SN 4 EP 8: Positioning Academic Libraries as Catalysts for Open Access in Africa

This episode features Dr. Frederick Kiwuwa Lugya, University Librarian at Busitema University and President of the Uganda Library and Information Association. Dr. Lugya discusses the transformative power of Open Science and the critical role academic libraries play in bridging the gap between researchers and public access. He shares insights from his 20-year journey in librarianship, the challenges of high-cost academic resources, and his advocacy for a National Open Access Policy in Uganda to ensure that publicly funded research remains accessible to all.

Here are the key things to look out for:

The Necessity of Open Access: Driven by the frustration of students unable to afford expensive e-resources, Dr. Lugya emphasizes that institutional repositories are essential digital infrastructures that remove barriers to scholarship in the Global South. 

Policy and Sustainability: True sustainability for Open Science requires collaborative investment in digital hardware and software, alongside national policies that give researchers academic credit for publishing in open access journals. 

Evolving Librarian Roles: Modern information professionals must move beyond traditional cataloging to master data curation, AI integration, and digital advocacy to effectively support researchers and administrators. 

Disciplinary Information Literacy: By integrating information literacy directly into curricula (such as engineering), librarians and lecturers can collaborate to ensure students gain the competence-based skills needed to ethically evaluate and use digital information.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Welcome to Mazumgumzo – African scholarly conversations, a podcast that highlights the perspectives of various stakeholders in academia and research fields across Africa through open dialogue on mazungumzo on scholarly communication in Africa.

Joy Owango:

Welcome to Mazungumzo – African Scholarly Conversations! I’m your host, Joy Owango, the Executive Director of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa), a capacity-building trust based at the University of Nairobi, Chiromo Campus, Kenya.

Today, I’m delighted to be joined by Dr. Fredrick Kiwuwa Lugya,  a University librarian at Busitema University, President of Uganda Library and Information Association, researcher, and advocate for open science and scholarly communication in Africa. As a librarian by training and by passion, Dr. Lugya brings a unique perspective on how libraries serve not just as repositories of knowledge but as active agents in shaping research culture, digital transformation, and access to information. His work emphasizes the role of information professionals in bridging the gap between researchers, policymakers, and the public, ensuring that African scholarship is both visible and impactful globally.

Dr. Fredrick, it’s a pleasure to have you on Mazungumzo. Welcome!

Dr.Fredrick Lugya

Thank you, Joy. I’m very happy to be hosted on this platform.

Joy Owango:

Alright, so before we explore your current work, could you take us through your journey into librarianship and scholarly communication? What inspired your focus on research visibility and open science within the African context?

Dr. Fredrick Lugya:

First of all, I’ve been a librarian and continue to serve as a librarian for the last close to 20 years. I’ve been around for a while, and you know, my passion for librarianship draws back to the time when I was in library school and when I had my first job with pitch castle. That’s when I was oriented and I started, you know, liking librarianship as a profession. However, when I joined Makerere University in 2005, I was promoted through the ranks, and I worked as a reference and circulation librarian.It was during that time I interacted with students, supporting them through finding resources. I recall very well I was introduced to E resources, and during that time, e resources was very expensive, so students go online, try to look for resources online, and they could not get them, they would be asked to pay. That really became a serious frustration for the students.

By then, the notion of institutions in Africa and in Uganda, starting an institutional repository started as an alternative to provide access to free resources. So we started the consortium of Uganda university libraries, under the leadership of Lisa Maria Musoke, who by then was the university librarian.

So my passion Open Access started then, when I looked at our students at Makerere University struggling to find resources, which resources Makerere university could not pay for, but also the consortium of Uganda University Libraries could not be able to gather enough resources to pay for this paid journal articles. We were so lucky that by then we had funding from CANEK. We had funding from SIDA.

As this funding was rolling out, it became exceedingly very hard for Makerere University and universities in Uganda to pay for this vendor resources. So we had to come up with alternatives of how we can actually start going open. I remember in the year 2007, I participated in the International Open Access week, and actually I won a grant. It is at that point that I started to learn about open access and how good it is, the benefit it has, the challenges that were being faced. I learned more about open access through the International Open Access week. We continued with that, and we started advocating for institutional repository. By then, our institutional repository at Makerere University was called Uganda Square Digital Library before it became Makerere University institutional repository.

My interest into this was as a result of my users failing to get access to resources. So we joined the international open access movement, and we continuously advocated for the same through entire Uganda. As the president of the Uganda Library Association, we really would like to build up the momentum, first of all, to advocate for all institutions in Uganda to have institutional repositories. Thereafter, we would like to see policy formations which can advocate for open access. So my passion of open access originated from failure of my users to gain access to the resources that they want. But also you can see that as we speak now, almost 20 years down the road, we still face the same challenges in Uganda. Which means the open access movement, the Open Science movement, it has to be given the push and the momentum it requires, especially for us in the Global South, so that we can have more resources online, so that our users stop to struggle to find the resources they want. My passion, that’s where it comes from.

Joy Owango:

So as a librarian and researcher, you often emphasize that libraries are at the heart of open science. Could you elaborate on how academic libraries can practically support open science adoption in Ugandan universities and research institutions, bearing the experience you just shared with us that you observed and also went through in the last 20 years?

Dr.Fredrick Lugya

Thank you very much. Joy. I think that is really a very good question. Reason that libraries, whether academic, community, public special, they are the engine of open science. We are the custodian of all information, whether digital or physical. Now we have to participate fully in the open access agenda, and what’s the role of libraries? First of all, libraries have to come out and create the digital infrastructure that removes all the barriers to access to information, that has to come first.

By first of all, having institutional repositories in all libraries.Two, we need to train librarians on how to participate in the development and establishment of the Open Access institutional repositories. You see an institutional repository could be there, but when it’s content is closed, then it doesn’t serve the agenda, so we need to train librarians to establish institutional repositories, but also we need to bring on board other stakeholders, and key to these are the Vice Chancellors the administrators of universities, because a library is the agenda from the parent institution. The library cannot serve its stakeholders unless the parent institution buys into the open access movement, the Open Science movement. So we need to advocate more of the administrators of our institutions to buy into the agenda of the library, and that is advocating for open access.

We need policies in place so that libraries stop advocating, but they have a research agenda. They have a policy in place that guides the entire open science and open access. Actually, I’m really very happy with the work that is being done by the training center in communication. What you’re doing to drive the policy agenda is key in laying a very strong foundation for open science. You shouldn’t stop at national level. We need to move down at institutional level, where every institution not only subscribe to the national policy, but also should have its own unique and customized open science, open access policy that guides their internal operations.

For example, if you look at research institutions like NEMA, they produce a lot of research which could impact policies at national, local level. Universities like Busitema university, we produce a lot of research by students, by our researchers, which we store in our institutional repositories. We need to have a policy which says that everything that is funded by public money, whether local or international, should remain open for everyone.

There is a very big challenge, which has been a long standing challenge, the issue of tenure. Institutions, researchers publish to get tenure. However, the policy in institutions does not leverage or give credit to articles that are published in open access journals. So you find that researchers choose to publish in vendor journals as opposed to open access journals. So there is a need for a policy that advocate for researchers, actually a researcher who publishes in an open access journal should be given more credit and more points during the promotion their tenure.

Lastly, there is a need to provide training to the users. Many times, researchers lack knowledge and understanding of the benefit of open access, including administrators. So we need more awareness workshops, more hands on training of how researchers can navigate these systems.

Joy Owango:

Okay so many African institutions face infrastructural and policy related barriers, which you’ve mentioned, some including research assessment to implementing open science. From your perspective, what critical steps should institutions in Uganda take to build sustainable systems that enable openness in research and data sharing?

Thank you very much for that, and here, I think we need to address the issue of sustainability.. Sustainability of open access and open science can only happen if we allow sharing. The digital infrastructure that supports open science and open access is very expensive, in terms of the hardware and the software and the implementation process. However, if institutions can come together, they do investment that is collaboratively done, then it would hope to reduce on the cost. For example, we have the Research and Education Network in Uganda, which has a digital infrastructure.If all universities, if all research institutions can come together and say, we are establishing some of the initiatives, actually, TCC is doing with the National Council for Science and Technology, where we have a single repository, where we all pull together our resources, and then these resources are shared by everyone,that is one. Two, there’s need to have a pool of resources in terms of funding, where governments pull these sources and then they provide support to institutions. By doing so, they make it easier, even for private institutions. I can give you an example. Private universities struggle a lot to invest into this kind of thing because they don’t have the money. But if the government can come up and this goes back the issue of policy, if government can come up and budget and provide resources for institutions, maybe that could also hope to boost the Open Science and open access movement.

Joy Owango:

Okay, so my next question is, what key skills and mindsets, do you think future Uganda librarians need to thrive in the evolving landscape of open science and digital knowledge management in Africa?

Speaker 2: Dr. Fredrick Lugya

I think what Open Science and open access requires, is that resources are put online. We have a digital infrastructure. This calls for key skills, and the first skill is data curation, which sometimes we call the improved version of cataloging. The ability for the librarians to have skills to process all kinds of information resources, starting from research articles, data sets, audio visual and visual and audio materials, all kinds of materials need to be processed as produced by the researchers. So there is the need to up the data creation and management skill.

We are talking about AI, for example, many librarians, they really don’t understand how AI works and how they can use AI in their work. They need to create more awareness about the impact of AI and how librarians can use AI in their work. There is also need for digital advocacy to skill the librarian in indigenous Advocacy and Communication. You could have the resources, you could have the technology, but librarians could relax the skill to digitally train other people digitally advocate, advocacy digitally goes into designing posters, and then you you send them online to create a web.

Being able to train other people on how to use the resources, being able to understand open access and open science, and being able to talk about it in different forums, among the administrators. For me, I think if we are able to do that, we shall be able to help librarians. And most importantly, librarians need to be proactive. They need to work collaboratively, and they need to have entrepreneur skills that way we can be able to support the Open Science and open access movement.

Joy Owango:

At Busitema University,you’re leading several initiatives, including integrating information literacy into engineering programs and developing discipline based information literacy curricula. Could you tell us more about how these projects are reshaping how librarians, lecturers and students collaborate, and what impact this has on teaching and research outcomes?

Dr. Fredrick Lugya:

Thank you very much, and I’m happy that you’re mentioning the issue of disciplinary based information literacy. I’m grateful to the leadership of the university, and also I’m grateful to the funding we received from electronic information for libraries(EIF) no it’s called Engineering Information Foundation in the New York(EIF) which funded this project in the south. When they funded this project, it was an eye opener. Right now we’re talking about competence based learning, or competence based curriculum, moving from A level secondary school into university. I think as Busitema university, we are visionary to start this four years back, or five years back, what has it done? We are seeing a collaboration between the librarian and the lecturer, starting from curriculum development, curriculum implementation to designing learning materials to pass through delivery to evaluation of students.

At all levels, a librarian participates fully into the learning of the students.This brings the librarian to the forefront of learning, because they are able to participate with the students, they are able to guide the students through finding resources, the students are able to gain soft skills. For example, how do I use a journal article in my work?  Not only I learned how to find a journal article, they learn how to read it, they learn how to use it in their work, they learn how to evaluate sources, they learn how to cite, they learn all sorts of things that help them into their research.

For us, we are very grateful that we started five years back, because right now it becomes very easy to implement competence based curriculum, which is coming to the university next year. One of the challenges Open Access has done is that, there is a lot of information available for free on the internet. One of the skills that we need to train our users is, how do you easily evaluate the right information? When do you use a podcast like this that you’re recording? When do you use an article from a newspaper? When you use a video from YouTube, or when do you use a magazine article in your research? So  the disciplinary based information literacy training that we conducted and implemented at Busitema University, we actually rolled out other faculties in the university. It has so much hope for our students to use ethically, to use information and be able to write well, to be able to find information online, and it has been a plus for us.

Joy Owango:

Okay? So finally, as you look ahead, if you could drive one major transformation in how Ugandan institutions produce, share and govern knowledge in the next decade, what would it be and why?

Dr. Fredrick Lugya:

Thank you very much, Joy. I think that is really a very good one. One key thing, but also it has other components, I would say, how do we get a national open access policy in place? If we do, then that national policy will have all the components that drive this country in the right direction. Because if we have a national open access policy, it will talk about issues of resource sharing, it will talk about issues of a union catalog, it will bring the librarians to the boardrooms, where issues of policy are being discussed, we shall have an Act of Parliament that would bring, the mandate of the librarians out so that we stop advocating and we are able to talk with authority.

The training of School Librarians, the training of librarians in the community libraries and their funding will all be articulated in this policy. So one key thing, the one bullet that would get us where we want is the adoption of a national open science policy for Uganda.

Joy Owango:

Okay, and then what else are you looking at?

Dr. Fredrick Lugya:

Sorry?

Joy Owango:

What else are you looking at beyond that?

Dr.Fredrick Lugya:

One other thing that we are looking at is, of course, I’ve talked about the need to have an Act of Parliament, okay? Which will regularize the work of the librarians that they do. But also, another key thing which actually had slipped off my mind, is having the National Library of Uganda. We are a country without a national library, and you cannot talk about legal people. You know, when you talk about open access, you need to have the Legal Deposit Act. We do have that act, but it’s not operationalized, it’s not implemented, because we don’t have a national library in Uganda.

If we have a national library in Uganda, then that means it will be a public library where anything that is published in Uganda, is legally deposited in that library. So it becomes a national refresh library, a reference point, the way how we are seeing in developed countries. That means that you have a point where, if you’re looking for any information published in Uganda, published about Uganda, you would find it in the National Library of Uganda. Therefore, that means we should have reinforced the issue of open access and open science. Also another key thing, lastly, there is a need to really do enough work to engage the generators of information and those are the researchers.

Many times these researchers, they don’t really understand that actually, when they generate information and they provide it by open access, even their work will not only gain citation, but it will create an impact the communities where they come from. Let me give you an example. We’ve just celebrated the International Open Access week, and everything that we’ve done in this week is available on our website. The things that we need was conducted on Wednesday of that week.We conducted an advocacy which we called “Amplifying your voice.”

When we asked researchers to spend one minute to tell the community the research that they do and how that research is helping the community, and then upload that video online on our social media handle. I’m telling you, it created a very big impact. So there is a need to create awareness among researchers on the benefits of  their research, if other people are able to find it and it creates an impact and solves a problem in their community.

Joy Owango:

Okay, alright, then, thank you so much. This has been very enlightening. I’m glad you made time to be in our podcast. We are excited about the work that you’re doing at Busitema University, and also through the Uganda Library Association, what you’re trying to do to advocating open science.Once again, thank you, and do have a lovely day. Bye for now.

Dr. Fredrick Lugya:

Thank you very much joy, and I wish you a lovely evening.

Outro:

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