Open Access in Egypt

Repositories | Organisations | Projects | Journals | Copyright | Funding | Publishers | News | Other

Open Access Repositories

• The Digital Assets Repository (DAR)

The Digital Assets Repository (DAR), is a system developed at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, The Library of Alexandria. DAR acts as a repository that preserves and archives all types of media (including books, slides, negatives, manuscripts, maps, audio and video) and provides public access to these digitized collections through web-based search and browsing facilities. Over 115,000 books and 35,000 images are now available on DAR's website. All out-of-copyright books are available on the Internet. For books that are in copyright, Internet users can browse only 5% of the book with a minimum of 10 pages. However, all the books are available within BA, with simultaneous access limited to the number of physical copies available.

• Cairo University Repository

The new repository at Cairo University is built using DSpace. It presents a comprehensive bibliographies of some digitized materials and it is constructed to host (publications, theses, manuscripts, pictures, conference materials..etc).The interface is in arabic with searching facilities in each section.

• The British University in Egypt's e-print server

The BUE e-print repository supports OAI 2.0. It provides access to a collection of self archived papers by BUE academics in order to make their research output freely accessible to all. Also, it offers searching and browsing facilities using a full range of fields. Using Web 2.0 feeds as RSS or atom feeds can be set up to keep updated. The BUE e-print repository is powered by EPrints 3.

• Institutional Digital Repository For Library and Information Department at Faculty of Arts, Menofia University (IDR-MDLIS)

AUC DAR Repository is the first institutional repository in Arab countries for libraries and information launched by Menofia University-Library and Information Department. It provides access to the collections of the institution as theses, e-books, journal articles, and digital (Text, Video, Photo, and audio) and it offers searching and browsing facilities using a full range of fields. IDR-MDLIS adopts Dublin Core as a criterion of metadata to organize the entities and uses Greenstone program to build the digital repository.

• AUC Digital Archives and Research Repository (DAR)

AUC DAR Repository launched by the American University in Cairo (AUC). An open access institutional repository for sharing and preservation of scholarly collections, based on DSpace. AUC DAR features multidisciplinary subjects as oral histories, views of artifacts, jewelry, image collections and much more including a collection of Egyptian postcards. with publications of graduate student theses, faculty and department publications and special digital collections. Providing RSS feed from any AUC DAR collection or sub-collection of new additions.

Open Access Organisations/Groups

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Open Access Projects/Initiatives

Access to knowledge (A2K)

The Library of Alexandria (BA) has initiated several activities to spread the philosophy of access to knowledge (A2K) and build local capacity of researchers, librarians and practitioners to effectively implement new and emerging (A2K) tools and practices. The (A2K)'s statement of purpose is to raise the awareness of a wide array of public audience on the relationship between Intellectual Property (IP)and development on the international level, with a special focus on Access to Knowledge, for the purposes of promoting innovation and creativity and stimulating the development of an inclusive knowledge society in the Arab world.

Internet Archive

On April 2002, ¬the Internet Archive of California, USA and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) of Alexandria, Egypt announced a partnership venture to promote the distribution of digital material to all researchers. The BA Internet Archive is the first center of its kind established outside US. It is designed to act as a backup for the mother archive in San Francisco, USA and a hub for Africa and the Middle East. The Archive now includes over 70 billion webpages covering the period 1996 – 2007, 2000 hours of Egyptian and US television broadcasts, 1,000 archival films, and 25,000 digitized books acquired through the . It is widely accessed through the BA website, via the Wayback Machine, with over 31 million hits yearly. The Internet Archive has also donated some equipments to the BA’s My Book: Digital and Printed project. The Archive is run and maintained through the BA’s International School of Information Science (ISIS).

• Supercourse:

The Supercourse is a global partnership anchored in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA). It is a repository of lectures on public health and prevention targeting educators across the world. The Supercourse has a network of over 65,000 scientists in 174 countries who are sharing for free a library of 37,12 lectures in 31 languages. The Supercourse has been produced at the WHO Collaborating Center University of Pittsburgh, with core developers Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D., Faina Linkov, Ph.D., Mita Lovalekar, M.D., Ph.D. and Eugene Shubnikov M.D..

• Science Supercourse:

On 05 January 2009, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) launched the Science Supercourse Project. It hopes to provide the most updated and accessible online science lectures free of charge to assist educators and scholars from developing countries. This effort was established in order to build a knowledge network in four main scientific domains namely: Medicine, Engineering, Environment and Agriculture. This is to be achieved through building an internet archive of 100,000 golden PowerPoint lectures within a year and one million in three years through the participation of scientists worldwide and the availability of these lecture via the Internet. The project is managed by the Center for Special Studies and Programs (CSSP) and the Information & Communication Technology Department at the BA.

The 4 main investigators of this project are: Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Library of Alexandria, Prof. Ronald E. LaPorte, Director Telecommunications and Disease Monitoring, WHO Collaborating Centre, Professor of Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh, USA. Prof. Gilbert Omen, Professor of Internal Medicine, Human Genetics and Public Health University of Michigan Medical School, and Prof. Vinton Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist Google.

Digitizing the National Archives in Egypt to Boost the Arabic Content

The national project for the digital documentation of the National Archives of Egypt (NAE) was inaugurated on 14th of December, 2009, following the launch of the world's first domain name in Arabic script. The National Archives' website provides online access to a selection of the archive material, most of which is in Arabic. The project aims to help preserve and document the heritage of the Egyptian National Archives and it is expected to increase the Arabic e-content and broaden the web access to Arabic speakers with over twenty-five million records representing over ninety million documents. NAE is equipped with a powerful search engine as it is designed to be an educational resource for researchers and historians around the world. The website also provides information on seminars organized by the NAE.

Open Access Journals

According to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), there are about 9 journals listed in (DOAJ), which have their origin in Egypt.

Copyright

Creative Commons (CC) Egypt

The legal team from CC Egypt, headed by Hala Essalmawi, produced the first BY-NC-SA license draft adapted to Egyptian law.

Funding Policies

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Publishers and Open Access

Hindawi Publishing Corporation publishes a collection of peer-reviewed, Open Acess Journals covering several areas in STM (Science, Technology, and Medicine). All articles published in Hindawi journals are open access and distributed under the Creative Commons attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Current Local News & Events

Open Access Week October 18– 24, 2010

Many activities are conducted through the Open Access Week with students, university staff and librarians in Egypt.

Arab Initiatives of Open Access

The Arab Initiatives in the area of free access is a blog set up by Dr. Abdel-rahman Farrag and Mr. Sulieman Salem Alshuhri on the arabic OA initiatives. The blog can be browsed and read in Arabic or Google's English.

Contributor's contact details

Mandy Taha, Library of Alexandria, Egypt.

e-mail: mandy.taha@bibalex.org