The ROMOR project funded by Erasmus+ finished a training program on the establishment and management of Open Access Institutional Repositories in Palestinian universities at the University of Parma in Italy. The two-week training program included a number of lectures, workshops and working groups on topics included mechanisms and management of Open Access Institutional Repositories of Palestinian universities.
The lectures dealt with the transfer of relevant European experiences and how to use this experience in developing an integrated work system for research Repositories in universities, including the development of expertise and skills for the Palestinian universities.
A series of scientific and field visits to a number of centers and libraries were organized to benefit from the European experience in managing data and open access repositories. In addition, a series of meetings were held with information management specialists at Parma University to benefit from their experience in the management of institutional information.
The training program included the development of course syllabuses for managing the Open Access Institutional Repositories by teams from the Palestinian universities participating in the training program. A description of three courses were proposed in Data Curation and Management, Evaluation Criteria for Re-Using OERs, and Introduction to Research Output Management and Sharing through Open Access Institutional Repositories. The training was conducted with the participation of experts from Britain and Italy, in the presence of representatives of partner universities in the ROMOR project; Islamic University, Birzeit University, Palestine Technical University, and Al Quds Open University.
It is worth mentioning that the output managing project of scientific research of the Institutional Repositories of the Palestinian Higher Education Institutions “ROMOR” is a project funded by the European Erasmus+ program. The Islamic University of Gaza supervises the project management, whereas the project includes a number of partner universities in Palestine as well as partners from Britain, Austria and Italy.