Academic writing & publishing workshop was conducted on December 27, 2019 from 10 am to 12:30 pm at Akalework Library School of Graduate Studies. This was one of the workshops that was organized by the office Research and Knowledge Management (RaKMO). It was hosted by Dr. Telahun Gebrehiwot Director of RaKMO. There were forty two attendees both faculty and non-faculty members including Dr. Misganaw Solomon Vice President of Research and International Relations Office.
The two presenters were distinguished scholars both of whom were from the USA. Dr. Angela Ford began working in the field of primary and secondary education in 2007 and performed a variety of roles including teacher, guidance director, assistant principal, and principal, until she moved to higher education in 2013. She has worked on a number of research projects including a United States Department of Education funded grant to study the effects of educational facilities on learning. Dr. Ford has also worked on an international university partnership between George Washington University and Taibah University in Saudi Arabia, facilitating the establishment of a new Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Administration. Her research interests include international university partnerships; international comparative studies; unequal learning environments; closing the opportunity gap in a variety of settings worldwide; motivation, aspirations, well-being, and persistence in students and educators; and training high quality educators. Dr. Ford is currently the Vice President of the International Society of Educational Planning and a Fulbright Scholar at Addis Ababa University’s College of Education and Behavioral Studies Her presentation discussed the importance of joining the scholarly conversation through writing and publication and will then explore how to engage effectively at a variety of levels on topics of importance in specific fields and interests to each scholar. Discussion covered the common rules of scholarly writing, the need to embrace and even appreciate feedback from others as part of the conversation and the growth experienced as a writer and scholar through conversations around the topics and the writing process. The presentation also included points on how to get started with writing and publication and how to think about long term goals.
Dr. Daniel Gelaw Alemneh is a faculty member at the University of North Texas (UNT), coordinator of Digital Curation activities and also teaching at the UNT College of Information. His research interests include open access, scholarly communication, Digital Curation and ensuring long-term access to cultural heritage resources. He publishes extensively and has participated in several national and international research projects, including the IMLS funded ETD-Lifecycle Management project as well as the LEAP-II (Library Education for the U.S. Affiliated Pacific) projects.
Dr. Daniel has been actively involved in various local, national, and international professional societies and served in various capacities, including as a Director of Chapter Assembly and member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) and its Executive Committee. He was the Co-chair of the International Conference on Knowledge Management Conference (ICKM). Dr. Daniel is currently a Fulbright Scholar at Addis Ababa University’s College of Natural Science, School of Information Science.
His presentation discussed that Scholarly and Scientific Communication has a long history, while the Open Access (OA) movement has more recently become a key distribution method for this form of communication.
The emergence of the Internet in the late 1960s and the web that emerged in mid-1990s opened up access to all forms of information. Despite disciplinary differences, OA is removing the barriers of access to knowledge, therefore more academic literature is being used and included in global academia. Along with these benefits there are also challenges that need to be considered. The presentation covered both the benefits of Open Access as well as the challenges faced with this form of information distribution in the context of Ethiopia.
