This is a common question we encounter on almost a daily basis. Your guess is not far from the answer. Besides the “state of the art” library facility and great leadership that we are proud of, the library has digitized almost all its functions. 

Kindly watch the videos below, of some of our library professionals Mr. Samuel Muthami- head librarian Research and Special Collections, Mr. David Mutiso – E resources librarian and Mr. Edward Safari – Systems Librarian as they showcase the various digital platforms and processes at Kenyatta University Postmodern Library.

Watch the videos below

Welcome to The Knowledge Retreat

Taylor & Francis Group one of the world’s leading publishers of scholarly journals, books, eBooks, and reference works is hosting an online training named "The Knowledge Retreat" for free expert advice on focus and inspiration when writing.

Register for free access to expert advice on improving your focus and inspiration when writing or researching.

Articles published by Taylor & Francis for KU authors are now deposited in our Institutional Repository Under Research Papers RP) Community.

EIFL - Taylor & Francis Journals Licence Agreement allows depositing publisher PDFs (downloaded from https://www.tandfonline.com/) in any repositories 12 months after publication for STM disciplines and 18 months for Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines.

EIFL has renewed its agreement with SAGE for the IMechE journals from the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, and the renewed agreement includes open access publishing terms for authors which guarantees a waiver (100% discount) on Article Processing Charges for authors from Kenya when publishing an article in one of the IMechE journals.

The agreement runs until December 2024, and the offer is available to CORRESPONDING authors.

Direct link to most recent title list of journals with discounted or waiver APCs for corresponding authors from Kenya: https://www.eifl.net/kenya_apcs

How to claim the waiver:

The waiver or discount is automatically applied as SAGE’s system will recognise an eligible corresponding author’s affiliation to eligible countries or institutions.

You can find more information on this page:

https://eifl.net/apcs/imeche-apcs-open-access-publishing

EIFL has renewed its agreement with Cambridge University Press which guarantees a waiver (100% discount) on Article Processing Charges for authors from Kenya when publishing an article in one of the Cambridge University Press fully open access journals.

 The agreement runs until December 2022, and the offer is available to CORRESPONDING authors.

Direct link to most recent title list of journals with discounted or waiver APCs for corresponding authors from Kenya: https://www.eifl.net/kenya_apcs

 How to claim the waiver: 

Once the completed licence to publish form has been received, authors will receive an email from Rightslink-CCC, who work on Cambridge’s behalf to collect Article Processing Charges (APCs). All authors must complete this process. Within the Rightslink process, corresponding Authors from eligible countries should select their country and select ‘Apply Discounts’. They will then be returned to an updated version of the charges page, where the net total will be updated to reflect the waiver.

 You can find more information on this page:

https://eifl.net/apcs/cambridge-university-press-apcs-open-access-journals

Image from APKFab Random Chat & Date

Please note that you do not need to log in to the maktaba platform. Ignore the login tab. However you need to register and login to use the e-resources on the maktaba platform. See the information below:

Steps to the registration
1. Register to access e-books and e-journals by simply clicking on this link:  https://elibraryku.remotexs.co/user/register
2. Check your registered email for further instructions such as creation of the password you will be using to log in to the system. The username is the email you use to register (ie your student email)
3. Log in on https://elibraryku.remotexs.co/user/login

SAGE Research Methods Online (SRMO) is a research methods tool created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects. SRMO links researchers to content from books, book chapters, journals, reference books, and videos. SRMO covers methods and concepts to help you design research projects, understand particular methods or identify a new method, conduct your research, and write up your findings. SRMO focuses on methodology and can therefore be used across all disciplines.

Elsevier has put together a webinar series that will address highly requested topics from researchers. The series is called The Researcher Toolbox … powered by Scopus

The series we will be covering:

• Essential tips for Publishing in High Impact Journals – Lessons from Cell Press Presented by: Dr. Rebecca Eccles (PhD), Scientific Editor at Molecular Cell (Cell Press, Elsevier)
• Making sense of Open Access and Pre-Prints Presented by Lucia Schoombee (Senior Research Intelligence Consultant) and Daneshree Moodley(Core Products Consultant)
• Get the Most out of your Author Profile Presented by Isabel Butt (Scopus Senior Product Manager)
• Responsible use of Research Metrics Presented by Dr. Andrew Plume President for the International Centre for the Study of Research and Senior Director of Research Evaluation at Elsevier.
• How to get indexed in Scopus and why Presented by Prof Jaya Raju(Content Selection and Advisory Board Member) and Shareef Bhailal(Senior Scopus Product Manager)

Register here

Please register to access e-books and e-journals by simply clicking on this link  https://elibraryku.remotexs.co/user/register

Once you are successfully registered, check your registered email for further instructions.

If you are using a mobile gadget, you can easily scan the QR code on this page for the link to the registration process

Nb: If you have forgotten the password to your corporate email you are advised to submit a ticket to support.ku.ac.ke

Image from https://twitter.com/open_to

There is a growing demand for good quality statistical data that is timely and reliable. Open data sources provide data that is free for anyone to reuse, modify and share. The sources include:

Local data sources

• Kenya Open Data
• Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS)
• Kenya Data Portal
• African Open Data Network
• InfoTrak
• Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) data

Global data sources

• Visual Capitalist
• World Bank Open Data
• World Health Organization (WHO) Open Data Repository
• The Global Health Observatory
• Worldometer
• Google Public Data Explorer
• Google Dataset Search
• European Union Open Data Portal
• Data.Gov
• UNICEF Dataset
• WHO (COVID-19) Situation Dashboard
• NextStrain
• Covid-19 Visualizer
• The UNWTO Tourism Data Dashboard 

 A Knowledge Map presents you with a topical overview for your search query based on the 100 most relevant documents matching your query. The visualization is intended to give you a head start on your scholarly search. You can identify relevant areas at a glance and documents related to them.

Benefits of using Knowledge Maps

Get an overview of a research topic: knowledge maps provide an instant overview of a topic by showing the main areas at a glance, and papers related to each area. This makes it possible to easily identify useful, pertinent information.

Separate the wheat from the chaff: we cluster similar papers together. This makes it easier to identify relevant content when you are searching for an ambiguous term, or when you would like to identify content from a single discipline in a multidisciplinary field.

Identify relevant concepts: one of the most difficult tasks when you are new in a research field is to learn the “language” of the field. Open Knowledge Maps makes it easier for you by labeling research areas with relevant concepts.

Find open content: our knowledge maps include both closed and open access papers. However we highlight open access papers – and the majority of those papers can be read from within the interface. And if not, the fulltext is only a click away.

Click here to access the Open Knowledge Maps

EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) has negotiated a number of agreements with publishers that secure waived or discounted Article Processing Charges (APCs) for corresponding authors to publish their articles in open access. The list of journals is available on https://www.eifl.net/kenya_apcs

Altmetrics stands for "alternative metrics.” In real sense however, they are complementary to traditional, citation-based metrics. The metrics are becoming widely used in academia as evidence of influence for promotion and tenure and in applying for grants. They capture online interactions with a piece of research.  The sources of the metrics are for example Wikipedia, public policy documents, discussions on research blogs, mainstream media coverage, bookmarks on reference managers like Mendeley, and mentions on social networks such as Twitter. For more information on the subject click here

Image from SciRange Publications

EIFL has negotiated a free read & publish agreement with the following journals:

• Development
• Journal of Cell Science
• Journal of Experimental Biology

This means that corresponding authors from these countries will not have to pay any Article Processing Charges (APCs) for open access publishing when an article is accepted for publication by one of the three hybrid journals published by The Company of Biologists. The offer runs until 31st December 2023. Click here for a full list of journals with waived or discounted Article Processing Charges

Taylor & Francis has an agreement with EIFL that guarantees no - or heavily reduced - Article Processing Charges (APCs) for authors from EIFL partner countries when they publish in a Taylor & Francis-owned fully Open Access (OA) journal, including Cogent journals. Kenya is one of the partners included in the agreement.  The agreement runs until 2023. You can view the title list here and browse it by subject.

How does it work?

The new submission system, “Submission Portal”, will automatically recognize countries and will alert eligible authors that they are eligible for a waiver or discount, and prompt them to apply for it. They will need to tick a box to apply for the waiver or discount. The waiver will not be automatically applied.

Subjects covered in the offer

Arts & Humanities, Behavioral Sciences & Social Care, Business, Economics and Sociology, Education, Geography, Information Science, Sport & Heritage, Life, Earth & Environmental Science, Medicine & Health, Physical Sciences and Engineering, Politics, IR & Area Studies.

For more journals with Article Processing waivers click here

Search for Scholarly Journals to Publish your Research Papers at The Observatory of International Research (OOIR) website which hosts papers published in 792 peer-reviewed journals across the social sciences:

• Political Science

• Sociology

• Law

• Geography

• History

• Communication

The choice of journals is based on Web of Science 's SSCI (Social Science Citations Index). The journals listed cut across Open Access to Closed Access models. Some of the Journals listed do not deposit scholarly metadata at CrossRef.

Select a Journal from the list and click on the URL after the word Homepage to Access the Author and Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

Access free and Open Access Journals from EFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) in Arts and Humanities, Law, Medicine & Health, Science & Mathematics and Social sciences. Access other free resources available from EIFL

CS. Cyrus Gichaga Karanja, the Administrator at the Kenyatta University  School of Agriculture and Enterprise Development (SAED) donated books to Kenyatta University Post Modern Library on 17/12/2019.

The books were received by Dr. Gitau Njoroge, the Chief University Librarian and Mr. Muchai the Head Librarian Bibliographic Control.

Faculty staff and students from the Kenyatta University Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy and Nursing were trained on the ClinicalKey platform on 6^th and 7^th November 2018. The sessions were facilitated by Mohamed Tanamly who has a medical background. He also introduced participants to ClinicalKey Medical Education. Kenyatta University has been given trial access to the platform which has been described as the next-generation medical learning platform

There was an apparent safety scare at the Post Modern Library on Monday the 18th March 2019 at about noon. Following this incidence, it has been clarified that the noise that triggered the scare was a result of impact of breakage of floor tiles on 3rd Floor next to the lift.

Our users are therefore advised as follows;

1. The library is very safe and normal library services resumed at 3.30pm on the same day.
2. Students and staff who left their personal items should check with the service counters.
3. Library users who may have left with library books are requested to return them to the Library’s circulation counter.
4. Library users who may have picked other user’s items are also advised to surrender them to the Library at the circulation counter.