Increasing awareness of and demand for Open Science Infrastructure to support Higher Education and Research Communities in Sierra Leone

Thomas Philip Songu

Funding Area: Community governance / Gobernanza comunitaria

Problem Statement: Sierra Leone is among the world’s poorest countries and still recovering from a long civil war from 1991-2002 that devastated the country, including its education sector. Although several efforts are underway to address the challenges, the problem is so vast that the need for more investment into education still remains pressing. The higher education and research institutions are currently struggling to implement advanced internet-based digital learning platforms, such as DSAPCE, Moodle, Blackboard - considered the norm in most advanced universities. This challenge, combined with the lack of exposure to alternative learning resources, keeps the quality of education provided far below their counterparts in the sub region and globally. Lecturers and students are faced with daunting challenges related to isolation from their peers and a lack of teaching resources. Improving access to ICT infrastructure through the provision of a reliable internet and digital learning tools for academic and research in Sierra Leone will contribute to improving quality teaching and learning for better learning outcomes.

Proposed Activities: With the establishment of the Sierra Leone Research and Education Network (SLREN), the NREN and the library community are looking to foster open science and open access to playing a critical role in the creation, management, discovery and reuse of scholarship. SLREN and the library consortium are excited about the opportunity to engage with universities, research funders, and other organizations within the Open Science ecosystem to work together in building truly open infrastructure for the future. SLREN in collaboration with the West and Central Africa Research and Education Network (WACREN) proposes to host a series of national capacity building training to strengthen the higher education and research community governance in Sierra Leone. National Open The capacity training workshops will bring together science, education and research community of policy-makers, library communities of practice, IT practitioners and funders in Sierra Leone to discuss a wide array of open science matters, including infrastructure, policy and capacity building. This includes activities such as but not limited to: 1. Highlight the importance of NREN, open science/scholarship and access to research in achieving the SDGs and develop a shared vision for an open science policy framework for Sierra Leone 2. Consult with diverse stakeholders and partners to understand the landscape and establish a priority-setting process 3. Identify opportunities for building synergies in the science, technology and innovation ecosystem for open science 4. Co-create a roadmap for an enabling policy environment for Sierra Leone, including priority infrastructure and capacity building 5. Organizing community workshops to discuss governance needs and (re)design governance structures. 6. Convene a dedicated committee/working group of key stakeholders to lead work on diversifying governance. 7. Work on improving governance processes, e.g. reviewing and evolving bylaws and other policies. 8. Capacity building for ICT, library and faculty staff and 9. Facilitate a series of meetings and community building training events to formalise open access/open science policies at institutional and national levels using the infrastructure as enabler. Expected to start from November 2023 to June 2025, pending on availability funding The resources required will include but not limited to the following: 1. Travel cost for both national and international participants 2. Accommodation and facilities to hold workshops and seminars 3. Digital equipment and stationaries to produce training materials 4. Photography and press coverage to enhance advocacy 5. Report writing and other professional work

Openness: By “Open Science” we are referring to a system for scholarly communications that is built to maximize the dissemination and reuse of all research outputs-including data, code, protocols, methods, and publications-throughout the research lifecycle. With the “infrastructure” of scholarly communications, we are referring to the tools and metadata used to create, share, and assess these outputs of scholarly research. Importantly, this includes data about the scholarly research process itself, such as reference lists and funding information. These metadata play an increasing role in the assessment of research outputs, research institutions, and researchers themselves, and drive incentives within many areas of the research process. What if there were a model in which commercial players could develop and support open infrastructure using service-based business models that didn’t involve ownership of this infrastructure or create dependencies on any single provider? What would a system like that look like? What kinds of openness would it require? Could a company working in such an environment recover the investment required to develop their products and services? We believe a model where commercial providers develop and maintain open scholarly communications infrastructure requires four basic principles of openness: Open Source, Open Data, Open Integrations, and Open Contracts

Challenges: Providing open scholarly infrastructure is likely to be more challenging than providing Open Access to scholarly articles. The primary challenge in moving towards Open Access publication models has been a reorganization of how publication costs are paid, rather than a fundamentally new approach to scholarly publication. Open scholarly infrastructure will require completely new models of interaction between commercial companies (publishers, technology providers, data aggregators), non-profit organizations, and the research community. Developing open infrastructure for the creation, dissemination, and assessment of scholarly outputs will require parties with disparate incentives to work together to overcome difficult challenges. Proprietary sources supply much of this critical metadata. ORCID, the Initiative for Open Citations, and Crossref’s new Event Data service are important counterexamples that provide hope for future progress. However, these open services are a small minority in an environment where most of the data needed to support Open Science is controlled by commercial companies, both big and small. This growing reliance on a handful of companies to provide proprietary analytics and decision tools for research funders and universities poses serious risks for the future.

Neglectedness: The higher education landscape in Sierra Leone is changing! The Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) has identified education as national priority for its development agenda. The Parliament of Sierra Leone has recently approved the establishment of the National STI Council, which will significantly accelerate Sierra Leone’s participation in the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI) for Sub Saharan Africa. Participation in SGCs will enable Sierra Leone to collaborate in research and evidence-based policy develop that will contribute to socio-economic development for Sierra Leone. SLREN, through the Ministry of Technical and Higher Education (MTHE), will approach various development partners, including the World Bank, European Union, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FDCO), UNESCO, the Global Research Councils, etc. to support for Open Science and Open infrastructure initiatives in Sierra Leone. SLREN will also collaborate the West and Central Africa Research and Education Network (WACREN) and other regional and global research and education network to seek funding from development partners.

Success: The project Goal is to ensure that Sierra Leonean teachers, lecturers, students and researchers have access open educational resources and with state of art network infrastructures and applications that their peers are enjoying in other parts of the world, thus allowing them to play an active role in regional and global teaching, learning and research activities. Impact: Improved internet connectivity for equitable access to digital learning platforms, use and knowledge outputs by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Sierra Leone Intermediate outcomes • Hosted open infrastructure • Hosted institutional repositories • Hosted national journal platform • Training and capacity building program for librarians and ICT • Open Science Infrastructure policies at institutional level and a national policy drafted and submitted to the appropriate authority. High level outcomes • Increased internet bandwidth in institutions • Increased Usage of national research and education network and services • Increased digital learning capabilities • Increased publications and presentations among member institutions • Increased local and regional publications and engagements • Increased skills for campus network and REN managers; • Increased network of country and regional mentorships • Increased support to REN activities by policy and decision makers;

Total Budget: 24,032

Affiliations: Yes. 1) The Sierra Leone Research and Education Network (SLREN), 2) The National Science, Technology and Innovation Council (NSTIC) and 3) Njala University,

LMIE Carveout: SLREN Is An Acronym For Sierra Leone Research And Education Network. We Are A Research And Education Community Made Up Of Universities, Libraries, Research Institutions, Colleges, Secondary And Primary Schools In Sierra Leone. The primary target beneficiaries are the entire players in the education sector in Sierra Leone upon formal application. These include but are not limited to universities, libraries, research institutions, colleges, secondary and primary schools

Team Skills: Thomas has spent over 2twenty years within the IT industry with extensive implementation experience of best practice Information and Communication Technology (ICT) within large public and private global organizations. He has more than ten years research experience with strong research record in all areas of Information and Communication Technology, Information Systems Management, Information Security and Privacy, with a special emphasis on the theoretical foundations applications of information Security and cryptography, including data science, network and IoT security, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at various levels, ranging from Foundation Year to Post Graduate. He was a member of the team that developed the curriculum framework for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Sierra Leone. Thomas has also recently worked with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) as subject matter expert for the development of Open Distance Learning (ODL) policy, including course enhancement with Open Educational Resources (OER) and the deployment of Institutional Repository for Njala University

Submission Number: 57