Research Information:FOCUS ON LATIN AMERICA
Forging stronger relationships in Ecuador
Ecuador’s higher education system has undergone significant changes and constitutional reform – all with the goal of improving the quality of the country’s academic institutions, writes Stacy Sieck
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n 2008, the Ecuador Government passed the country’s 20th national constitution, which included sweeping reforms meant to foster the development of a ‘culture of quality’ in the country’s education system.
Two years later, the Higher Education Law of 2010 – facilitated by the Board of Assessment, Accreditation and Quality Assurance in Higher Education (CEAASES in Spanish – Consejo de Evaluacion Acreditacion y Aseguramemiento de la Calidad de la Educacion Superior) was passed. The goal was to improve the country’s university accreditation process to monitor and assess how universities are accredited, as well as how they are funded and administered. Under these reforms, schools must be reevaluated every five years to ensure they meet the standards set forth by CEAASES.
The country presents unique opportunities for us as publishers. As the country’s government – and organisations like CEAASES and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Technology, and Innovation (SENESCYT) – are investing millions of dollars into educational reform, they are also encouraging new research and publication programmes.
Increasing emphasis on research and innovation Although not the top country in South America for research output, Ecuador is seeing a steady increase in scholarly research. From 2009 to 2014, we at Taylor & Francis alone saw a 3,000 per cent increase in readership of our journals by researchers in Ecuador. And, according to SciMago, from 2009 to 2014, Ecuador saw on average a 13 per cent increase per year in research output, with the number of citable articles nearly doubling, from 495 articles in 2009 to 880 articles in 2014.
This increase in research may, in part, be attributed to the country’s recent higher
Quito, Ecuador We must seize this
opportunity to engage with and support researchers
education reforms, but new funding programmes like SENESCYT’s Prometheus program also play a part. The Prometheus program was created in 2010 by SENESCYT to promote academic research and innovation within Ecuador, providing research grants to native researchers as well as to foreign researchers willing to work full-time in Ecuador for two to 12 months. Since 2010, the government has spent $27 million on Prometheus, and the program has produced 935 projects and 285 published papers by researchers from 48 countries.
Open access in Ecuador Ecuador is investing in open access publishing programs. As of June 2015, Ecuador had 11 open access journals listed in the DOAJ, and SENESCYT launched another government- funded open access journal – Neotropical Biodiversity, the country’s first scientific journal specialising in biodiversity – in collaboration with Taylor & Francis earlier this year. Ecuador has also shown dedication to the development of institutional repositories,
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enabling green open access policies to flourish there. In 2010, Ecuador approved a higher education law that requires the deposit of graduate and postgraduate theses in the country’s higher education national information system. Four years later, CEDIA – the National Research and Education Network of Ecuador – announced the launch of the Network of Open Access Repositories of Ecuador, to increase the visibility of the scientific research distributed in national repositories across the country. According to UNESCO’s Global Open Access Portal, Ecuador’s repository network is reported to hold more than 46,000 valid records of undergraduate theses, dissertations, and articles. These initiatives, among numerous others, show Ecuador’s dedication to open access publishing.
Growing relationships with the research community It is apparent that, as Ecuador’s government continues to support the growth and improvement of its higher education system, publishers have an important role to play. We must seize this opportunity to engage with and support researchers, so we are well-positioned to reap the benefits of this growing market in the future. To help us better serve the research community in Ecuador and South America overall, we at Taylor & Francis have started increasing our presence in South America. We’ve hired a new sales manager to survey the region, and we have hosted researcher/librarian workshops. We’re keen to watch this region grow and thrive over the coming years, and this is only the start of our work as publishers in this part of the world.
Stacy Sieck is the library communications manager for North and South America at Taylor & Francis.
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