My name is Roshan Karn and I am a final year medical student at Institute of Medicine, Tribhuwan University in Nepal. I established the organization named Open Access Nepal in early 2014, after attending the Berlin 11 Satellite Conference for Students and Early Stage Researchers. It was conceived with a motive of addressing the mandate of advocating and promoting the principles and policies of Open Access in Nepal received at the conference. Open Access Nepal portrays itself as the student chapter of Right to Research Coalition.

In the initial stage we encountered lot of problems as very few were actually aware about Open Access and its entities. But eventually through Open Access Nepal we have set a strong foot in this field. We met with chief librarians, representatives from organization active in the field of Open Access, professors, faculty members, deans, campus chiefs, and undergraduate as well as postgraduate students.

In the beginning we traveled throughout the major cities of the country advocating Open Access through seminars, talk programs, workshops and presentations. In order to promote Open Access locally, a local chapter of Open Access Nepal was formed in major universities and in number of medical, engineering and management colleges. The campus coordinators brief us on their activities every month. We are strongly connected to each other through our blog, social media and email groups.

We have a series of events lined up for the Open Access Week and we are excited to be a part of Generation Open. Through generous supports from R2RC and EIFL, we will be organizing a conference targeting the students and researchers. Our OA week event will also observe an active discussion between students and different stakeholders active in this field. We are also organizing workshops on Open Access, Open Access button, Open Educational Resources, Open Data and Open Access Repository. We have developed a strategic partnership with the Nepal Medical Students’ Society (NMSS).

I believe that the involvement of students in this field is a major achievement as the students and early stage researchers are the ones pivotal for the promotion of OA policies and principles and with the energy, enthusiasm, vigor and zeal that we possess, I am quite confident that we can make a major difference in this field.

I would like you to talk to me about measures of promoting open access policies in developing countries. Do you have open access policy in your institution? How can we develop strategies to make open access the default mode of publishing scholarly articles? What measures can be taken to populate the open access repository? What are the open access policies at national level in your country? What do the policy makers think about this? What can be done by individual researchers? What is hindering our country to adapt open access policies while there are countries who are strongly adapting it?

I would like to talk about open access repository, open educational resources and open data. Since all of these are related let us discuss on what we can do to motivate students to get them involved in research related activities. Let us explore the opportunities for the students. Let us share what we have.

I am thrilled to be a part of OpenCon. I am confident it will be an amazing event. It will be incredible to meet all of you. While we will be working hard for Open Access, let’s make sure that we have fun too.

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