What motivated you to join DOAB as an ambassador?
I am motivated to join DOAB as an ambassador as I strongly believe in the importance of opening up knowledge and fostering better interaction across the regions and to ensure a more sustainable and equitable flow of scholarly exchange. Being a DOAB ambassador will enable me to strengthen my role in the MENA region in promoting scholarly communications by leveraging the OAPEN & DOAB collections and services. This will be of great benefit to many stakeholders across the local scholarly community, not least academic publishers and their authors.
How do you plan to drive open access books publishing in your country/region through your work as a DOAB ambassador?
As a DOAB ambassador I will have the opportunity to present and promote open access books publishing in my region through events, conferences, and discussion groups, for instance during highly followed events like the yearly Open Access Week. I will similarly be engaging in academic social networks and social media. In this way I hope to increase awareness about the benefits of open access and also increase the uptake of open academic publications. In this capacity, I will strive to promote best practices and support high-quality scholarship, metadata, and naturally also underscore the importance of dissemination and visibility of local scholarly content.
What or who inspires you in your role?
I am inspired to motivate peers of community members of scholars, researchers, and other stakeholders to learn about the services provided by DOAB and the importance of the mission- and value-driven impetus behind healthy community-building endeavours. Of course, an important dimension is bilateral collaboration across the wider ecosystem. Part of this task is engaging stakeholders in driving further open access publishing in Egypt.
What are the biggest challenges you see in advancing open access book publishing in your country/region?
In addition to the well-known financial barriers which make publishing open access expensive and accessible only to a few, I also see the importance of educating practitioners and raising awareness about open access as a critical need in overcoming barriers. A means to this is stressing the opportunities that open access publishing offers, while at the same time debunking common myths about publishing open access, like alleged lower quality of the publications and poorer peer review standards, less prestige and visibility etc. , etc..
Is there anything else you would like to add?
I hope my community of scholars and faculty in the MENA region will learn about DOAB’s and OAPEN’s resources and services in the hope that it can incentivise them and decide to engage more academic publishers and research funders in using and promoting them to drive open access book publishing. In doing so, this engagement can foster more collaboration and vibrant exchange of academic scholarship across Egypt and beyond, increasing the visibility of research from the MENA region and also promoting more diversity. Ultimately, such open and inclusive scholarly communication contributes to the broader social and cultural advancement of society.