global Research Visibility. DOI is a chief member of the PIDs (persistent identifiers) scholarly communication infrastructure family. DOI provides a system for persistent and actionable identification and interoperable exchange of managed information on digital networks. 

The details of my presentation can be accessed here or the streamed version watched on YouTube.

Special thanks to Owen Iyoha, MD/CEO of Eko-Konnect, for the invitation to participate, address the attendees and most importantly contribute to the general discourse on the evolution of Nigerian scholarly communication sector and open science uptake in which I have keen interest. 

Towards Curing the Predatory Publishing Malady in the South: The TriangleSCI Facilitation

 

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari
Our team's project was accepted in June as one of the five teams (projects) to participate in the ongoing Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute in Duke University, Durham, NC, United States. Our project aims to mitigate the predatory publishing debacle through a community of practice (CoP)-developed toolkit and/or strategies. Members of our team have varying expertise in the core components and contexts of the project. The cross-regional team represents a good example of North-South collaboration of scholars/librarians from Canada- Prof Dan O'Donnell; Algeria- Prof Samir Hachani; Canada/United States- Dr. Nathan Woods; Bangladesh- Shaharima Parvin; Nigeria- Dr. Basiru Adetomiwa and Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari. Post TriangleSCI, we hope to expand the project to other regions of the Global South therefore recruiting more participants into a named community. 

So far it has been a wonderful experience participating in the institute generously funded by the Mellon Foundation. 

The participating teams and projects in the 2022 institute include:

• A Post-Pandemic Reckoning: Improving Metadata for Better Accessibility to Scholarly Archives for People with Disabilities by Erika Fülöp, Dene Grigar, Jarah Moesch, Richard Snyder
• Building a contextual alternative to scholarly journal un/safelists by Joshua Neds-Fox, Matt Ruen, Teresa Schultz, Brianne Selman, Leila Sterman, Stephanie Towery
• Equity Toolkit for Disability Inclusion by Karen Stoll Farrell, Kimberly Gladfelter Graham, Simon Holt, Sylvia Izzo Hunter, Erin Osborne-Martin, Stacy Scott
• Intercultural & interdisciplinary open resources supporting environmental justice by Nadine Aboulmagd, Alex Armstrong, Elena Berg, Jeff Gima, Fiona Glasgow, Antonio Lopez, Dalal Rahme
• Towards Curing the Predatory Publishing Malady in the South: Community of Practice Approach to Developing Local Strategies and Toolkits by Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari, Basiru Adetomiwa, Samir Hachani, Dan Paul O’Donnell, Shaharima Parvin, Nathan Woods

We would be leaving Durham energized to pursue the implementation of our project and by that contribute to the public good. We however express our profound gratitude to the TriangleSCI team, Paolo Mangiafico, Mellon Foundation and of course, our home institutions.

Re: Internationalizing Nigerian Journals Using OJS: Time to Act is Now!

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari 

With reference to my December 3, 2018 post titled "Internationalizing Nigerian Journals Using OJS: Time to Act is Now!", I am glad to announce the huge role I played leading to the online presence of two Nigerian journals and still counting. With my advice and expertise in conjunction with the technical prowess of a colleague and the goodwill of the editorial teams of these two journals we have now begun the journey to massively enroll more Nigerian journals online and consequently put them on the International map. The PKP's Open Journal System is the preferred choice of platform given its leading role in the sector and being a supporting infrastructure for Open as default (Open- Science, Access, etc) which I actively advocate for.

I hereby gladly present our two latest journals online as mediums of communicating credible research of scholars in cognate fields from every part of the world:

1. ABUAD International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences (AIJNAS)

AIJNAS

AIJNAS is a university-based scholarly journal of the College of Science, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. The journal publishes research articles, based on theoretical or experimental research works in all the fields of natural and applied sciences. In addition to having a journal-level digital object identifier (DOI)- https://doi.org/10.53982/aijnas, every accepted and published article carries its unique DOI and indexed in many reputable scholarly databases and archiving infrastructures for persistent visibility and access. Authors are thereby cordially invited to submit original and unpublished full-length papers for the forthcoming issues of the ABUAD International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences (AIJNAS). 

2. Fountain of Knowledge Journal of Library and Information Science (FKJOLIS)

FKJOLIS

FKJOLIS is a scholarly society journal of the Nigerian Library Association (NLA) Ekiti State Chapter. The journal is a peer reviewed publication that publishes scholarly articles and essays that contribute to knowledge and boost the frontiers of research in the areas of library and information science (LIS) scholarship and practice. 

In addition to these, we have improved capacity through experience in getting Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for published articles which will go a long way in giving Nigerian journals permanent footprints in the scholarly communications landscape.

Call it walking the talk, you are absolutely not wrong!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Reference Management Systems for Research Support

Photo Source: EV Science Consultant 

At the prestigious Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, through the University Library, a university-wide training workshop was organised for faculty members on the above topic with special focus on Mendeley. The training was rotated among the five colleges of the university over three days in five different training sessions at AM and PM.  The comments and responses from the faculty members show their commitment to learning and relearning new tools, and the Library cum Librarians are ready partners every step of the way.

The event also gave us the opportunity to promote Open Science ahead of several Open Science initiatives the Library will be presenting to the university community in the coming months.

Click here to access the full presentation slides.

Science communication and collaboration for Open Science: Tools and Platforms for Internationalising Nigerian Research

I was a guest speaker at the Eko-Konnect 2020 Users Conference along other leading speakers (scholars and business/tech leaders) from Japan, Germany, Cote d'Ivoire, South Africa and other parts of Nigeria. The general theme of the conference was: "Developing the National Repository for Science & Humanities". I spoke on the above topic, i.e.: Science communication and collaboration for Open Science: Tools and Platforms for Internationalising Nigerian Research.
Click here or the title above to access full presentation of my slide and others.
In attendance were key stakeholders from government, tech sector and the academy (Higher education); and great were the conversations that ensued. Talking scholcomm and Open (Access, Science and all) was particularly interesting to me.

Stimulating Data Reuse with the New Wellcome Data Re-use Prizes to help unlock the value of research

In order to encourage not only research data management but to stimulate their reuse for new knowledge and broader health benefits, Wellcome Trust has launched two prizes to be won by anyone or group of people from anywhere in the world with novel ideas using Wellcome's open data. The winner of each prize will get £15,000 (approx. $19,000 USD). Two runners-up will get £5,000 (approx. $6,400 USD).
Click here for key dates and how to enter the competition.

Internationalizing Nigerian Journals Using OJS: Time to Act is Now!

It is with painful mention that it is majorly in Africa and primarily in Nigeria that we still classify journals as 'local' and 'foreign/offshore' to the effect that we apportion grades to the categories in rating outputs of scholarship. Close to this retrogressive practice, though not the goal of this essay but worth mentioning, is the rating apportioned to authorship: singular or multiple, where single authored papers carry higher grades at promotion/tenure assessment. An alarming moment was to hear, in a conference, a scholar publicly denounced collaborative works some two years ago for the sake of the high rating he would get for a solo effort. Well, that is a theme for another day. Another topic for another time is the crass pursuit of international publication at the expense of local relevance of research outputs which places serious question on what Africa (Nigeria) regards as research excellence/quality. It has been reported (Robert Tijssen and Erika Kraemer-Mbula) that Africa's idea of research excellence/quality is pro-Global North (Europe and America). Anyway, to this end, Munyaradzi Makoni, in a Nature Index, has called on Africa to set its standard of research excellence.

Now, the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) had discerned the need for platforms to help scholars implement new journals or migrate existing journals so as to be Open Access (OA) compliant. Among other initiatives, the Open Journal System (OJS) of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), a federally supported project by the Canadian government, has come to the rescue. The global acceptance of the OJS has being rising commendably. Through the OJS, a lot of Open Access journals have sprung up and are enjoying global visibility. However, it is alarming that we still have not leveraged this opportunity for our journals in Nigeria. This may not be unconnected with our poor attitudes towards OA. But OA has come to stay and we must embrace the new default going forwards.

African scholarship has often be fraught with the challenge of gaining global visibility. Most research works published in local journals waste away in the offices of the editors-in-chief or on library shelves. The lazy approach to internationalize is the practice of publishing African research in journals homed in other parts of the world which by appellation go by the generic name "foreign journals". Apart from denying Africa its proper research rating and access to its own research outputs, the demerits of this practice are numerous. "Nonetheless", according to Robert Tijssen and Erika Kraemer-Mbula in their paper titled Research excellence in Africa: Policies, perceptions, and performance, "African research must also try to transcend the confines of Africa as a geographical space to remain globally competitive”. Just in the same way the BOAI inferred that "an old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good", the OJS technology has provided the opportunity to achieve the needed public good of Nigerian research being made visible to first, Nigerians and the rest of the world. 

Through OJS:

• the local-international dichotomy of journals will be bridged,
• there will be global presence of Nigerian journals,
• local research will receive immense visibility,
• locally published journals can be indexed in Google Scholar, Scopus, Clarivate Analytics and all,
• journals of Nigerian origin can be well cited, measured and ranked,
• this will also enhance the ranking of authors and their universities,
• greater democracy and equability of global research outlook 

In fact, we will be doing the global scholarly community a great deal of good as research outputs from Africa (Nigeria) can be assessed more equitably. A World Bank and Elsevier report has it that Sub-Sahara Africa with a 12% share of world population contributed less than 1% of global research outputs between 2003 and 2012. It is worthy of mention that African (Nigerian) scholarship is far bigger than is presently viewed. 

Why OJS?

It is open, free and OA compliant.

Possible challenges and ways to overcome

Guaranteeing 24/7 access to journals if locally hosted may be difficult given the state of our electricity infrastructure and the low commitment of many institutions to Internet facilities. Content availability constitutes the major hurdle but it can be crossed if confronted collaboratively. Under my leadership Elizade University Library has taken a lead and commenced the journey of putting the University's journals into the global arena. Our journals will be e- and Open. But the government of Nigeria can do more, especially for older universities and journal outlets across Nigeria. If the government of Canada can do a public good as OJS for the rest of the world there is no sense in Nigerian government or its relevant agencies not lifting a hand for the good of its people and Africa at large. Government agencies as the National Universities Commission and majorly the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) should turn huge resources (kind and cash) at their disposals in the direction of providing a perpetual cloud hosting of a national OJS platform that can be called Journals Nigeria, Digital Scholarship NG or anything else. This platform will thus serve as the one single window to all Nigerian journals.

Regional and national efforts/initiatives are all over the places but very few or nothing in Africa. SciELO of South America to which South Africa as only African country has keyed is a good example. Yes, in Africa, we have AJOL whose goal is to fault the claim that African research is invisible but not all of AJOL are Open. So, my proposition is to internationalize with OJS in the spirit of Open Access and not at any other time but NOW! This way the objective of AJOL is also achieved with greater ease and speed.

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari

Scholarly Communications Librarian

Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Nigeria

Maiden Visiting Library Scholar Lecture

Welcome Address delivered by Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari at the 1^st Visiting Library Scholar Lecture organized by the University Library, Elizade University, Ilara-mokin, Ondo State, on Friday, September 28, 2018.

Protocols

It is with huge delight and copious joy that I stand before you to welcome you to the very first edition in the series of the University Library Visiting Library Scholar Lecture.

The birth of the Lecture came from the womb of the circumstance that surrounded my participation in the FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute (FSCI) at the University of California San Diego in July/August, 2018. It was in connection with my desperate desire to save $102 for my University on my accommodation budget. Lusia, one of the FSCI’s administrative officers for FSCI2018 graciously found a way around it and assured me that I would pay one night less. The arrangement then was, I would be moved to the President‘s apartment till I depart at the wee hours of the following day to the airport. So, she introduced me to Dan at the beach party on the beach of North Pacific Ocean at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the last day of the program. Then, Idowu and Dan got talking, and Dan would be visiting Lagos and graciously accepted the request to stop at Elizade University.

So, this Lecture is established in honor of Professor Daniel Paul O’Donnell for his love for our University and the shared value we have regarding Open Access.

Our journey into Open Access began with a commemorative training programme to mark the 2014 Open Access Week. Since then, we have being making efforts to promote Open Access and engage with ideas and projects that have to do with Open Access. The ideals of Open Access endeared me to FORCE11 (The Future of Research Communications and e- Scholarship) and allowed me the chance of being part of FSCI. As an institution, we have passed the Open Access policy and developing a repository of Open digital scholarly information.  Notwithstanding, there are challenges to scale and gaps to fill.

As the title of the Lecture, Open Access/Open Science and the Humanities, on a Cross–regional Basis, appears, it is suggestive of the fact that some of the differences across the regions in respect of Open Access will be addressed. We therefore hope to benefit immensely from the knowledge of our distinguished lecturer who has worked and working extensively in these areas. I am therefore glad to welcome Prof. Daniel O’Donnell from Lethbridge to Ilara-mokin.

I appreciate the Senate and Management of Elizade University who allowed this kind of legacy event despite our cradle age.

On a personal note, I never knew God took note of my vision of work that I printed upon assumption of duty in 2014 as the practice then was. In it, I said, I would project Elizade U to the global scholarly community. God has being doing just that and today’s event with Dan is a new climax. To this end, I return all the glory to God and the Father of our LORD Jesus Christ.

Once again, you are all welcome to our young but rising University. I cannot be less assured; it is one of the most beautiful campuses you’ve visited.

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari

Scholarly Communications Librarian/Library Coordinator.

Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Ondo State, Nigeria

Friday, September 28, 2018 

My FSCI 2018: A Scholarship that Makes the Difference

FSCI 2018 Participants

Exactly one month ago, I was part of the august gathering of distinguished scholars, librarians, publishers, research funders and everyone else in the scholarly communications sector that attended the FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute for year 2018 (FSCI2018). The event took place at the very reputable campus of the renowned University of California, San Diego, La Jolla. Participation was global with participants turning up from six (6) continents among which, I guess, two of us from the blessed continent of Africa. I made it, substantially, courtesy of the tuition and travel scholarship granted by the organisers. That said, what is FSCI or even FORCE11 to start with?

FORCE11 (The Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship 2011) is a community of scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and research funders that has arisen organically to help facilitate the change toward improved knowledge creation and sharing. Individually and collectively, it aims to bring about a change in modern scholarly communications through the effective use of information technology. This they do through annual conferences since 2011 and FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute (FSCI) since 2017.

The FSCI, pronounced physkey, situated at the University of California, San Diego, is a week long summer training course, incorporating intensive coursework, seminar participation, group activities, lectures and hands-on training. Participants attended courses taught by world-wide leading experts in scholarly communications. Participants also have the opportunity to discuss the latest trends and gain expertise in new technologies in research flow, new forms of publication, new standards and expectations, and new ways of measuring and demonstrating success that are transforming science and scholarship.

The 2018 programme was structured to allow for one AM (morning) course all week and two PM (afternoon) courses within the week. These are really tempting courses, very appealing. Just like many participants had headaches choosing which course, I eventually settled for the following courses:

Inside Scholarly Communications Today (AM, Monday to Friday) where we covered topics like: History of scholarly communications, Technology and information transfer, Financial flows in scholarly publishing and Peer review and its complications. The course was taken by Cameron Neylon, PhD, Professor of Research Communications, Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin University, Australia 

Open Data Visualization - Tools and Techniques to Better Report Data (PM, Monday-Tuesday) where we learnt about Superset data visualization software and were exposed to other scholarly communication software like Story Map, Dataverse, etc. With Superset, we tried our hands on novel ways data can be visualized beyond charts and graphs. Gaurav Godhwani, Technical Lead and Advisor, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA India) and Chapter Leader, DataKind Bangalore instructed this course. He was the first participant I met upon arriving Revelle College, UCSD and now a friend.

Mentoring the Next Generation of Open Scholars: Approaches, Tools & Tactics (PM, Wednesday- Thursday): Scholarly publishing literacy, Copyright literacy, Open pedagogy, Open source and free software options were discussed. Robyn Hall, Scholarly Communications Librarian, MacEwan University, Edmonton, Canada chaired and instructed this beautiful course.
The benefits of the above courses are numerous. These, apart from plenary sessions, Do-A-Thon and short lightning talks exposed me to the trends, tools and techniques in scholarly communications and open education resources. The PowerPoint Karaoke was novel. Participating in FSCI has broadened my professional horizon. It has connected me to vast resources of people and materials needed to prosper in my new office of Scholarly Communications Librarian, the very first of such office to be so called in Nigeria, I guess.

Adegbilero-Iwari Idowu  and a Sea lion at the La Jolla Cove

As a trained Scholarly Communications Librarian, I can now go ahead to fulfill the demands of my office as a pioneer in my country and mentor others to greater success. But the scholarship makes the difference. I, thus, hope that the scholarship programme is continuous and enlarged so as to afford opportunities for more people, especially from Africa.

Worth mentioning as a special gain is the opportunity to meet Daniel Paul O'Donnell, Professor of English, University of Lethbridge, and among many things, the President of FORCE11. On the heels of this, Professor O'Donnell will be presenting the maiden edition of Visiting Library Scholar Lecture Series of Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Ondo State, Nigeria come September 28, 2018. I am very upbeat at the opportunities it portends for us as an institution, Nigeria as a country and FORCE11 as a community.

Idowu and Claudia of Mississippi State University

La Jolla, an upscale city called a village, provides visitors with great, serene and inspiring experiences. While at UCSD, the 64 degrees cafeteria will ensure your appetites are satisfied but a visit to the Geisel Library will awe your heart. Besides, watching the sun set or kind of deep into the Pacific Ocean on the Piers of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, especially with confident narrations from Steven, the memory of your visit will just be evergreen.

God bless Lusia, Stephanie and all the administrators of the institute and the entire FORCE11 community. God willing, see you at FSCI2019...

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari,

Scholarly Communications Librarian

Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Nigeria

Open Access Walk at Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Nigeria

Open Access Walk Video

Here is a creative Open Access Walk we had before the kickoff of our 2016 Open Access Week programme at Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Nigeria.

https://youtu.be/-xK31fhIrJc

Happy viewing

FORCE11 and The Future we can’t Avoid

It gives me much pleasure to come across the FORCE11 movement. I call it a movement as this represents our collective will to embrace the inevitable future we all must come to. It is better believed on time that it is not going to be business as usual as technology continues to emerge and ravage our modern world. So, we must all be proactive and be ready not only to accept the challenge technology will throw at us but to see how we can adapt to make it work for us. Although, the newer models of research communication are emerging yet the pace remains slow as traditional models still hold sway. The Open access movement is gaining momentum but there is still much to be done. In my opinion, part of that much left to be done is what FORCE11 has come to achieve, taking head-on the future of research communication and e-scholarship to the center burner of scholarly discuss. And we all must join hands; librarians, researchers, publishers and all stakeholders to do this.

Information and communication technology (ICT) continues to exact its telling impact on virtually everything. It has not spared scholarship. Doing research and communicating same has been hugely affected. Going are the days one had to wait twice a year to see the articles of a biennial journal or wait a whole year to see the next conference of a scholarly society organized. The e (electronic-) is taking over. E-conferences, e-seminars (webinars), e-journals and lots more are taking over to further underscore the impact of ICT. In fact, with Open Access and complementary technologies like the Institutional Repository (IR) libraries are even becoming publishers themselves. The social networking technology has also added a new twist to the whole show. Academic Social Networks (Mendeley, ResearchGate, Academia.Edu, etc) gaining strength from open access are also expanding the frontier of research communication in the digital era.

But one other emerging technology that should be considered for the great impact it will have on e-scholarship and research communication in times to come are the Virtual Research Environments (VREs). The VREs are other areas of technology I will like to direct our attention to as we consider the future of research communication and e-scholarship. The VRE is like an amalgamation of several technologies like wikis, blogs, and lots more. The VRE handles well every stage of the research process, from conceptualization to communication. The VRE, allows, within a digital environment the collaboration of researchers beyond the limit of physical borders. 

The VRE like HubZero, Open Science Framework (OSF) and others gives room for collective research. They are good platforms for research collaboration and peer review. In fact, you can see the contribution of every collaborator to the project or research work within a VRE. And real life sharing of research findings is possible within the VRE. This is what I will desire we consider, how the VRE can be used with growing emerging technologies to take us to the future we are envisaging for research communication and e-scholarship. 

I am a librarian with interest in emerging technologies and anything e. I am also passionate about open access. I am a member of the Open Access Week and regular commemorator of the International Open Access Week since I know about it. I am equally a PhD student with interest in Institutional repository. I have gone through the FORCE11 manifesto and convinced that I have a movement to join. Attending the conference will in no small measure grant me first hand information on the future of research communication and enable me to abreast of global efforts being taken in e-scholarship. It will in no doubt enhance my advocacy skill as a librarian with interest in emerging technology in scholarship. It will also empower me to mobilize support for the movement in Nigeria and Africa at large.

I hereby desire to be part of the FORCE2016 in Portland and future activities of the FORCE11 movement.

Kindly consider me for the Travel Fellowship as this will greatly enhance my participation.

The future we can’t avoid is really here; let’s go and consider the FUTURE of research communication!

Thank you.

2015 International Open Access Week: Elizade University at it Again...

ELIZADE UNIVERSITY, ILARA-MOKIN, NIGERIA

Celebrated 2015 International Open Access Week with a Workshop…

Theme: Emerging Research Tools: Focus on Google Scholar, Academia.Edu and Zotero

Date: Thursday, October 22, 2015

Time: 12noon

Venue: Performing and Film Theatre

Participants: All Faculty Members

It was exciting...
Visit http://openaccessweek.org/events/open-access-week-at-elizade-university-emerging-research-tools