Annoucing OBC's First Collective Development Fund award: Fostering Academic Self-Reliance in Nigeria through Open Access Books
Establishing a sustainable platform to empower Nigerian scholars and educators to create, produce, and disseminate high-quality open access books, as well as fostering new collaborations across Academic Publishing Centres in Nigeria's six geopolitical zones
Annoucing OBC's First Collective Development Fund award: Fostering Academic Self-Reliance in Nigeria through Open Access Books
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The Open Book Collective is delighted to announce that we have awarded funding to the first three recipients of our Collective Development Fund. I This post introduces the first project we are funding, to commence in January 2025. Further projects will be announced here shortly.
Project 1: Fostering Academic Self-Reliance in Nigeria through Open Access Books
Building on recent OA book advocacy in Nigeria, the Academic Publishing Centre (APC) at the Federal University of Technology Minna (FUTMinna) undertakes this project to meet the critical demand for locally authored academic materials within Nigerian universities.
Utilizing Datasphir, a local open-source digital infrastructure provider, a sustainable platform will be established to empower Nigerian scholars and educators to create, produce, and disseminate high-quality open access books. In addition to the successful demonstration of the platform and associated website, the project aims to curate a collection of at least 26 published books during this pilot. This will be accomplished via a series of collaborative writing workshops hosted nationwide in collaboration with other Academic Publishing Centres in Nigeria's six geopolitical zones. These specialised workshops, guided by experienced facilitators, will empower authors and librarians to engage in intensive content creation, honing their skills in book production. This project answers a critical need for locally authored, openly accessible educational materials in Nigeria. Beyond serving as a pilot, it will act as a demonstrator for similar initiatives in the region.
In keeping with the OBC’s key values, this project will support multilingual publishing and gender inclusion, and aims to highlight marginalised and underrepresented voices within academia.
Abdulsalami and his collaborators will be providing updates and reports on this critical work here on the OBC blog. We will introduce our second awardee shortly.
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