The LIBSENSE project has been supporting research in African universities since 2016. Additional funding this year will support the assessment of the project’s impact and empower ECRs to drive it forward.
LIBSENSE (Library Support for Embedded NREN Services and E-infrastructure) is a research project which supports National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in West and Central Africa to promote open science principles and develop infrastructure to support research at African universities and research institutions.
This has been achieved largely through engagement with academic librarians, who are professionals with the right skills to go beyond the purely technical aspects, and form communities which share best practices.
The co-founders of LIBSENSE, comprising Professor Pamela Abbott from the School of Information, Journalism and Communication, WACREN chief strategy officer, Mr Omo Oaiya, Chief Executive of COAR, Mrs Kathleen Shearer and Open Access Programme Manager at EIFL, Iryna Kuchma have driven the project to become a pioneer for introducing Open Science concepts and policies, such as open access publishing, in African countries. Compared to richer countries in other continents, African nations tend to compete less well in terms of research funding, publishing ability and access to academic networks. Concepts like open access publishing, which makes research papers available to anyone for free, help to counter these issues.
LIBSENSE partnered with UNESCO in 2020-21 to define its own position on the Recommendation on Open Science, highlighting inequities in research opportunities and making plans to overcome them. This encouraged several African governments to engage with and begin to implement the principles.
Pamela Abbott, Professor of Information Systems, said: ”LIBSENSE is trying to address an intractable systemic problem around inequality of participation in global academic scholarship, which means African researchers are often excluded from research networks and research communities which would actually benefit from the knowledge that they could contribute.”
Pamela’s work in LIBSENSE has been funded by several grants from WACREN, facilitated by AfricaConnect, an EU-funded initiative to connect African research institutions to similar ones in Europe. The most recent of these was awarded in January 2026 to fund four years of developing and implementing sustainable action research frameworks to support ethical and responsible open research practices. Part of this work involves building the capacity of early career researchers (ECRs) to lead on-campus Open Science initiatives to improve research practices in their institutions. .
Pamela’s work is also in the impact pipeline for the School and has received Faculty Knowledge Exchange funding to amplify the impact documented in an impact evidencing report published in 2025, in which LIBSENSE stakeholders highlighted how the project had influenced their work.
The KE funding will support a workshop and year-long mentoring programme in Nigeria for 30-plus Early Career Researchers, training and empowering them to form on-campus networks within their institutions to support Open Science principles on the ground.
LIBSENSE is funded by WACREN (West and Central African Research and Education Network).