Our Chris Zielinski made a number of excellent points in his comment Open access in sub-Saharan Africa - RealKM [ https://realkm.com/2022/02/03/open-access-in-sub-saharan-africa/ ] on the Book titled Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access. [ https://realkm.com/open-access-to-scholarly-knowledge-in-the-digital-era... ]
OA or commercial, the fact is that “colonization of minds” is still there. Yesterday there was a workshop on ARCIF (Arab Citation and Impact Factor) https://emarefa.net/arcif/# . One researcher from an Arab country said it clearly that “we still think that what comes from the West is better” He said it in Arabic of course. OA salvaged access to research during COVID-19 and is still doing this.
Best regards. Najeeb Al-Shorbaji
HIFA profile: Najeeb Al-Shorbaji recently retired from the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked since 1988 in different capacities. He was most recently Director of the Knowledge, Ethics and Research Department at WHO headquarters, Geneva. Previously he was Coordinator for Knowledge Management and Sharing in EMRO (Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office), Egypt. He is a member of a number of national and international professional societies and associations specialised in information management and health informatics. He has authored over 100 research papers and articles presented in various conferences and published in professional journals. He is a member of the HIFA Steering Group and the HIFA Working Group on Multilingualism.
http://www.hifa.org/support/members/najeeb
http://www.hifa.org/projects/multilingualism
Email: shorbajin AT gmail.com
