International Advisory Committee

Reggie Raju

Reggie Raju, Chair of the executive of SPARC Africa and chair of the international advisory committee.

Heather Joseph

Heather Joseph serves as SPARC’s Executive Director, leading the strategic and operational activities of the organization. She has focused SPARC’s efforts on supporting new models for the open sharing of digital articles, data and educational resources. Under her stewardship, SPARC has become widely recognized as the leading international force for effective open access policies and practices. Prior to joining SPARC, Heather spent 15 years as a publishing executive in both commercial and not-for-profit organizations. She also serves on the Board of Directors of key non-profit organizations supporting the open sharing knowledge, including DuraSpace and ImpactStory.

Lorraine Haricombe

Lorraine J. Haricombe is the Vice Provost and Director of the University of Texas Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin, where she oversees the flagship Perry Castañeda Library and ten specialized libraries, including the world-renowned Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. Prior to joining the University of Texas in 2015, Haricombe served as Dean of Libraries at the University of Kansas, where she was Provost’s designate for implementing the Open Access (OA) policy at KU, the first public university in the USA where faculty adopted an institutional policy on Open Access.

A frequent speaker on issues relating to open access, library modernization and institutional transformation, Haricombe serves on numerous boards and committees including Vice President/President Elect of the Board of Directors for the Association of Research Libraries (2019-2020), the International Federation of Library Association’s (IFLA) Committee on Academic and Research Libraries, the Visiting Committee for the Harvard Library, Notre Dame University’s Hesburgh Library Advisory Council, and SPARC Africa, a global affiliate of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). She has held positions in the past as president of Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) and as chair of the Steering Committee for SPARC.

Osman Aldiridiri

Osman Adliridiri is a medical student and an advocate for openness in research, science and education. He is the founder of Open Sudan Initiative that works to build open sharing cultures in Sudan.

 

Roshan Karn

Roshan Karn, a medical Medical doctor, started the movement Open Access Nepal.

Omo Oaiya

Omo Oaiya is Chief Strategy Officer of the West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN). With the other sister regional networks, he is currently assisting with the development of high-capacity internet networks for research and education across Africa. Prior to this, he has been project manager, network manager and system developer in different IT sectors offering consultancy with a focus on developing academic networks in the last decade.

Omo has a Pharmacy degree from the University of Benin, Nigeria and maintains his interest in health as volunteer team lead for the IT development group in the Peoples Open Access Initiative (Peoples-uni), a UK based initiative providing postgraduate public health education via Internet based e-learning.

Susan Murray

For the past 12 years, Susan Murray has been the Executive Director of African Journals OnLine (www.ajol.info). AJOL is a South African Non-Profit Organisation working toward increased visibility and quality of African-published research journals. AJOL hosts the world’s largest online collection of peer-reviewed, African-published scholarly journals. Murray has an academic background in Development Economics and an abiding interest in the role that increased access to relevant research outputs can play in low income and emerging economies, as well as the practicalities of attaining this. Included in Murray’s work for AJOL, she has the following international roles: Advisory Committee Member of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); Elected Member of the CrossRef (Pila) Board of Directors (in November 2018); Member of the Advisory Board for Public Knowledge Project research project; Resource Member for the African Journals Partnership Program (AJPP); and Frequent African and international conference speaker including having been an invited opening plenary speaker at the 10th anniversary conference of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) held in 2018. Read the full bio here.

Thomas Hervé
Mboa Nkoudou

Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou, is a Cameroonian PhD student in Public Communication at "Université Laval" (Canada). His research interests are focused on Open science; specifically, a decolonized approach to scholarly communication and open tech culture.

Patrick Mapulanga

Patrick Mapulanga is a Senior Assistant Librarian at Kamuzu College of Nursing Library of the University of Malawi. His doctoral research topic is on knowledge translation of health research findings at the University of Malawi’s College of Medicine and its relevance in health policy formulation in Malawi. The study seeks to develop a communication and dissemination strategy to facilitate the use of health-related evidence. Patrick holds an Master in Library and Information Studies from the University of Botswana. Patrick has worked as the Editor of the Malawi Journal of Library and Information Science (2016 to date), the Executive Secretary of the Malawi Library and Information Consortium (2013 to 2016). He is a peer reviewer of several journals, the South African Journal of Library and Information Studies (2016 onwards), the Information Development published by Sage (2015 onwards), Library Management and Library Review published by Emerald (2014 and 2013 onwards respectively). Patrick is now interested in publishing in health research and health policy formulation, 21st century information skills such as systematic reviews, bibliometrics, scientometrics, informetrics, webinars, journal ranking systems, scholarly communications.

Ahmed Ogunlaja

Ahmed Ogunlaja is a medical doctor in Nigeria and a health policy scholar at Washington University in St Louis. He is the founder of Open Access Nigeria, an advocacy organization working to promote online access to research, data and educational resources. He was named a Mandela Washington Fellow in 2016 and a Plan S ambassador in 2019.

Ina Smith

Ina Smith’s research focus is on promoting digital skills, open access, open science and open data publishing in the global South, with specific emphasis on Africa. She holds a Masters’ Degree from the University of Pretoria in Computer-Integrated Education, a Higher Education Teaching Diploma , and an Honours Degree in Library and Information Science. She has vast experience working in open access during her employment at the Univ. of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University – in repositories, journal publishing and conference publishing, and vast experience in developing training material in digital skills, as well as presenting training as part of continued professional development. She is currently employed as a project manager at the Academy of Science of SA, where she is managing the African Open Science Platform project, and also do digital citizenship training in her free time as co-director of In the Cloud: Creating Digital Citizens (MICT SETA accredited training company). Read the full bio here.