BACKGROUND
In 2015, EIFL began working with two leading universities, University of Mandalay and University of Yangon, to set up open access institutional repositories. In 2017 we expanded our support to include three more universities - Yadanabon University, Yangon University of Economics and Yezin Agricultural University. There were 158 universities under the Myanmar Ministry of Education, and several more were also keen to set up open access repositories.
In 2019, the Ministry of Education, the Rectors’ Committee and the National Education Policy Commission asked EIFL to set up a national open access education and research portal to feature all research outcomes from Myanmar.
EIFL’S open access support was part of the EIFL eLibrary Myanmar project, which was created to enable libraries at universities under the control of the Ministry of Education to provide effective support for teaching, research and learning.
MAIN ACTIVITIES
- Raising awareness on open access through a series of seminars and conference presentations.
- Setting up open access working groups at universities to develop institutional open access and repository policies, creating repository teams and document collection workflows.
- Setting up open access institutional repositories and the national research and education portal, the Myanmar Education Research and Learning (MERAL) Portal .
- Training librarians that are repository managers to upload documents to the MERAL Portal.
TIMELINE
2015 - Ongoing
ACHIEVEMENTS
- Created institutional open access repositories at University of Mandalay, University of Yangon, Yadanabon University, Yangon University of Economics and Yezin Agricultural University (2015-2019), opening up their research to the world. The repositories include peer-reviewed journal articles, research papers, and papers from selected international conferences.
- All five universities have adopted open access policies that guide deposits and stress their commitment to disseminating the outputs of their research as widely as possible.
- The Ministry of Education, the Rectors’ Committee and the National Education Policy Commission asked EIFL to set up a national education and research portal to feature all research outputs from Myanmar.
- Launched the Myanmar Education Research and Learning (MERAL) Portal that makes research outputs from 31 universities available in open access:
- Co-operative University, Sagaing
- Co-operative University, Thanlyin
- Mandalay University of Distance Education
- Mandalay University of Foreign Languages
- Maubin University
- Mawlamyine University
- Meiktila University
- Myanmar Institute of Information Technology
- Myanmar Maritime University
- Sagaing University of Education
- Technological University, Hmawbi
- Technological University Mandalay
- University of Computer Studies, Mandalay
- Universities of Computer Studies, Taungoo
- University of Computer Studies, Yangon
- University of Dental Medicine, Mandalay
- University of Dental Medicine, Yangon
- University of Information Technology
- University of Mandalay
- University of Medicine 1
- University of Medicine 2
- University of Public Health, Yangon
- University of Yangon
- West Yangon University
- Yadanabon University
- Yangon Technological University
- Yangon University of Distance Education
- Yangon University of Economics
- Yangon University of Education
- Yangon University of Foreign Languages
- Yezin Agricultural University
- Raised awareness on open access by speaking at the Myanmar Universities Research Conference 2019, the Leading Higher Education Transformation in Myanmar conference in 2018.
More about EIFL’s work in Myanmar
- For further information about Open Access in Myanmar, contact Iryna Kuchma: iryna.kuchma@eifl.net
- Read about the EIFL eLibrary Myanmar project
- The Myanmar Education, Research and Learning Portal (MERAL) -
