African Population and Health Research Center - Importance of Open Access (OA) and Open Data

"Kenya is a technology leader in East Africa and so it should come as no surprise that Kenya is also one of the countries leading the way in the Open Access and Open Data efforts on the continent. But what are these initiatives and why should they matter to you? It is important to do research, publish it, as well as disseminate it to a wider population for knowledge sharing. Data is equally key for decision making, planning and development of a nation. That is where the ideas of open access and open data come in. There are two similar movements changing the way we think about sharing knowledge in a free and accessible way to get the information to make more impact in the society. Watch a video on the World Bank’s Open Data Initiative here and visit Kenya’s Open Data website here.  The 2002 Budapest Open Access initiative defines Open Access as 'making content freely available on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.' Although definitions vary slightly, Open Data is an effort to encourage more transparency from government agencies and institutions by having them post all accurate data online for the public use and review.  Recently APHRC staff had an opportunity to participate in the Open Access (OA) workshop at the University of Nairobi during the global open access week. The workshop was organized to help sensitize organizations/institutions in Kenya about open access and institutional repositories... APHRC is getting more involved in open access and open data work in a couple of ways.  First, APHRC’s Library is working to create its own Institutional Repository (IR) system through the use of the Open Access software called Dspace...  Second, APHRC’s new Data for African Development Working Group has decided to assess the open data movement as part of its core mandate. This work will involve reviewing information on unpublished data, either through a country specific case study, or at the international level in several ways...