Libraries and librarians in open science adoption: A reflection from Tanzania

Abstract

The study aimed to establish the role of libraries and librarians in fostering open science adoption in Tanzania. The research objectives were examining the roles of library and librarians in OS adoption; determining the challenges of OS adoption presents to libraries and, subsequently, proposes solutions. Structured questionnaires were employed for data collection from 113 librarians. The results show 81.1% librarians were familiar with Open Science while 18.9% indicating otherwise. This finding signals the need for awareness creation, advocacy campaign, training and seminars not only to familiarise the librarians with the term OS but also adopt it. The identified OS benefits include broadening access to scientific data and research publications and (57.5%); promoting collaborative research through ICT tools (34.5%); enhancing public research consumer choices (31.9%); raising productivity under tight budgets (31%); and promoting citizens’ trust in science (22.1%). Strategies for enhancing OS include institutional policies (66.4%), funding (57.5%), building requisite infrastructure (55.8%), and capacity-building (50.4%). The paper concludes that, Tanzania needs open science to broaden access to scientific publications and data considering the tight budgets allocated to subscription for paywall learning resources. Implicitly, libraries should adopt and invest more in OS for better results despite the teething problems.