EIFL open access advocacy grants deliver big results | EIFL

“Open access (OA) seeks to remove price and permission barriers that prevent knowledge from being shared. OA increases visibility, usage and impact of research and provides significant economic, social and educational benefits. The [Electronic Information for Libraries] EIFL-OA programme harnesses these opportunities to make open access a new norm. Through EIFL-OA, 11 library consortia and libraries in Africa and Eastern Europe were awarded small grants in 2011 to implement national and institutional OA advocacy campaigns to reach out to research communities.  As a result of the grants, over 1700 national policy makers, research administrators, researchers, students, journal editors and publishers, and librarians attended workshops or other outreach events; educational materials in seven languages have been developed, including six short videos; 30 new OA repositories were set up and there was an increase in research output deposited in existing OA repositories; and three Universities launched new OA publishing initiatives...” [Use the link above to access the complete post, providing descriptions of the OA projects in each country.]