Open Access Week is an annual global event that takes in the last week of October. This year’s virtual event, organized by Qatar National Library (QNL), saw the participation of HBKU Press. Despite the economic challenges that publishers worldwide are facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press (HBKU Press) celebrates Open Access Week 2020 by reaffirming its commitment as a leader in information dissemination.

According to Bachar Chebara, Executive Director of HBKU Press, “HBKU Press has and continues to adapt successfully to the changing publishing landscape to keep our authors and researchers at the heart of the publication process. Now more than ever we are successfully providing a supportive and collaborative research environment for academics and scholars in Qatar, MENA and the rest of the world.”

Dr Isaifan clearly highlights how HBKU press has adapted to maintain its status as a world-class publisher and hub of information exchange for the region, despite the impact that COVID-19 has had on the landscape of open access, open science, and scholarly publishing.

“Our online Open Access website, QScience.com, is an instrumental platform that supports researchers’ publishing endeavours by providing necessary services such as research writing guidance, editing, typesetting, translation, article hosting, archiving and indexing in internationally recognized indexing databases,” said Dr Isaifan. “We’ve also expanded our services to include virtual training support on the use of our submission systems and institutional support by expediting publishing services to meet the changes that the constantly evolving research landscape have demanded of us during the pandemic.” 

The panel discussion touched on the pandemic’s impact on many stakeholders from libraries, scholarly publishers, and research institutions, including the expectation and predictions for the upcoming years.

HBKU Press has adopted an Open Access Model for its Academic, online publishing platform, QScience.com, consisting thousands of scholarly, peer-reviewed articles that are freely available to readers around the world.

The platform also allows authors to share their work freely, with higher access, download and sharing rates while ensuring proper citation. The Open Access model is in line with international standards that ensure that information from the region is being shared freely in the wider knowledge economy.

In an effort to disseminate knowledge and understanding of scientific, social, political and health-related subjects, QScience.com currently hosts scholarly journals, conference proceedings and eBooks, all available for free online.

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