Busitema University Library Secures Major Grant to Establish Open Access Journal Network
The University Library is delighted to announce that Dr. Fredrick Kiwuwa Lugya has been awarded a grant of fifty million Uganda Shillings (UGX 50,000,000) from the Busitema University Research and Innovation Fund (BURIF) to establish the Busitema Campus-Based Open Access Journal Network (B-CubeJN) . This flagship initiative, selected under the thematic area of Wealth Creation, marks a significant step forward in the university’s commitment to advancing open scholarship and amplifying its research visibility.
The B-CubeJN project will establish six peer-reviewed, open-access journals, one for each of Busitema University’s six campuses. Each journal will be strategically aligned with the disciplinary focus of its host faculty, creating authoritative publishing platforms in fields such as Engineering, Health Sciences, Agriculture, Management, Natural Resources, and Science Education. By adopting a decentralised yet networked model, the initiative will harness specialised expertise across campuses while fostering a unified identity for Busitema’s growing research output.
A central objective of the project is to unlock the considerable body of research presented at the university’s annual symposia between 2023 and 2025, which to date has remained unpublished and underutilised. The inaugural issues of the six journals will draw upon this rich repository of scholarship, ensuring that more than sixty high-quality research articles receive formal publication, are assigned Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), and become fully citable and discoverable within the global academic community.
In keeping with the principles of Open Science, all articles will be made freely accessible via the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, thereby transforming publicly-funded research into a public good available to scholars, policymakers, industry professionals, and local communities alike. To further enhance the discoverability and impact of the research, all six journals will be submitted for indexing in leading databases such as Google Scholar and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). This is expected to contribute meaningfully to the university’s webometric ranking and overall scholarly footprint.
Sustainability has been embedded in the project’s design from the outset. Beyond the initial grant funding, which supports essential infrastructure and training, the university is providing substantial in-kind contributions. Academic staff, including deans and professors, will serve on editorial boards, ensuring intellectual leadership and continuity. In addition, the project will train eighteen editorial staff members in contemporary publishing practices and platform management, thereby building enduring capacity within the institution.
By transforming previously unpublished symposium proceedings into a dynamic and accessible body of knowledge, the B-CubeJN initiative directly advances Uganda’s Vision 2040 and the National Development Plan. It strengthens the national innovation ecosystem, promotes a knowledge-based economy, and ensures that research conducted at Busitema University delivers tangible benefits to society.
The University Library extends its sincere congratulations to Dr. Lugya on this outstanding achievement, which reflects the library’s growing leadership in research support and open scholarship. The university community now looks forward to the official launch of the six journals and the lasting contributions they will make to research, innovation, and national development.