Étiquette : Africa

Catégories
EN

Institutionalizing Open Science in Africa: Limitations and Prospects

Authors : Izuchukwu Azuka Okafor, Smart Ikechukwu Mbagwu, Terkuma Chia, Zuwati Hasim, Echezona Ejike Udokanma, Karthik Chandran

The advancement of scientific research and raising the next-generation scientists in Africa depend largely on science access. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused discussions around open science (OS) to reemerge globally, especially in resource-poor settings like Africa, where the practice of OS is low.

The authors highlighted the elements, benefits, and existing initiatives of OS in Africa. More importantly, the article critically appraised the challenges, opportunities, and future considerations of OS in Africa. Addressing challenges of funding and leadership at different levels of educational, research, and government parastatals may be pivotal in charting a new course for OS in Africa.

This review serves as an advocacy strategy and an informative guide to policymaking and institutionalization of OS in Africa.

URL : Institutionalizing Open Science in Africa: Limitations and Prospects

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2022.855198

Catégories
EN

Perspectives on Gender in Science, Technology, and Innovation: A Review of Sub-Saharan Africa’s Science Granting Councils and Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

Authors : Jose C. Jackson, Jane G. Payumo, Amy J. Jamison, Michael L. Conteh, Petronella Chirawu

Africa’s focus on science, technology, and innovation (STI) has grown over the last decade, with emerging examples of good practice. There are however numerous challenges to sustainable development in Africa; for example, inequalities within and among African countries are rising and enormous disparities of opportunity, wealth, and power persist.

While policy makers and organizations have put increasing emphasis on integrating gender into STI policies and initiatives as a means to achieve gender equality for all women and girls, inequality remains a key challenge to continental sustainable development. STI funders such as the Science Granting Councils (SGCs) in Africa are key players in national innovation systems.

They advise and facilitate policy and program development, disburse funds, build research capacity, set and monitor research agendas, manage bilateral and multilateral STI agreements, and assess the communication, uptake, and impact of research.

They, therefore, have a major role to play in enabling countries to achieve SDG5. This study assessed the current actions in gender mainstreaming across the SGCs and the status of gender research and collaboration in participating countries.

Our findings provide evidence of uneven progress in promoting gender equality in the operations of the SGCs, including funding research and promoting the integration of gender dimensions in research content and curricula.

All SGCs emphasized national commitments to gender, and the importance of gender in STI, but acknowledged that at the structural and institutional levels there was a misalignment between policy and practice. As expected, more men than women were employed across most levels at the SGCs and held positions of seniority and decision making.

Most of the SGCs had very limited or no gender-related funding programs to promote gender and STI or to eliminate the barriers that women scholars face.

This resulted in persistent inequalities in who received funding, the size of the grants they received, and in the knowledge production, collaboration, and the impact on their country’s gender-related research. These findings suggest that SGCs need to strengthen their actions to mainstream gender if they are to achieve success with SDG5.

URL : Perspectives on Gender in Science, Technology, and Innovation: A Review of Sub-Saharan Africa’s Science Granting Councils and Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2022.814600

Catégories
EN

Research data management and services: Resources for different data practitioners

Author : Gilbert Mushi

The emergence of data-driven research and demands for the establishment of Research Data Management (RDM) has created interest in academic institutions and research organizations globally.

Some of the libraries especially in developed countries have started offering RDM services to their communities. Although lagging behind, some academic libraries in developing countries are at the stage of planning or implementing the service. However, the level of RDM awareness is very low among researchers, librarians and other data practitioners.

The objective of this paper is to present available open resources for different data practitioners particularly researchers and librarians.

It includes training resources for both researchers and librarians, Data Management Plan (DMP) tool for researchers; data repositories available for researchers to freely archive and share their research data to the local and international communities.

A case study with a survey was conducted at the University of Dodoma to identify relevant RDM services so that librarians could assist researchers to make their data accessible to the local and international community.

The study findings revealed a low level of RDM awareness among researchers and librarians. Over 50% of the respondent indicated their perceived knowledge as poor in the following RDM knowledge areas; DMP, data repository, long term digital preservation, funders RDM mandates, metadata standards describing data and general awareness of RDM.

Therefore, this paper presents available open resources for different data practitioners to improve RDM knowledge and boost the confidence of academic and research libraries in establishing the service.

URL : Research data management and services: Resources for different data practitioners

DOI : https://doi.org/10.29173/iq995

Catégories
FR

Le libre accès au service de la communication sur le changement climatique en Afrique

Auteur/Author : Marième Pollèle Ndiaye

Cette contribution est issue d’un projet de recherche consacré aux défis de la science ouverte pour stimuler la communication sur le changement climatique en Afrique. Nous tentons de comprendre d’abord, ce qui explique l’invisibilité des recherches dans ce domaine avant de questionner ce qui définit le décloisonnement scientifique.

En nous servant des sciences de l’information et de la communication (SIC) comme guide, deux hypothèses serviront de fils conducteurs à la réflexion. La première consistera à envisager les temporalités organisationnelles comme facteurs pouvant influencer l’engagement des chercheurs en faveur d’une science ouverte.

Dans le même ordre d’idée, la seconde hypothèse considérera l’aspect rhizomique (au sens de Gilles Deuleuze et Felix Guattari, 1976) des SIC tel un écueil pour identifier les recherches africaines autour de la communication sur le changement climatique.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ctd.4008

Catégories
EN

An analysis of the factors affecting open access to research output in institutional repositories in selected universities in East Africa

Author : Miriam Kakai

INTRODUCTION

Institutional repositories (IRs) present universities with an opportunity to provide global open access (OA) to their scholarship, however, this avenue was underutilised in two of the three universities in this study.

This study aimed at proposing interventions to improve access to research output in IRs in universities in East Africa, and it adds to the depth of knowledge on IRs by pointing out the factors that limit OA in IRs, some of which include lack of government and funder support for OA and mediated content collection workflows that hardly involved seeking author permission to self-archive.

METHODS

A mixed methods approach, following a concurrent strategy was used to investigate the low level of OA in IRs. Data was collected from three purposively selected IRs in universities in East Africa, using self-administered questionnaires from 183 researchers and face-to-face interviews from six librarians.

RESULTS

The findings revealed that content was collected on a voluntary basis, with most of the research output deposited in the IR without the authors’ knowledge. The respondents in this study were, however, supportive of the activities of the IR, and would participate in providing research output in the IR as OA if required to do so.

CONCLUSION

The low level of OA in IRs in universities in East Africa could be increased by improving the IR workflow, collection development, and marketing processes. Self-archiving could be improved by increasing the researchers’ awareness and knowledge of OA and importance of IRs, while addressing their concerns about copyright infringement.

URL : An analysis of the factors affecting open access to research output in institutional repositories in selected universities in East Africa

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2276

Catégories
EN

Research Data Management (RDM) at the University of Ghana (UG) : Myth or Reality?

Author : Bright Kwaku Avuglah

This article explores Research Data Management (RDM) at the University of Ghana (UG). It emphasises on institutional awareness and attitudes, and whether the University Library is officially supporting this emerging strategic interest in research focused Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

Purposive sampling was used to select information-rich respondents from across the University (i.e. Librarians, Research Administrators, ICT Managers and Senior Researchers) who were interviewed on a range of issues about RDM.

Institutional documents were also reviewed to corroborate the primary data and get a deeper understanding of the research problem. The study shows that while RDM is recognised at the institutional level as good research practice and integrity issue, the concept is tenuously understood in the local community.

Unsurprisingly, however, there was a general appreciation and awareness of the need for RDM and the implications for such critical concerns as security, integrity, continuity and institutional reputation.

The library is yet to take a strategic approach to RDM issues and there is clearly a dearth in RDM expertise within the library system.

The study recommends that the library must be proactive in advocating and promoting RDM issues at UG, but first, the Librarians must take advantage of numerous existing opportunities to build their capacity.

URL : Research Data Management (RDM) at the University of Ghana (UG) : Myth or Reality?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v15i1.670

Catégories
EN Non classé

Open access and research dissemination in Africa

Authors : Katie Wilson, Anthony Kiuna, Richard Lamptey, Susan Veldsman, Lucy Montgomery, Cameron Neylon, Richard Hosking, Karl Huang, Alkim Ozaygen

This paper discusses research undertaken by the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) and participants during and following an Open Knowledge international workshop held in Mauritius in September 2019.

The workshop brought together key experts to explore the role of open knowledge in the creation of equitable and inclusive global knowledge landscapes.

This paper explores the role of open access and institutional repositories in knowledge sharing and the dissemination of research output from higher education and research institutions within the African continent.

The paper reviews the landscape of research output from the African continent; analyses open access research output, overviews of institutional knowledge sharing positions and the dissemination of research output from Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02544891