WSU BECOMES SIGNATORY OF THE BERLIN DECLARATION TO OPEN ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE

Walter Sisulu University has been instated as a signatory of the Berlin Declaration to Open Access to Knowledge, an international platform which grants free and online access to academic information such as publications and data.

WSU joins over 700 international entities, including governments, universities, and research institutions who share the vision expressed in the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

The Berlin Declaration was instituted in 2003 to provide a global and free-to-access representation of scientific knowledge and cultural heritage.

Speaking on the signatory status, WSU’s Manager of Institutional Repository and E-Data in the department of Library & Information Services, Adelin Kantore said: “This signifies a commitment to support the declaration by ensuring that WSU as a producer of knowledge will make necessary efforts in line with the Berlin Declaration and encourage our researchers and grant recipients to publish their work according to the principles of the open access paradigm.”

Kantore added that several WSU academics and researchers are already publishing on Open access platforms and that these holders of knowledge and cultural heritage needed to support open access by providing their resources on the internet.

“WSU encourages their researchers to publish work in open access journals. Furthermore, we have two repositories which are vital for dissertations and thesis, journal articles, and conferences proceedings among other content as well as Figshare for Research data management to support the researcher’s Self-archiving by depositing a free copy of an electronic document, or research datasets online to provide open access to it,” concluded Kantore.

Senior Director for Research and Innovation, Professor Wilson Akpan, said that publishing in accredited Open Access channels helps researchers to increase their citation footprint in the knowledge economy.

“Our researchers are exerting their scholarly impact by publishing in reputable open access journals, and that impact is bound to grow. We encourage them to choose their dissemination channels carefully and keep their focus only on quality. Needless to say, high citation impact guarantees the university’s international visibility,” said Akpan.

For more information on Open Access visit: https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration

By Yanga Ziwele