On the 23rd of November, 2017 NEO Country Representative, Dr. Nedal Jayousi and NEO Head of Programmes, Ms. Rana Qaimari conducted a field monitoring visit to the ROMOR project at Birzeit University with the presence of all local partners :Islamic University of Gaza (through video conference), Al-Quds Open University, Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie.
The meeting was opened by the Dean of the College of Graduate Studies Prof. Talal Shahwan from Birzeit University who stressed the importance of the ROMOR project and its role in enhancing the capacities of researchers, and to stimulate cooperation and exchange of experiences with universities and local and foreign institutions in the field of managing the various scientific outputs.
Prof. Samir Afifi from the Islamic University of Gaza presented, in brief, the reality of the publication of scientific research in Palestine through presenting statistics collected from UNESCO Science Report and also from Scopus -The largest database of peer-reviewed literature. He stressed the importance of the ROMOR project, which aims in the coming years to build the human and technical capacities necessary to manage, archive and disseminate scientific research through open access institutional repositories, thereby enhancing the visibility if the research at the local, regional and international levels.
Dr. Rawia Awadallah, as well as Dr. Iyad al-Agha from the Islamic University of Gaza, presented the different activities of the project during its first year. All project coordinators form all partner institutions: Prof. Adnan Yahya, Birzeit University, Yousef AbuZir from Al Quds Open University, Nael Salman of the University of Palestine -Technology, as well as the European partner universities, described their role and active contributions to the ROMOR project.
Dr. Nedal Jayousi stressed the importance of Erasmus + projects involving partnerships with local, regional and European universities, and their advantage in providing an opportunity for local universities to connect with different universities and learn about global research experiences. He pointed out that the ROMOR project is one of the important projects for Palestinian universities, as the open access to information has become one of the most important needs of the academic community and scientific research at the present time. Besides, he pointed out the importance of the evaluation of ROMOR project, which will reflect positively on the effectiveness of the project and its impact.
In addition, the participants discussed with Dr. Nedal the problems and the obstacles they are facing in their work in the project,in addition to their achievements, and made suggestions for mechanisms of future work.
