Qatar National Library has announced the recipients of its inaugural Open Initiative Awards, rewarding the best contributions to the advancement of open scholarship in Qatar.
His Excellency Dr. Hamad Bin Abdulaziz Al-Kawari, Minister of State, Qatar and President of Qatar National Library, revealed the winners at a virtual ceremony on 25 October. He also delivered a rousing keynote speech outlining the importance of the open access movement to the research community, as well as the vital role open access plays in knowledge acquisition and sharing in Qatar and across the world.
Open access is the practice of sharing knowledge openly and making research outcomes visible and accessible to all. The movement includes open access to research papers, open data, open education resources, open licenses and other applications of openness in scholarly and research environments.
An esteemed panel of judges from the Library deliberated over dozens of applications received after the call went out to Qatar’s research community in August for nominations.
The Best Individual Award went to Dr. Julie Decock, a scientist at Cancer Research Center, QBRI-HBKU, and Assistant Professor at College of Health and Life Sciences, HBKU, for promoting open scholarship in Qatar through student mentorship and open access research at QBRI.
Dr. Decock exhibited strong support of open scholarship and personally promoted open access through research tools, research data, software code and research manuscripts. She has been involved in QBRI’s summer research program for undergraduate students program, offering laboratory-based hands-on experience, and has given several workshops on open scholarship.
