Open science drive gets buy-in from university leaders

"A greater understanding of open science appears to be taking root among university leaders in North and East Africa, with many of them keen to take proactive steps to support efforts for the adoption thereof within their institutions. This was the outcome of an advocacy campaign rolled out by the Association of African Universities (AAU), the Public Library of Science (PLOS), and the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa) and published earlier in March.... Surveys, following the workshops, showed that 85.98% of North African workshop participants had a better understanding of open science after the event and 12.33% a moderate comprehension, whereas 97.53% of the East African participants had a good understanding of open science, and 2.47% a moderate understanding. Participants of both the workshops indicated that they would work with institutional leaders to support open science. Steps they can take include collaborating with library services to promote awareness about open science, encouraging the integration of open-access journals in the university’s journal selection strategy, encouraging research directorates to adopt open data and evaluation in academic writing processes, working on the adoption of professional incentives for academics who employ open science-based outputs and working with the vice-chancellors’ offices to support the process of the adoption of open science in universities, which may support institutions in some of the rankings...."