Basic Information:

Theme: Open Access Research for Students

Date: 4th December 2015

Venue: Deerwalk Institute of Technology, Tamreshwore Mahadevsthan, Jayabageshwori, Kathmandu.

Time: 10:00 AM – 02:00 PM

For Registration: Please contact “Roshan Gautam” <roosan.gm@gmail.com>

Workshop Introduction

The workshop, first of its kind will be collaboratively organized by Open Knowledge Nepal (OKN) and Open Access Nepal (OAN). On the importance of open access for student research, opportunities, capacity development and research trends. The workshop will take place in Kathmandu, Nepal on 4th December 2015 at Deerwalk Institute of Technology.

The workshop objective is to highlight the condition of Open Access and Open Research in Nepal, to showcase the research opportunities and the moving direction of research trends, and to increase the capacity of student researchers for the further improvements.

Representatives from different universities, libraries, civil society and the students of different universities/colleges are expected to attend the workshop.

Workshop Objective

To provide students with the much needed background knowledge and motivation to start practicing research.

Why students?

Today’s students are not the same as yesterday’s students. They have more competition, yes, but they also have more access and more power. They have more privilege than students have ever had in human history and this privilege comes with few responsibilities and endless possibilities.

Why now?

Innovations in technology come with the gift of speed. Speed enhances productivity and communication. Harnessing the power of open access to resources, shifting paradigms in communication, and access to technology, students of today can be involved in research practices early.

Why research?

Thanks to technology, we have more information and resources in our fingertips than ever before. Decisions made today should be backed by data and proper scientific methodology, if not wholly dependent upon them. Evidence based decision making is what research practice will teach students.

Who are we?

Open Knowledge Nepal is a working group of international Open Knowledge (Foundation) Network in Nepal. Open Knowledge Nepal has been working as a civil society organization involved in training, advocacy, networking, research, and including organizing events about everything open including open data, open access, open government, open source and open science since 2013.

Open Access Nepal are Nepal’s representatives in the Right to Research Coalition (R2RC), a US based organization dedicated towards advocating and educating the policies and principles of open access worldwide. The objective of Open Access Nepal is to disseminate information to student and researchers about open access and promote its policies and principles in Nepal.

Open Access?

Open Access (OA) means unrestricted online access to peer-reviewed scholarly research. Open access is primarily intended for scholarly journal articles. but is also provided for a growing number of theses, book chapters, and scholarly monographs.

The initial concept of open access refers to an unrestricted online access to scholarly research primarily intended for scholarly journal articles. The term “Open Access” itself was first formulated in three public statements in the 2000s: The Budapest Open Access Initiative in February 2002, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing in June 2003, and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in October 2003.

Open Research?

Open Research is concerned with making scientific research more transparent, more collaborative and more efficient. A central aspect to it is to provide open access to scientific information, especially to the research published in scholarly journals and to the underlying data, much of which traditional science tends to hide away. Other aspects are more open forms of collaboration and engagement with a wider audience, including citizen scientists and the public at large.

Open research is research conducted in the spirit of free and open source software. Much like open source schemes that are built around a source code that is made public, the central theme of open research is to make clear accounts of the methodology freely available via the internet, along with any data or results extracted or derived from them. This permits a massively distributed collaboration, and one in which anyone may participate at any level of the project.

Event Schedule:

Time	Presentation Topic	Presenter
10:00 AM – 10:45 AM	Registration and Inauguration
10:45 AM – 11:30 AM	Open Access and Open Access Movements in Nepal	Dr. Roshan Kumar Karn Director | Open Access Nepal
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM	Ongoing practices of research by students in Nepal	Mr. Prakash Neupane Ambassador | Open Knowledge Nepal
12:15 PM – 01:00 PM	Gaps in student research	Mr. Chandan Goopta Co-Founder | theOpinio
01:00 PM – 01:30 PM	Tools and resources for students	Mr. Kshitiz Khanal Team Lead | Open Knowledge Nepal
01:30 PM – 02:00 PM	Refreshment & Networking Break