Busitema University will join the rest of the World to celebrate the International Open Access Week, November 7-11, 2022. The Open Access Week is an international event that brings together institutions, academics, researchers, librarians, administrators, policymakers, students and the entire community to advocate for free and immediate online access to scholarship.

While this Year’s OA theme is “Open for Climate Justice”, Busitema University has chosen the theme: Open with Purpose: developing an Open Access Policy &Institutional Repository Policy for Busitema University. The chosen theme aligns well with the current state of open access and is intended to achieve the goal - to develop a policy framework and digital infrastructure to open and allow unlimited access to research outputs, hence advancing the University’s mission “To provide inclusive high standard Training, quality research and outreach for industrialization and sustainable development” and contributing to the SDGs and UNESCO agenda of Open Science and Open Access. Specifically, our goal is to:

1. Promote and advance increased awareness of Open Science (OS), Open Access (OA) and the contribution of the academics to digital archiving using the Institutional Repository (IR);
2. Develop OA and IR policies through a collaborative and participatory effort involving academic staff. Interactive discussions will take place between Monday 7, 2022 and Thursday 10, November, 2022;
3. To launch the Busitema University Knowledge Base (BU-Kb) – a central Web-based platform that brings together research teams to collectively and collaboratively work together on research projects despite their geographical disparity occasioned by the multi-campus model;
4. To launch the Journal Management System (JMS) – a Web-based window of interaction allows exchange of research outputs among different players in the publishing process, including researchers/ authors, reviewers, editors, and collectors.

The Campus interactions shall be physical and will take place between Monday 7 to Thursday 10 th November 2022 while the closing event will be on Friday 11 th November, 2022 via Zoom.

Institutions, academics, researchers, librarians, administrators, policymakers, students and the entire University community is invited to contribute and participate in our quest for developing policies to guide our agenda of opening research and scholarship to the World.

Follow the navigation bar to the week long activities, the Friday closing ceremony and links to the draft open access policy and institutional repository policy. We do welcome your participation and comments to improve the draft policies. Send all your comments to - library@busitema.ac.ug and cc to flugya@busitema.ac.ug

At the climax of the celebrations will be on Friday November 11, 2022 during which which we shall launch:

1. Busitema University Knowledge Base System,
2. Busitema University Journal Management System, and
3. presentation of the report of the draft of the OA & IR Policies.

While we would prefer your physical presence, we do welcome your attendance via a Zoom link during the closing event.