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D-Lib Magazine
Volume 19, Number 11/12
Providing Access to Electronic Theses and Dissertations: A Case Study from Togo
Joachim Schöpfel
University of Lille 3
Maebena Soukouya
University Library of Kara (Togo)
Point of contact for this article: Joachim Schöpfel, joachim.schopfel@univ-lille3.fr
doi:10.1045/november2013-schopfel
Open access has become a significant part of scientific communication. With regards to dissemination of scientific production, the green road, i.e. self-archiving of scientific work in an open access repository, is often considered as the choice for developing countries because of lower investment and operational costs. This paper will provide a review of relevant literature on the topic, followed by a short overview of open repositories in sub-Saharan African countries, a region facing serious political, economic and social challenges. The main section will present a project for the digitizing of PhD theses of two universities in Togo, and we will then discuss questions and problems related to the specific conditions of the project, in order to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics and rich diversity of the open access movement. Is there an option for sustainable development of open access in these countries? The future will show whether open access contributes to reducing the digital divide between sub-Saharan Africa and other countries or whether it will instead consolidate this divide.
Open access, defined as "a comprehensive source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the scientific community"1, has become a significant part of scientific communication. Today, digital scientific literature — articles, dissertations, communications, book chapters and other papers — is increasingly freely available online via open repositories (green road) and/or open access journals (gold road). Freely available means, "free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions" (Suber, 2012, p. 4).
The access principle (Willinsky, 2005) is generally considered as a global movement, without national or regional frontiers. Open access to scientific information includes research from developing countries. Under the open access perspective, the scientific world often appears as if it were already a global village with the same cultures, technologies and infrastructures. Yet what may be right and desirable on an abstract level, as an idea or goal, can be misleading on the field because of different conditions and needs.
Peter Suber, one of the leaders of the world-wide open access movement, acknowledges the access gap in scientific information ("serials crisis") as a global problem particularly alarming for developing countries: "Several Sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero, offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers" (Suber, 2012, p.31). Also, he regards the need for open access to scientific information as most pressing in developing countries.
The need for open access means on the one hand that scientific communities need access to scientific information for their research and teaching activities, as a matter of content accessibility, infrastructures and computer networks, hardware, information behaviour, digital divide and awareness.
On the other hand, the need for open access also means, the dissemination of local scientific production on the Internet, "free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions", via the green or the gold road, or both. Here, questions are more about visibility and impact, referencing, access to publishing technologies and communication channels, attitudes toward open access and copyright.
With regards to this second aspect — dissemination of scientific production — the green road, i.e. self-archiving of scientific work in an open access repository, is often considered as the choice for less wealthy institutions and developing countries because of lower investment and operational costs.
Our paper will focus on this second aspect. We will provide a review of relevant literature on the topic, followed by a short overview of open repositories in sub-Saharan African countries, a region facing serious political, economic and social challenges. The main section will present a project for the digitizing of PhD theses of two universities in Togo, and we will then discuss questions and problems related to the specific conditions of the project, in order to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics and rich diversity of the open access movement.
Literature overview
The crucial role of scientific and technical information (STI) in the development of countries in Africa is highlighted by different authors and institutions. For instance, Justin Chisenga from the FAO Regional Office for Africa insists that STI "could assist in finding solutions to most of the problems, such as inadequate food supply, poverty, water pollution, diseases, environmental degradation, deforestation, and many others besieging the continent today (...) It is an indispensable factor in the rational use of natural resources, scientific and technological advancement, progress in agriculture, industry and services" (Chisenga, 2006). Citing a UNESCO statement, he adds "assimilation of scientific and technological information is an essential precondition for progress in developing countries".
"Information is essential to meeting challenges" (McBean, 2005). But STI is not enough. Other conditions must be met for STI to become "assimilable", e.g. information literacy, technological capacity and financial resources (ibid.). A recent overview of African STI initiatives underlines the role of physical infrastructures (Derfoufi, 2012). Her survey on Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal shows that even if the offer of STI increased because of open access and international initiatives such as HINARI, access remains fragile. The reasons are expensive (or lacking) connectivity, insufficient hardware, frequent electricity cuts, non-optimal coordination between national and regional infrastructure projects etc. The same factors are mentioned by Lor & Britz (2010) in their critical reflection on the notion of access to knowledge: "sub-Saharan Africa lags far behind other regions of the world in internet access (...) Copyright restrictions and linked fees for access may be too expensive for the user."
Inadequate funding of libraries is another problem because low financial support reduces the libraries' capacity of resource acquisition and of spending for the development of an efficient relevant information technology infrastructure inside the library — computers, telephones, networks, software etc. — and of professional training programs for the library staff (Ani et al., 2005). Together, these and other factors create and maintain a digital divide that challenges economic development (Mutula, 2005, 2008). However, Mutula reveals another aspect of what he describes as "under-utilization of available infrastructure facilities" and calls for "application programs (that) should fit in well with the cultural realities and sensitivity of the people of Africa" (ibid).
Education and training of information professionals is essential for the development of information literacy, but also resource sharing and development of shared standards. Kavulya (2007) highlights the need "to train information professionals in the management of electronic information by giving them skills such as designing and administration of electronic networks, electronic reference services, skills for electronic information literacy teaching, and evaluation of internet information. Even more important would be training in digital library management activities such as supply models, searching, downloading, document delivery, archiving, software, copyright, licensing and managing and access." The adjustment of international programs to local conditions has been described in terms of re-contextualization, internalization and "indigenization" that "give rise to the need to address the local environment in the discourse of knowledge society" (Magara, 2010, see also Chan et al., 2011).
How does this political approach apply to the open access movement? With regards to developing countries, Mavodza (2013) distinguishes between open access as a tool to access (and consume) scientific information and as a way to disseminate national or institutional research output (production) but doesn't discuss aspects of "indigenization". In her case study on Uganda's Makerere University, Kakai (2009) describes initiatives to improve the visibility of local papers and projects on the Internet, addressing specific local conditions as problems or opportunities for the dissemination of research results. Alongside with publishing in OA journals, Kakai suggests the creation and diffusion of metadata via websites, catalogues and databases. She also outlines a policy on the submission of ETDs that includes a digitization program for print documents and a mandatory approach or at least, implementation guidelines and procedures for self-deposit and voluntary archiving of digital files (ibid).
The question of re-contextualization, in terms of local contents and conditions for open access is tackled by Ezema (2013) in his survey on institutional repositories in Nigeria. In particular, he reveals lack of awareness and lack of required skills by researchers and librarians as main barriers to open access and argues for an acquisition policy in favour of local content materials, especially theses and dissertations but also other types of grey literature. The self-deposit of academic publications in open archives is generally considered as the cheapest and quickest way to increase accessibility, visibility and impact of research output of developing countries (Derfoufi, 2012). But what do we really know about this research output, especially on academic publications?
"African countries produce plenty of research papers, although many appear in local journals. Those published in internationally visible journals are often produced in collaboration with researchers in other countries — and focus on areas such as public health and agriculture" (Nordling, 2010). Some figures: "Between 2004 and 2008, Nigerian scientists were co-authors on nearly 1% of agricultural science papers published in international journals, and Kenyans co-authored nearly 0.5% of the world's immunology papers and more than 0.3% of environment/ecology papers. Overall, scientists across the whole of Africa publish about 27,000 papers in international journals per year, which is only about the same volume as the Netherlands, although the African number has doubled since 1998" (ibid) 2.
Nevertheless, a significant part of the scientific research output from Africa does not find its way into the world's well-established international scientific journals. One part is published in the small number of local journals with often poor distribution and visibility. And the rest is grey literature, i.e. "unpublished information and knowledge resources such as research reports, theses and dissertations, seminar and conference papers (often) produced in limited numbers, and with limited circulation even within the institutions where they are produced" (Chisenga, 2006). This statement consolidates Ezema's conclusion about the interest and professional support of theses and dissertations as main local content source that should be valorised through acquisition mandates and deposit in institutional repositories (Ezema, 2013).
Open repositories in sub-Saharan countries
Open archives, in particular institutional repositories are considered to be valuable for African research and development because "they can offer instant access to information and knowledge resources being generated on the continent. The universities and research institutes in Africa are the major centres of research and consequently the major generators of research based data, information and knowledge. The scientific and technological information and knowledge which they are generating should be easily accessible, and the creation and use of institutional repositories could be the first step in this process" (Chisenga, 2006). They could increase the visibility, accessibility and impact of African research and help to maintain and preserve (the) scientific production (see also Chalabi & Dahmane, 2012). In other terms, "open access should be viewed in Africa as a development imperative" (Nwagwu, 2013).
But the reality is different. The international OpenDOAR directory of open access repositories3 contains only 57 repositories from fifteen sub-Saharan countries. South Africa is listed with 25 sites. Together with Kenya (seven) and Nigeria (six), it represents 67% of all sub-Saharan open archives while the other countries count three or less sites. Several other sub-Saharan countries — about two thirds — have no open repositories at all; at least, they are not recorded by OpenDOAR.
Most of these repositories are institutional archives, created for the deposit of the scientific production of a local institution, e.g. a university or a research structure. DSpace (MIT) is the software of two thirds of all sites, followed by Eprints from the University of Southampton and the Greenstone digital library software developed by the New Zealand University of Waikato in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO.
Nearly all sub-Saharan repositories (more than in other regions) are multidisciplinary but there are also specialised platforms, for instance from the University of Ghana (history and archaeology), the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (agriculture, food and veterinary) or the Sudan Libraries & Information Association (library and information sciences).
The most frequent language of these repositories is English. Yet there are some servers with French, Afrikaans (Dutch), Portuguese, Arabic or Amharic content or interface. Most repositories hold several content types. Two thirds hold journal articles and electronic theses and dissertations, one half holds conference proceedings but one can also find multimedia files, unpublished works, learning objects and datasets. Compared to other regions, repositories with ETDs and conferences are slightly overrepresented.
Thirty-nine repositories (= 68%) contain electronic theses and dissertations, a percentage that may reflect the focus of universities on "digitising and providing access to (...) ETDs rather than setting up full-scale institutional repositories" (Chisenga, 2006). These are mainly multidisciplinary institutional repositories, often with DSpace and in English4.
Even if OpenDOAR may not be exhaustive, it is acknowledged as the most representative international directory, compared to alternative lists like ROAR, BASE or the Webometrics ranking list of world repositories. The sub-Saharan repositories represent only 2.5% of the OpenDOAR database. This is very few compared to other continents and regions (Europe 48%, North America 21%, Asia 17%, South America 8%), and is roughly at the same level as India, Canada or Taiwan.
The Togo context
Togo is a small tropical country in West Africa, with a land area of 56,785 km2, a population of 7.1 million (population density 125 pop/km2), a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of 1,096$ and an annual real GDP growth of 3.1% (average over 2003-2011).5 Togo is bordered by Ghana, Burkina Faso and Benin and has a short coastline with the Gulf of Guinea. The country is a member of the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. The official language is French. Its economy is dominated by agriculture (cocoa, coffee, cotton...) and phosphate mining. A free trade zone has been opened in the port of Lomé, Togo's largest town and capital.
Togo has two public universities (University of Lomé and Kara University) and two private universities (University of Science and Technology of Togo and the Catholic University of West Africa-University of Togo Unit). The University of Lomé' maintains faculties of sciences and medicine and schools of engineering and agriculture. The two public universities comprising 56,000 students (2012-13) are part of the Network for Excellence in Higher Education in West Africa (REESAO), a francophone institution6. The REESAO was established on 11 October 2005 in Lomé in order to promote a new policy of university cooperation, with priority emphasis on the modernization of the supply of university education in order to facilitate the mobility and employability of students. Member universities should also increase their efficiency, become regional centres of excellence and support their country's development.
Created in 1965, the National Institute of Scientific Research is the central scientific coordinating body. "Several French research institutes have branches in the capital, and there are pilot farm projects throughout the country. In 1987-97, expenditures for research and development totalled 0.5% of GNP. For the period 1990-2001, there were an estimated 102 scientists and engineers (same level as in Kenya or Nigeria), and 65 technicians engaged in research and development per million people7." Many academic teachers come from bordering countries or from Europe.
Describing current strategies "for bridging the digital divide in sub-Saharan Africa", Mutula (2008) mentions with regards to Togo, the ECOWAS information and communication technology policy framework promulgated in 2006 in Lomé which includes "harmonizing national ICT policies and plans, developing an enabling environment, building a regional infrastructure/backbone, and developing local content and financing mechanisms for the information society."
Togo is also part of the HINARI program group A countries. HINARI is a public-private partnership sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO), with access to a large collection of biomedical and health literature (11,400 e-journals, 18,500 e-books, and 70,000 other sources such as seminars, databases or encyclopaedias). Via HINARI, six Togolese institutions have free access to selected medical e-journals and databases8. Other institutions have free access to e-journals etc. via the AGORA9 and OARE10 programs.
Scientific output: In 2009, the Scopus database contained 58 publications signed by Togolese scientists. Again, this is a small number compared to the leading countries by output - Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa; but when indexed against GPD, Togo performs quite well, and is at the same level as Nigeria. "Indexing output against GDP provides further interpretation (...) South Africa (and) Kenya (...) all have significant relative productivity, as do a number of other countries in East Africa (Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania) and West Africa (Cameroon, Ghana)" (Adams et al., 2010). Co-authorship analysis shows collaborations with the francophone countries Benin, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast (Irikefe et al., 2011). "A West Africa group (Benin-Togo) pivots around Cameroon, a relatively research-productive country. The common factor within this group is almost certainly their common use of French as the cross-national business language" (ibid.).
In June 2013, the Scopus database indexed 453 documents signed by authors affiliated to the University of Lomé, most of them journal articles in agricultural and biological sciences and in medicine written in English (71%) or French (28%), with an increasing annual output of around 60 papers today.
According to the major international directories OpenDOAR and ROAR, Togo has no academic open archive so far. Also, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) does not index any Togolese title. Only one PhD thesis from Togo seems available via the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) and the search engine Scirus, even if others may be hidden in open repositories like TEL (HAL) for instance, when co-directed by French and Togolese scholars.11 Togo also joined the Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD)12 but does not seem to be really integrated so far.
Some final remarks on the two main academic libraries: The library of the University of Lomé was created in 1970 with four departments (law, sciences, medicine, and humanities13). Since 1987, all collections are stored in a new main building, except for agronomy, education, medicine and pharmacology. Today, the central library conserves about 70,000 documents — books, journals, reference works, theses and dissertations and other grey literature, such as report collections from the European Union, the World Bank, the International Labour Office and UNESCO. The library also holds a special collection on Togo.
The library of Kara University — three departments in social sciences and humanities, economics, management and political sciences — was created in 2004 from a collection of the former National Institute of Education. It is a small academic library, designed for 1,500 students on the campus.
The "Theses@Togo" project
The following section will present the main characteristics of an open access project that was submitted to the Togo ministry of higher education in 201314. The project is conceived as a follow-up to the automation and computerization of both libraries of Lomé and Kara Universities. In fact, both libraries implemented an integrated library system with three modules (cataloguing, circulation, OPAC). While Lomé opted for the UNESCO database software CDS/ISIS and GenISISWeb for web publishing in 2004, Kara chose the French PMB software (PhpMyBibli). But so far neither of the two libraries has set up a digital archive, a document or publication service. At the moment, the universities of Togo are implementing a new information system for the management of students, programs, budget etc. in order to comply with the three-cycle Bologna process (BA, Master, doctoral degree). This major project is the opportunity to introduce new technologies of information and communication to the libraries in order to share resources and facilitate access (including new workspace such as internet cafés), and to submit the present/existing digitization program.
The main objective of the project called "Theses@Togo" is to contribute to the visibility, accessibility and impact of the Togo scientific output. It is a project primarily on the supplier side of scientific communication, in order to improve the dissemination of academic papers. More specifically, the project is meant to promote the PhD theses of the Togo academic holdings, to facilitate their dissemination to a wide audience, to raise awareness about published topics and prevent plagiarism, to solve the problem of physical deterioration of documents and ensure better protection and conservation of this scientific heritage, to facilitate reproduction of print copies (print-on-demand), to support and encourage research by PhD students and scholars, and to valorise young scientists and jury members. Also, this project should increase the impact of PhD theses and scientists from Togolese universities and their number of citations, and help, through distant and multiple accesses, prevent problems of interlibrary loan and empower users. The project should also contribute to the resource-sharing program of the REESAO countries. In fact, the project is a mix of dissemination, conservation and scientific marketing that reaches far beyond simple documentation choices.
Why PhD theses? "Theses and dissertations are the most useful kinds of invisible scholarship and the most invisible kinds of useful scholarship. Because of their high quality and low visibility, the access problem is worth solving" (Suber, 2012). They represent an institution's research activities, and often they contain the results of at least three years of individual scientific work, accomplished in a laboratory, a research team or an institute, school or company. They are produced and published by universities as part of so-called academic grey literature (Juznic, 2010), considered as "library material" and disseminated in limited numbers outside of commercial publishing, with a specific legal status. As stated above, they have special interest for African countries as a significant part of their scientific output.
Also, "sharing theses and dissertations that meet the school's high standard reflects well on the institution and benefits other researchers in the field" (Suber, 2012). Each year, the University of Lomé delivers PhD diploma in social sciences and humanities, applied sciences, sciences, technology and medicine. The PhD theses are deposited at the university library of Lomé, some with a copy for Kara. Their total number is estimated at 8,325 theses, with altogether about 16,650 copies in Lomé and Kara. All these documents are only available in print format. This raises the issue of accessibility and preservation. It should be noted that users of academic libraries often face difficulties to access some of these items. Those especially from the University of Kara often face difficulties in accessing theses of which the Lomé library has only one copy. Also, sometimes interlibrary loan requests are not fulfilled on the grounds that the only remaining copy at the Lomé library is deteriorated and/or excluded from interlibrary loan.
So far, university libraries of Togo have no gateway or federate portal that could serve as a single point of entry to their bibliographic records and information resources. There is no document server either. Therefore, the project must include the implementation and configuration of an open access platform. After a benchmarking and a feasibility study, a decision was taken in favor of the DSpace software.15
Why DSpace? Since 2002, this open source software has proven its worth, reliability and evolutivity. Developed by MIT and the HP Labs, the system is regularly updated; the most recent release is 3.1. It is free of charge, easy to download and to implement, and the set-up options satisfy most of the basic needs of an open repository. DSpace is already the software of nearly two-thirds of all African open repositories which facilitates exchange of experience and know-how with the DSpace community. For instance, in sub-Saharan Africa, three countries (Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal) use DSpace for the dissemination of their PhD theses, conference proceedings and other scientific papers.
The software will be installed on a server at the University of Lomé, independent of the library system. The new service and its content will be referenced in international directories and discovery tools, such as the NDLTD gateway or DATAD, and metadata harvesting will allowed through the OAI-PMH protocol.
All documents will be digitized on site in the library of Lomé. This will largely simplify the management of the circulation of items and reduce the risk of losing documents.
The first step will be an inventory of the PhD theses under consideration. So far, there is no catalog or inventory for these items. Some theses of the Lomé holdings are unique copies; others are held in two or more copies. Also, we have no precise information about binding and paper quality, number of pages, complementary materials, color photographs, maps, etc. Along with the main bibliographic information, this inventory should contain at least the following elements: number of pages, existence of special pages (maps etc.), digitizing option (see below) and subject (Dewey classification). Also, the inventory should support the workflow management and the follow-up and reporting of the whole project.
The project recommends two different ways of digitizing (destructive/non destructive): unique items should be digitized with a book scanner (non destructive) while items with two or more copies — in particular copies of theses held by the Kara library — could be processed with a high speed scanner (destructive), except for items with bad or fragile paper quality that do not allow for this kind of feeding.
In order to reduce the size of scanned files, the project recommends scanning with 300dpi and in black and white, except for special materials, and to produce the image files in TIFF format (when in colour, in JPEG), for preservation. The quality of all image files should be controlled and if necessary, enhanced with the usual software. In order to allow indexing and searching in the full text, the project also recommends producing text files with non-corrected OCR and depositing PDF text files along with the image files. The deposit includes the creation of metadata on the DSpace server.
Metadata and indexing
A set of descriptive and administrative metadata is assigned to each item, together with a persistent identifier (URI, handle...). Every item is represented in an indexed form that employs the means and methods of the non-qualified Dublin Core element set. This minimum dataset includes thesis title in French and English, university, academic department, year of defence, grade, the student's name, the full names of the members of the jury, abstract and keywords in French and English, number of pages, date of deposit. A verbal subject indexing with uncontrolled keywords is done for every document, and all items should be classified with the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC).
The project team will then produce a written policy containing the indexing regulations for documents and define who does the indexing (library staff, or the authors in case of self-deposit, or if it is done automatically). Later, these metadata should be mapped to the French rich and standardized TEF metadata format in order to enhance interoperability.
These metadata will be available for access, exchange and harvesting through an OAI-PMH compliant interface on the DSpace platform.
The DSpace platform will contain at least five indexes, allowing for browsing items by title, author, issue date, subject, and community (institution) with sub-communities if wanted/needed (for instance, University of Lomé, faculty of sciences), perhaps also by collections in communities (institutions). This may be settled definitively during the inventory of theses. Anyhow, most important is the standard and feasible character of metadata and indexing.
The first part of the project includes 3,500 PhD theses from 2000 to 2010, from all disciplines held by the Lomé university library, some with a copy on the Kara campus.
The preparation of the project — validation of technical aspects, acquisition of equipment, staff training, inventory, and tests — should be completed between September 2013 and April 2014. Production should start in May 2014 and continue until April 2015 when it will be evaluated against the defined objectives and adjusted, if necessary.
The best projects are worthless if they are not realistic. As Mutula (2005) recalls, "in sub-Saharan Africa, most university research and development is under-funded". Therefore, this project builds on existing resources (equipment, infrastructures, and human resources) and on limited investment. The overall project budget for the first year has been estimated at 65,000 Euros. This budget will cover the following expenditures:
Investment. Acquisition of a book scanner and a high-speed scanner with software. Two servers.
Operational costs and project management. Training of the project team and small furniture.
Human resources. The proposal includes four persons: the project director (a librarian also in charge of file conversion, preservation, dissemination and workflow management), a part-time computer scientist (implementation of DSpace), an archivist (digitization, image processing, OCR) and a secretary (deposit, metadata creation, administration). These people are already working in the Lomé library but need information and training that will be organized by the project director.
The preparation of the project and its risk analysis reveal a couple of challenges, some of which are specific to the sub-African context.
PhD theses are works of the mind and protected by intellectual property rights (Schöpfel & Lipinski, 2012). Thus, scanning and dissemination on the Internet are subject to prior authorization. The project team will try to obtain a licence for each thesis. In case of refusal or no reply/response (orphan works), access to the digital files could be limited to the academic campus.
The project suggests dissemination on the Internet not only free of charge (gratis open access) but also free of some copyright and licensing restrictions ("libre" open access, cf. Suber, 2012). This means minimal protection, mainly limited to moral rights (citation of source and author name, integrity of the work...) but relative freedom in subsequent reuse. The priority is clearly on dissemination and impact of the local scientific output.
Nevertheless, there may be another problem with intellectual property. As Chisenga (2006) points out, there may also be a general concern, "based on the history of exploitation of indigenous knowledge from Africa by the West, that if outputs of scientific research in Africa, i.e. research into plant medicine, are made accessible via institutional repositories and Open Access archives, the West will exploit the knowledge for commercial gain without compensation to the institutions/countries that generated the knowledge". As a result, it may be difficult to convince some scientists and institutions to provide open access to some kinds of content.
We already talked about inadequate technical infrastructure. "Development and provision of access to institutional repositories and Open Access archives requires access to adequate ICT facilities, especially the Internet and intranets through which access to the resources is provided. Although Internet access is now widely available on the continent, the speed and reliability of Internet connections is a major challenge faced by most institutions" (Chisenga, 2006). For some structures, this may include a problem of reasonable pricing.
But there are other questions related to infrastructures that have to be addressed, such as uninterrupted power supply (Ani et al., 2005), the link to the local library system, the integration into a regional or international network, workflow management, and long term preservation. This last point is crucial for the future of open access and the solution may not be found on a local or national level but together with other countries from the region, or with institutions from the francophone network.
No open access project can survive without institutional support. Institutional support is a key success factor and crucial for global information management strategy (policy), funding, and provision of resources (staff, hardware, infrastructure, office space, etc.). Two institutional levels can be identified for this project: the universities of Lomé and Kara, and the university libraries, with specific and different roles. The Togo public universities started to develop policies and strategies supporting the management of digital information resources. These strategies include support for open access in general and for an institutional repository for their theses and dissertations in particular. What is needed now is an explicit policy that will encourage or request deposit of research output (mandate), following other African models16.
The library support is essential for the preparation and management of the project. The project team is part of the library staff. Digitizing, deposit and preservation will be realized in the library facilities, with library material and collections. And it is also essential for funding. In the past, lack of funds has been put forward to explain the low uptake of institutional repositories. "Digitization projects, especially when they involve retrospective digitization of printed documents, are time and labour intensive and generally expensive. A large number of institutions, especially public-funded institutions in Africa, including many public universities and research institutes, do not have the staff with relevant skills and money to implement digital institutional repositories" (Chisenga, 2006).
Chisenga's statement is corroborated by Irikefe et al. (2011): "(...) interviews with scientists and governmental officials across sub-Saharan Africa suggest that funding levels remain low. (But) money is just one of many problems (...). Many labs are poorly equipped (...) Financial and logistical support for science is typically divided between many ministries with little coordination (...). Even when research is successful, it is hard to push developments to the marketplace. And poor governance — from corruption to ineffective bureaucracy — stymies progress in many nations".
Again, the context in Togo appears to be more favourable, and the development of a new Higher Education system may be the right opportunity to obtain institutional support and funding from universities and libraries. Yet, the project management must be aware of uncertainty and risks related to acquisition of hardware and software, to characteristics of items in the holdings, and to infrastructure, and should adopt an agile, highly flexible, reactive and interactive approach, able to anticipate and to adapt to upcoming problems.
A couple of years ago, Chisenga (2006) criticized a general lack of awareness and understanding of the concepts of open access in Africa: "The new trends are not filtrating into the continent due to lack of adequate advocacy and appropriate capacity building relating to these technologies. Many people still do not know about the Open Access Initiative". Due to political and scientific efforts, the environment started to change and today, research scientists, policy makers and information professionals appear better prepared "to push for investment and development of digital-based information repositories and services" (ibid).
Yet, in order to achieve and maintain community support and acceptance, the project team must be clear on the significance of community. For whom are they working? Who are the users? Several community levels seem entangled: the students and scholars on the local Lomé and Kara campuses, the Togo Higher Education and research community, the West African academic network REESAO, French-speaking countries, the network of African universities... Will the project team seek support from the worldwide ETD community (NDLTD), the DSpace network, and/or the Electronic Information for Libraries initiative (EIFL)?
The answer to this question is not irrelevant and will impact the selection of metadata, classification and indexing, referencing and communication. Also, the strategy of advocacy and information about deposit etc. will depend on the choice of community. One particular concern will be the need to adapt Western standards to the local and regional framework and the care for what has been called "indigenization", for local solutions that may be different from occidental/western models and initiatives. In this context, the main argument should be valorisation of local content and finding solutions for local problems.
As Peter Suber (2012) states, "the basic idea of OA is simple". Yet, our case study suggests that in spite of the global nature of open access, the challenges and solutions are local. Instead of a one-size-fits-all solution, open access projects should take care of regional or country-based priorities and specific partnerships and communication strategies (McBean, 2005). We can learn from global experiences but need to adjust them to local conditions.
This means that first of all, any project must clearly define its priority. Is it access to scientific information? Is it to increase the impact of local production? Or is it development of regional capacity for research and higher education? Is it a solution for local problems with poor holdings, preservation and interlibrary loan? Or is it all of them?
Second point, any project must be aware of the need for advocacy in favour of digital information and open access, especially for local content. Confronted with major economic and social challenges, for most of the sub-Saharan countries research may not be the political priority of the moment. Nevertheless, for all of them open access to scientific information appears to be an option of choice to foster scientific development and integration with the global research community. "Advocacy (...) should target government policy makers, senior management in universities and research institutes, research scientists, and library and information professionals. The importance and need for self-archiving and benefits of open access should be made clear (...)" (Chisenga, 2006).
Third, perhaps more than in other countries, advocacy must be accompanied by capacity building "in digital information management (...) including available standards for archiving electronic information resources (and) copyright issues" (ibid). International organizations like FAO or IFLA may play a significant role but the potential support of other networks (OA, ETD...) and local communities should not be underestimated, neither should the negative impact of intermittent foreign funding be limited.
Is there an option for sustainable development of open access in these countries? Are open repositories a solution for major local problems like language barriers, long-term preservation, funding and infrastructures? Or is the open foundation just another expression of occidental/western cultural and scientific values, ill adapted to local specificities? The future will show whether open access contributes to reducing the digital divide between sub-Saharan Africa and other countries or, at least, between the West African region and South Africa, or whether it will instead consolidate this divide.
Acknowledgments to Hélène Prost for her helpful advice. The paper was prepared with support from the French National Digitization Centre for PhD Theses, ANRT Lille.
1 Berlin declaration on Open Access to Scientific Knowledge of 22 October 2003.
2 See also Thomson Reuters' Global Research Report Africa (Adams et al., 2010).
3 http://www.opendoar.org (Figures from May 2013).
4 See also the typical profile of an African open repository following a recent survey from the Algerian CERIST (Chalabi & Dahmane, 2012): university-based, English language, institutional type, multidisciplinary, less than 2,000 items, most often with theses and dissertations, DSpace software, submission by author, no statistics.
5 Sources: OECD African Economic Outlook 2012, Basic Indicators 2011, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Wikipedia.
6 Réseau pour l'excellence de l'enseignement supérieur en Afrique de l'Ouest".
7 Source: http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Togo.aspx.
8 Centre de Formation en Santé Publique, Centre de Perfectionnement en Soins Infirmiers de l'Hôpital Baptiste Biblique, Ecole Nationale des Auxiliaires Médicaux, Faculté Mixte de M�decine et de Pharmacie, Herbier National du Togo, University of Lomé'.
9 Content in agriculture by FAO: Campus numérique francophone de Lomé, Ecole Sup�rieure d'Agronomie, Université de Lomé, Ecole Supérieure des Techniques Biologiques et Alimentaires.
10 Content in environment by UNEP and Yale University: Campus numérique francophone de Lomé, Campus numérique de l'université de Lomé, Herbier National du Togo.
11 Two examples: http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00728812 and http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00785581.
12 An initiative of the Association of African Universities (AAU).
13 With the holdings of the former Higher Education Institute of Bénin.
14 The project was prepared by Maebena Soukouya as part of his LIS Master studies at the university of Lille (France), supervised by Henri Stiller and Joachim Schöpfel.
15 See http://www.dspace.org/ and http://dspace.mit.edu/.
16 ROARMAP, the Southampton repository of open access policies provides mandates from eight African institutions, including the Covenant University (Nigeria), the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and University of Nairobi (Kenya) and the universities of Johannesburg and Pretoria (South Africa).
[1] J. Adams, et al. (2010). "Global Research Report Africa". Report, Evidence — Thomson Reuters, Leeds.
[2] O. E. Ani, et al. (2005). "Issues and Challenges of Globalization of Library Services in Nigeria in the 21st Century". Information Development 21(3):193-201. http://doi.org/10.1177/0266666905057336
[3] L. Chalabi & M. Dahmane (2012). "Open Access in Developing Countries: African Open Archives". In Elpub. 16th International Conference on Electronic Publishing, 14-15 June 2012, Guimaraes (Portugal).
[4] L. Chan, et al. (2011). "Towards Open and Equitable Access to Research and Knowledge for Development". PLoS Med 8(3):e1001016+. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001016
[5] J. Chisenga (2006). "The development and use of digital libraries, institutional digital repositories and open access archives for research and national development in Africa: opportunities and challenges". In Workshop on Building African Capacity to Implement the Outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the Sphere of Libraries and Access to Information and Knowledge. United Nations Conference Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 27 - 30, 2006.
[6] I. Derfoufi (2012). "Africa: Still Fragile Access to Scientific Information". Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 36(3-4):122-143. http://doi.org/10.1353/ils.2012.0015
[7] I. J. Ezema (2013). "Local Contents and the Development of Open Access Institutional Repositories in Nigeria University Libraries: Challenges, Strategies and Scholarly Implications". Library Hi Tech 31(2).
[8] V. Irikefe, et al. (2011). "Science in Africa: The view from the front line". Nature 474(7353): 556-559. http://doi.org/10.1038/474556a
[9] P. Juznic (2010). "Grey Literature produced and published by Universities: A Case for ETDs". In D. Farace & J. Schöpfel (eds.), Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies, pp. 39-51. De Gruyter Saur.
[10] M. Kakai (2009). "The Challenges of Advocating for Open Access Through Institutional Repository Building: Experience from Makerere University, Uganda". In World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Council, 23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy.
[11] J. M. Kavulya (2007). "Digital libraries and development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A review of challenges and strategies". The Electronic Library 25(3):299-315. http://doi.org/10.1108/02640470710754814
[12] P. J. Lor & J. Britz (2010). "To access is not to know: A critical reflection on A2K and the role of libraries with special reference to Sub-Saharan Africa". Journal of Information Science 36(5): 655-667. http://doi.org/10.1177/0165551510382071
[13] E. Magara (2010). "Politics in the indigenization of library and information services: The way forward for East Africa". Information Development 26(1):47-56. http://doi.org/10.1177/0266666909358302
[14] J. Mavodza (2013). "A review of the Open Access concept in the UAE". New Library World 114 (5/6). http://doi.org/10.1108/03074801311326885
[15] B. McBean (2005). "Informing Society in African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries: developing unlikely partnerships". Information Development 21(4):251-259. http://doi.org/10.1177/0266666905060068
[16] S. M. Mutula (2005). "Peculiarities of the digital divide in sub-Saharan Africa". Program: electronic library and information systems 39(2):122-138. http://doi.org/10.1108/00330330510595706
[17] S. M. Mutula (2008). "Digital divide and economic development: case study of Sub-Saharan Africa". The Electronic Library 26(4): 468-489. http://doi.org/10.1108/02640470810893738
[18] L. Nordling (2010). "African nations vow to support science". Nature 465(7301):994-995. http://doi.org/10.1038/465994a
[12] W. E. Nwagwu (2013). "Open Access Initiatives in Africa — Structure, Incentives and Disincentives". The Journal of Academic Librarianship 39(1):3-10. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2012.11.024
[20] J. Schöpfel &T. A. Lipinski (2012). "Legal Aspects of Grey Literature". The Grey Journal 8(3):137-153.
[21] P. Suber (2012). Open access. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
[22] J. Willinsky (2005). The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
All databases, directories and websites were accessed in June and November 2013.
Joachim Schöpfel is Lecturer of Library and Information Sciences at the University of Lille 3 (France), Director of the French Digitization Centre for PhD theses (ANRT) and member of the GERiiCO research laboratory. He was Manager of the INIST (CNRS) scientific library from 1999 to 2008. He teaches Library Marketing, Auditing, Intellectual Property and Information Science. His research interests are scientific information and communication, especially Open Access and Grey Literature.
Maebena Soukouya is academic librarian at the University Library of Kara (Togo). He has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Anthropology from the University of Lomé (Togo) and a Master Degree in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Dakar (Senegal). He is library system manager in charge of the bibliographic database of Kara University. He is also project director for the digitization and online dissemination of PhD theses in Togo. He is at present completing a Masters degree in Library and Information Sciences at the University of Lille 3 (France) and works at the French Digitization Centre for PhD theses (ANRT). He holds an Erasmus Mundus ACP scholarship (2011-2013).
Copyright © 2013 Joachim Schöpfel and Maebena Soukouya


text:
Posted on June 7, 2016 by Nathan Jolly
'The Muppet Movie' demanded to be taken seriously. The first shot cranes down through the heavens, to a pond in which a frog sits on a log plaintively strumming a banjo. I get how that doesn't seem overly serious, but below the surface of that pond, Jim Henson was emerged in a metal waterproof tank with a rubber sleeve and a breathing apparatus that was less "apparatus" and more "tubing". It took five days to shoot that opening scene. The final scene utilised 250 puppets and 150 puppeteers, all crammed in close quarters for the good of Hollywood. But, above the technical inventiveness (such as a WTF full body shot of Kermit riding a bicycle), the tender moments, the goofy meta plot, the part with the literal fork in the road, and the host of high-profile cameos, it was the soundtrack that most demanded we take the film seriously.
In this post-Pixar world the idea of being brought to tears by a non-living creature has been normalised to an alarming degree, but in 1979 I'm sure there were more than a few moviegoers embarrassed that a felt creature singing around a fireplace had broken them. This was, after all, the same beaked creature who fired himself out of a canon on primetime TV mere weeks earlier to court a chicken. Even failed daredevil puppets have untapped depths, it would seem.
While Henson was undoubtedly the heart and soul of The Muppets – his straight-faced goal with '80s series 'Fraggle Rock' was that "I'd like to make a TV show that brings about world peace" – the songs on the Muppets soundtrack were penned by successful songwriters Paul "Holy Shit I Wrote Rainy Days and Mondays" Williams and Kenneth "Holy Shit, I Wrote Those Dreamy Strings On Mind Games" Ascher, with Henson giving them complete freedom to write what they saw fit.
Luckily, that freedom was repaid by a series of songs both complex and beautiful: ranging from the '60s-leaning psychotropic jam 'Can You Picture That?', and the jaunty road anthem 'Movin' Right Along' to Piggy's unabashed love ode 'Never Before, Never Again' (perhaps the only love song that can back up its claims of a truly singular love – detailing as it does a romance between a pig and a frog) and 'The Rainbow Connection', one of the finest songs ever written. If the line "All of us under its spell, we know that it's probably magic" sang earnestly by a charmingly off-key frog doesn't warm your very essence then you are a lost cause. And assuming that wonder, hope, self-belief, and love are the four pillars of all Muppets songs (and they ARE), 'I'm Going To Go Back There Someday' is the track that rests most solidly across all four.
A yearning, beautiful song sang by Gonzo as the characters sit around a campfire, despondent but never broken, 'I'm Going To Go Back There Someday' comes deep from within a displaced creature who knows where home is, even if he cannot make out the particulars. It's an emotional place, a physical place, blurry nostalgia blended with future dreaming – a mood rather than a solid thought. He'll know it when he is there.
"Sun rises, night falls, sometimes the sky calls.
Is that a song there, and do I belong there?
I've never been there, but I know the way.
I'm going to go back there someday."
Every line in this song could be a tattoo, but the one that cuts me (then pumps ink into me) every time is "There's not a word yet for old friends who've just met." 37 years later there still isn't, but we all know the feeling Gonzo is referring to. It's platonic-love-at-first-sight; that instant knowledge that someone will be a major player in the messy way your life unspools. It's destiny, or something nearby. We know that it's probably magic…
1970s 200 sad songs gonzo henson jim henson keiren jolly kermit kermit the frog nathan jolly the muppet movie the muppets

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Angular2 - configuration error while running unit tests with PhantomJS In my Angular2.0.1 application I want to use karma and PhantomJS for unit tests. When I issue
npm run test

I have a log
[karma]: Karma v1.3.0 server started at http://localhost:9876/
[launcher]: Launching browser PhantomJS with unlimited concurrency
[launcher]: Starting browser PhantomJS
[PhantomJS 2.1.1 (Windows 8 0.0.0)]: Connected on socket /#weBxwT1c9A8XQjo9AAAA with id 35739171
PhantomJS 2.1.1 (Windows 8 0.0.0) ERROR
  Error: Missing: SyncTestZoneSpec
  at node_modules/zone.js/dist/jasmine-patch.js:32

How can I fix it?
My package.json
{
  "scripts": {
    "start": "tsc && concurrently \"watch-less -d ./less -r ./css -e .css\" \"tsc -w\" \"lite-server\" ",
    "watch": "concurrently \"watch-less -d ./less -r ./css -e .css\" \"tsc -w\"",
    "lite": "lite-server",
    "postinstall": "typings install",
    "tsc": "tsc",
    "tsc:w": "tsc -w",
    "typings": "typings",
    "test": "karma start --browsers PhantomJS",
    "e2e": "protractor protractor.config.js",
    "e2e-jenkins": "concurrently -k -s first \"lite-server -c bs-config-jenkins.js\" \"protractor protractor-jenkins.config.js\"",
    "extract": "ng-xi18n"
  },
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "@angular/common": "~2.0.1",
    "@angular/compiler": "~2.0.1",
    "@angular/core": "~2.0.1",
    "@angular/forms": "~2.0.1",
    "@angular/http": "~2.0.1",
    "@angular/platform-browser": "~2.0.1",
    "@angular/platform-browser-dynamic": "~2.0.1",
    "@angular/router": "~3.0.1",
    "@angular/upgrade": "~2.0.1",
    "angular2-in-memory-web-api": "0.0.20",
    "core-js": "^2.4.1",
    "reflect-metadata": "^0.1.8",
    "rxjs": "5.0.0-beta.12",
    "systemjs": "0.19.39",
    "zone.js": "^0.6.25"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "canonical-path": "0.0.2",
    "concurrently": "^3.0.0",
    "jasmine": "^2.5.2",
    "jasmine-fail-fast": "^2.0.0",
    "karma": "^1.3.0",
    "karma-chrome-launcher": "^2.0.0",
    "karma-firefox-launcher": "^1.0.0",
    "karma-htmlfile-reporter": "^0.3.4",
    "karma-jasmine": "^1.0.2",
    "karma-phantomjs-launcher": "^1.0.2",
    "lite-server": "^2.2.2",
    "protractor": "^4.0.8",
    "protractor-jasmine2-screenshot-reporter": "^0.3.2",
    "typescript": "^1.8.10",
    "typings": "^1.4.0",
    "watch-less": "0.0.4"
  }
}

and karma.conf.js
module.exports = function(config) {

  var appBase   = 'app/';      // transpiled app JS files
  var appAssets ='/base/app/'; // component assets fetched by Angular's compiler

  config.set({
    basePath: '',
    frameworks: ['jasmine'],
    plugins: [
      require('karma-jasmine'),
      require('karma-chrome-launcher'),
      require('karma-firefox-launcher'),
      require('karma-phantomjs-launcher'),
      require('karma-htmlfile-reporter')
    ],

    customLaunchers: {
      // From the CLI. Not used here but interesting
      // chrome setup for travis CI using chromium
      Chrome_travis_ci: {
        base: 'Chrome',
        flags: ['--no-sandbox']
      }
    },
    files: [
      // Polyfills
      'node_modules/core-js/client/shim.js',
      'node_modules/reflect-metadata/Reflect.js',

      // System.js for module loading
      'node_modules/systemjs/dist/system-polyfills.js',
      'node_modules/systemjs/dist/system.src.js',

      // Zone.js dependencies
      'node_modules/zone.js/dist/zone.js',
      'node_modules/zone.js/dist/jasmine-patch.js',
      'node_modules/zone.js/dist/async-test.js',
      'node_modules/zone.js/dist/fake-async-test.js',

      // RxJs.
      { pattern: 'node_modules/rxjs/**/*.js', included: false, watched: false },
      { pattern: 'node_modules/rxjs/**/*.js.map', included: false, watched: false },

      { pattern: 'systemjs.config.js', included: false, watched: false },
      { pattern: 'karma-test-shim.js', included: true, watched: true },

      // Angular 2 itself and the testing library
      { pattern: 'node_modules/@angular/**/*.js', included: false, watched: false },
      { pattern: 'node_modules/@angular/**/*.js.map', included: false, watched: false },

      // transpiled application & spec code paths loaded via module imports
      { pattern: appBase + '**/*.js', included: false, watched: true },

      // asset (HTML & CSS) paths loaded via Angular's component compiler
      // (these paths need to be rewritten, see proxies section)
      { pattern: appBase + '**/*.html', included: false, watched: true },
      { pattern: appBase + '**/*.css', included: false, watched: true },

      // paths for debugging with source maps in dev tools
      { pattern: appBase + '**/*.ts', included: false, watched: false },
      { pattern: appBase + '**/*.js.map', included: false, watched: false }
    ],

    // proxied base paths for loading assets
    proxies: {
      // required for component assets fetched by Angular's compiler
      "/app/": appAssets
    },

    exclude: [],
    preprocessors: {},
    reporters: ['progress', 'html'],

    // HtmlReporter configuration
    htmlReporter: {
      // Open this file to see results in browser
      outputFile: '_test-output/tests.html',

      // Optional
      pageTitle: 'Unit Tests',
      subPageTitle: __dirname
    },

    port: 9876,
    colors: true,
    logLevel: config.LOG_INFO,
    autoWatch: true,
    browsers: ['Chrome', 'Firefox', 'PhantomJS'],
    singleRun: true
  })
}

A: You can also check karma.conf.js for your reference.
Update your module loading dependencies of files as below
files:[
  // System.js for module loading
  'node_modules/systemjs/dist/system.src.js',

  // Polyfills
  'node_modules/core-js/client/shim.js',
  'node_modules/reflect-metadata/Reflect.js',
  'node_modules/zone.js/dist/zone.js',
  'node_modules/zone.js/dist/long-stack-trace-zone.js',
  'node_modules/zone.js/dist/proxy.js',
  'node_modules/zone.js/dist/sync-test.js',
  'node_modules/zone.js/dist/jasmine-patch.js',
  'node_modules/zone.js/dist/async-test.js',
  'node_modules/zone.js/dist/fake-async-test.js',

  // RxJs
  { pattern: 'node_modules/rxjs/**/*.js', included: false, watched: false },
  { pattern: 'node_modules/rxjs/**/*.js.map', included: false, watched: false },

  // Paths loaded via module imports:
  // Angular itself
  {pattern: 'node_modules/@angular/**/*.js', included: false, watched: false},
  {pattern: 'node_modules/@angular/**/*.js.map', included: false, watched: false},

  ....
]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
February 18, 2013 · by Jaye Irons
English: Oscar Pistorius during 2011 World championships Athletics in Daegu (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Oscar Pistorius Murdered His Girlfriend On V-Day?
On Valentine's Day, it was not known exactly what exactly happened between 'Blade Runner' Oscar Pistorius and his slain girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. And the matter at hand about this story that focus on Reeva Steenkamp's murder, has many fans of Oscar Pistorius in South Africa in utter disbelief.
Especially after overcoming so many odds stacked against the famed double-amputee Olympic participant in throughout his life.
Police in South Africa also wondered about another matter about Pistorius, requesting that he should be tested for steroid usage.
The substance was found in his home along with evidence of heavy drinking that was done by Pistorius, which brought up a red flag to the authorities right off as they probably figure it could have definitely tied into the murder of Reeva Steenkamp (via) Oscar's mental state at that time.
Now when the Police made the statement that he should be tested for steroids, they were tipped off by unnamed sources about Pistorius's illegal use of the substance and yea that will bring up another red flag against Pistorius.
This will basically give a motive to why Pistorius decided to kill his girlfriend, may he was in a en-raged moment, that just went off in his head and he attacked and killed Steenkamp.
So now Pistorius's lawyer will more in likely try to use that to make a plea that Pistorius might not been in his right frame of mind when he killed Steenkamp. (I'm Thinking His Goose Is Cooked If You Ask Me)..
Then another weird part of the case is that a bloody cricket bat was found at the scene as well, which now upgrades the charge against Pistorius to pre-meditated murder.
Or could the bat have been the weapon that Steenkamp went for, as she was fighting for her life against Pistorius? Yea that's a cliffhanger..
And the shooting death of Steenhamp that also is to be analyzed in this case..
So prosecutors and the Police are going to have to work on the case with the factual evidence found at the crime scene, to determine how all this played out ending up with the murder of model Reeva Steenkamp.
(Reeva Steenkamp)
And it does not look good for Pistorius at all, that claimed he was attacking a burglar which he believe Steenkamp was at the time..
LOL is this idiot SERIOUS?.. LOL he is just in Ugly trouble right now and he will be in prison for years no doubt. I think he can go for parole in 25 years? 2038..
But let's face it, even if he can go for parole at that time, he still is not getting out LOL… It was premeditated murder so.. NO DICE.
It's just a shame, Steenkamp was a beautiful girl and her life was wasted by this piece of s**t poor excuse of a human being Oscar Pistorius.
(Video Credit: BoozWheez)
(By: Jaye Irons)
'Bloodied cricket bat found at home of Oscar Pistorius' (standard.co.uk)
Blade Gunner: Oscar Pistorius' Career is Probably Over (greenlightng.wordpress.com)
Oscar Pistorius' career put on ice as races cancelled (thetimes.co.uk)
Reeva Steenkamp Hid From Oscar Pistorius, Was Shot Through Bathroom Door, Report Claims (thehollywoodgossip.com)
Nike, Oakley Stand By Pistorius As Police Discover Bloody Cricket Bat and Steroids (forbes.com)
Oscar Pistorius' girlfriend says goodbye on reality television show before tragic death (pix11.com)
Oscar Pistorius Cancels All Future Races (news.sky.com)
'Roid Rage? Steroids reportedly found in Bladerunner's home (foxnews.com)
Report: Steroids found in Oscar Pistorius' home (washingtontimes.com)
Mom of victim Reeva Steenkamp: Why did Oscar Pistorius do this? (washingtontimes.com)
This entry was posted in They Did WHAT!? and tagged Blade Runner, Murder, Oscar Pistorius, Pistorius, Red flag, Reeva Steenkamp, South Africa, Steenkamp, Valentine's Day. Bookmark the permalink.
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On Friday October 19th at 6:28pm the Gamber and Community Fire Company Dive Team was alerted to assist with a vehicle collision with rescue at the intersection of Old Taneytown Road and Mayberry Road just outside Taneytown.
First arriving units found a vehicle off the road upside down in a pond with one person still inside. Crews extricated the patient prior to arrival of Dive Unit 13. Divers conducted a secondary search of the pond looking for additional victims, not finding any. Crews cleaned up, cleared the scene and were back at the station by 8:30pm.


text:
Hashtag Trending – Pirating streams a felony in the US; Siri, where's my car; RIP Eric Engstrom
CDN Staff
Pirated streamed content will soon become a felony in the U.S., Apple is working on a new autonomous vehicle, and Eric Engstrom the champion of Windows Gaming and Direct X passes away.
It's all the tech news that's popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It's Tuesday Wednesday 23, and I'm your host Baneet Braich.
Pirating Streamed Content to Become Felony from technology
Pirated streamed content will soon become a felony in the U.S. thanks to a new Bill. Under the new bill, any person that pirates video streams of copyrighted work will have committed a felony act and be subject to either fines or imprisonment. The previous penalty for pirating streaming content was a misdemeanour. The bill targets large scale, criminal and for-profit streaming services. However, it does not address non-commercial activities or individuals who access the pirated streams knowingly or unknowingly. This bill was passed considering how people's viewing habits have changed since COVID-19 touched down, leaving them with more time to view content.
Hey Siri, start my car. That's right – Apple is working on a new self-driving vehicle with "breakthrough" battery technology by 2024, according to Reuters. However, the tech giant refused to discuss the new vehicle. Anonymous sources say it's a mass-market vehicle, with "radically" cheaper battery, and lidar sensors, which give self-driving cars a three-dimensional road view. [LinkedIn]
Creator of DirectX, Eric Engstrom, passes away at 55 from technology
And lastly, some heavy news to report as Eric Engstrom, the Pioneer Of Windows Gaming And DirectX, has passed away at 55 due to an injury. He will be remembered for his contributions to DirectX where the API made gaming on Microsoft's Windows OS the top choice for PC Gaming. DirectX is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable a computer to recognize and run games that can tap that computer's graphics capabilities. This also paved the way for what we now know as Microsoft's Xbox consoles. Rest in Peace Eric, you brought people joy in both the real and virtual world.
That's all the tech news that's trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. And remember, over the next couple of weeks, we want you to tell us what you think is this year's biggest Canadian tech story. Let us know on Twitter @ITWorldCa, or leave a comment on the show notes for this episode at ITWorldCanada.com. Respondents will be entered into a draw for a chance to win an IT World Canada mug in the New Year!
I'm Baneet Braich thanks for listening.
CDN Staffhttps://channeldailynews.com
For over 25 years, CDN has been the voice of the IT channel community in Canada. Today through our digital magazine, e-mail newsletter, video reports, events and social media platforms, we provide channel partners with the information they need to grow their business.
Hashtag Trending – Former SolarWinds exec speaks out; US cable companies face rule change; Busy work headaches
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This section contains over 130 hours of audio recordings in mp3 format of selected texts from the website in English, Pāli and Sanskrit.
The audio readings presented here are in mp3 format and can be played by going to the page they are embedded in. The files are not included in the website download but can be downloaded separately from the links provided below.
As of October 2010 all of the English works have now been read in, and as of March 2011 I have started to make readings in Pāḷi and Sanskrit available and will continue with this work over the coming years.


text:
Flirting with Models
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Mean Reversion and Bond ETF Returns
By Corey Hoffstein
This post is available as PDF download here.
Summary
In July 2016, we argued that bond investors should be quick to celebrate the strong returns they had realized year-to-date.
The combination of a defined maturity and known coupon rate creates a gravitational pull for bond returns.
Using a global bond ETF universe, we develop a simple model to forecast future 1-year returns.
The model suggests that mean reversion is a strong forecaster of future returns. A combination of starting yield and prior excess returns provides an R2 of 24.3%.
While bond investors may be frustrated today, mean reversion suggests that poor returns merely mean they have been pushing returns into the future, giving themselves something to look forward to.
On July 18th, 2016 we published a commentary titled Bond Returns: Don't Be Jealous, Be Worried. At the time of publishing, the iShares 7-10 Year U.S. Treasury ETF ("IEF") was up 6.92% on the year, as the 10-year U.S. Treasury rate had fallen from 2.27% to 1.60%.
The entire point of the piece was that unlike stocks, bonds have a fairly well-defined value. When you buy a bond with a given yield-to-maturity, barring the case of a default, you know what return you are going to receive. Therefore, while the mark-to-market value of the bond may go up and down with changing interest rates, these fluctuations will have no impact on your ultimate realized return.
This is even true if we try to sell our bonds along the way. Yes, we might be selling at a higher value than we bought, but we will be reinvesting that capital at a lower rate.1
With fixed income, today's gains are just tomorrow's returns realized early. To quote the commentary,
IEF may be up 6.92% year-to-date, but the 10-year annualized expected return for 10-year USTs just fell by 67 basis points. That may not sound like much, but the total return difference between a 2.27% annualized return and a 1.60% annualized return over a 10-year period is 796 basis points. The paper gains we have today are simply the yield returns we won't be receiving in the future.
From the date of writing, the 10-year U.S. Treasury rate has climbed to approximately 3.00%, a 140 basis point move. Over this time period, IEF has realized a -2.71% annualized return.
We would love to pound our chests about this prescient timing, but ultimately it was just a case of math, some faster-than-expected mean reversion, and quite a bit of luck.
Two years later, we sit in a different place. Year-to-date, IEF is down -2.42%. The 10-year U.S. Treasury rate started the year at 2.46% and has climbed 54 basis points to nearly 3.00%. The total return difference over a 10-year period between a 2.46% rate and a 3.00% rate is 688 basis points.
As the math shows us, losses today push returns forward.
For bonds, a combination of the stated coupons and the defined maturity creates a gravitational pull that almost always wins in the end. Escape velocity from this pull is only really ever achieved in the case of default. It is worth pointing out that for bond holders, there is no positive antithesis to default: borrowers don't suddenly make surprise increases to coupons out of the goodness of their hearts.
Given that we believe mark-to-market gains and losses are really just the push- and pull-forward effects of future returns, a question worth asking is: can we use this relationship to forecast future returns?
Modeling Mean Reversion in Bond ETFs
To test this hypothesis, we are going to model returns in a universe of 29 fixed income ETFs. The universe covers U.S. Treasuries of varying maturities, a spectrum of credit quality, asset-backed securities, and international exposures including emerging market debt.
Specifically, we will attempt to construct a linear model where we attempt to forecast future 12-month total returns by using a combination of prior returns and yield estimates. Specifically, our variables will include current yield ("Y0"), the spread between realized 12-month returns and starting yield. This spread is measured at the prior 12, 24, and 36-month points (labeled "S1," "S2," and "S3" respectively).
In effort to avoid overfitting our estimates, we employ two techniques. First, we combine the data from all the ETFs together. While much of the data is overlapping in the time domain and shares common economic factors, the breadth of the universe helps the model from overfitting to a specific economic event.
Secondly, we will estimate our parameters use a cross-validated Lasso model, where we utilize the last 18 months of the data for testing and the remaining data for training. To avoid information leakage, 12 months of data between the training and the testing set is embargoed.
A Simple Model for Forecasting Mean Reversion
After all this setup, the results are none too surprising. The best fit parameters are:
Y0 1.431759
S1 -0.270067
S3 0.164022
Our interpretation of these parameters is that future returns are a function of current yields (Y0) and the expectation that past spreads mean revert with a half-life of between 12- and 36- months (given that the S1 variable is negative and the S3 variable is positive).
The R2 within the training set is 24.9% and the R2within the testing set is 24.3%, a strong indication that the model is robust. This may seem like a rather low R2 number, but it is worth acknowledging that this model forecasting 1-year returns, a notoriously volatile horizon. Furthermore, this model does not incorporate any of the idiosyncratic information relevant to each bond sector. By design, it is a hyper generic model.
Below we plot the forecasted versus realized 12-month returns over the testing period using this model.
While there is a reasonably large degree of variability, we generally see a strong fit. Mean reversion appears to be alive and well in the data of bond returns, as we would expect it to be.
For an asset class with a known maturity date and defined cash flow, bonds can be frustratingly volatile for investors. Perhaps counterintuitively, rising prices can actually be the harbinger of poor forward returns. Consider that in 2016, falling interest rates caused bond prices to soar. Since then, bonds have offered frustratingly flat, if not negative, returns.
We would argue, however, that the two facts are inextricably linked. The higher return of 2016 simply "pulled forward" future returns, a price that was paid over the subsequent years.
This logic would suggest, then, that there might be some tactical opportunity for investors to adjust their bond allocations. In this commentary, we build a very simple model to explore mean reversion across a large cross-section of global bond ETFs. We find that a combination of current yield and prior realized returns in excess of yield is a reasonable predictor of future 1-year returns.
Of course, the fit is not perfect. There is a large degree of variability. To quote a recent Research Affiliates piece, "mean reversion is reliably unreliable."2 After all, if it were easy and certain, everybody would do it and everybody would profit.
Yet when we consider that we are attempting to forecast a short horizon (12 months) and ignore further potentially meaningful information for each asset class (e.g. duration, yield-to-worst, et cetera), the strength of our results suggest that mean reversion is a powerful force at work in bond returns.
Investors frustrated by poor bond returns may very well have something positive to look forward to.
Information on Newfound's income-focused strategies is available here. Specific research and educational materials are available below:
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This assumes reinvestment in the same bond. In practice, many constant maturity indices span multiple years, and there may be a roll yield that can be harvested. Nevertheless, the general premise holds as capital gains from changes in rates have little impact on long-term portfolio returns.
Performance Measurement: How to Do It If We Must
Corey Hoffstein
Corey is co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Newfound Research, a quantitative asset manager offering a suite of separately managed accounts and mutual funds. At Newfound, Corey is responsible for portfolio management, investment research, strategy development, and communication of the firm's views to clients. Prior to offering asset management services, Newfound licensed research from the quantitative investment models developed by Corey. At peak, this research helped steer the tactical allocation decisions for upwards of $10bn. Corey holds a Master of Science in Computational Finance from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, cum laude, from Cornell University. You can connect with Corey on LinkedIn or Twitter.
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