ICOA 2014 - International conference on Open Access and scientific research: towards new values

While the Open Access (OA) movement, with its green and gold routes, has reached a certain maturity in the world
and mainly in developed countries thanks to the policies of strengthening open access to Scientific and Technical
Information (STI) in all areas, it continues to progress in the developing countries including the Arab and African
states.
Indeed, the advance of OA in these countries was prejudiced by the lack of awareness among researchers and
policy makers of the benefits it could provide in terms of visibility of scientific production, democratization of
access to research results and application of performance indicators in the academic environment.
This conference is a contribution in order to propel the OA movement globally and especially in the countries of
the South endorsing reflection on issues related to the role of OA in the valorizing of scientific research. It tries to
show the different approaches and policies related to this new model as well as the feedback and the role that
libraries have to play in this new scene. The objective of the conference is to promote the exchange of
experiences, views, and research results between researchers, academics, and librarians from different disciplines,
on related aspects to the new models of scholarly communication. It will be a good occasion to discuss how to
offer solutions to common challenges.
It will provide an overview on the latest innovations in the field of OA to STI and raise awareness of researchers
and different stakeholders of the benefits of OA and get them actively involved in this movement. Moreover, there
will be an opportunity to build networks of collaborative work between researchers from different countries that
could initiate joint projects.
Organizers:
The research unit "Digital Library and Heritage", of the
Higher Institute of Documentation (ISD), Manouba University, Tunisia
In partnership with
The National University Center for Scientific and Technical Documentation (CNUDST), Tunisia
Conference Chair:
Mohamed Ben Romdhane, Higher Institute of Documentation (ISD), Manouba University, Tunisia
Contact : mbromdhane-AT-yahoo.fr
Themes:
Academic researchers can submit papers in one of the following themes:
- Open Access Theories: the theoretical foundations of the OA movement and the reasons for its success or failure;
- Requirements of digital scholarly communication: the transition from traditional to digital scholarly
communication and the role of ICTs and networks to enhance the development of OA;
- Economic Approaches of OA: the limits of the traditional economic model of scientific communication
and the emergence of new business models related to OA and the development of digital output and
digitisation;
- Open Access Policies : the establishment of institutional, national or international policies for access to
STI;
- Implementing Open Access at universities: achievement and evaluation of OA resources such as open
archives (disciplinary and institutional repositories), Open Access Journals (OAJ), scholarly social
networks…);
- Open Access and utilization of scientific research: State of the art and emerging new practices for
researchers;
- Open Access to STI and Libraries: role of the libraries and the librarians in the establishment,
management of OA services and the promotion of OA ;
- Open Access, copyright and emerging forms of scholarship: aspects related to traditional and new forms
of copyright, including Creative Commons, and new forms of scholarship ;
- Scholarly communication and ethics: aspects relating to the quality and integrity of scholarship.
Important dates:
- February 15, 2014 : call for abstracts
- March 30, 2014 : deadline for submission of extended abstracts (2 pages)
- April 30, 2014 : Notification of acceptance of abstracts
- July 30, 2014 : Deadline for submission of full papers
- September 22, 2014 : Acceptance Notification of full papers
- November, 27-28 2014 : Conference
Submission:
Authors interested in one of the themes of the conference are invited to submit, in the first instance, long
abstracts of their proposals before the deadline as specified above in English, French or Arabic. Authors should
follow the instructions of submission as mentioned in the platform (they should contain the title, problematic
issues, methodology, the main results, keywords and a brief bibliography). This text should be 2 pages long, RTF,
doc or docx formats, Times New Roman font, size 12, and single-spaced.
The authors of accepted abstracts will be asked later to submit the full text according to the model which will be
communicated to all concerned authors in time.
Each full-text paper will be anonymously evaluated by two reviewers from the scientific committee who should
decide the final acceptance or refusal of the paper.