An Open Knowledge Primer for OER Africa (Revised)

Open licensing, Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access came first. Now, increasingly, academics and researchers are making Open Science and Open Data integral to discussions about scholarly communication. Rather than segmenting them, many practitioners use the phrase “Open Knowledge.” Much of this primer is focused on open access although open licensing, open science, and OER are also discussed. It is meant to complement work carried out at OER Africa on OER and intellectual property rights/copyright. This primer is an updated and revised version of a primer that we published in 2019.

The primer has six main sections:

• Open licensing and intellectual property rights;
• Open science and Africa;
• Open data and Africa;
• Open access publishing;
• African university repositories and policies; and
• Open knowledge and African librarians.