Talking about preprints and AfricArXiv in particular, we are honored to be featured in University World News along with colleagues and institutional partners Joy Owango (TCC Africa-Training Centre in Communication ), Stephanie Dawson (ScienceOpen), Mark Hahnel (figshare), Catherine Ahearn (Knowledge Futures Group).
AfricArxiv is a community-led digital archive for African research communication. We provide a non-profit platform to upload working papers, preprints, accepted manuscripts (post-prints), presentations, and data sets via our partner platforms. AfricArxiv is dedicated to foster research and collaboration among African scientists, enhance the visibility of African research output and to increase collaboration globally.
Website: info.africarxiv.org
Holistic wellness and mental health in research careers – A conversation with Wangari Joyce Ngugi
Wangari talks about her experience as a professional in mental health, her work at Eider Africa, and the importance of community values for holistic well-being.
Open Reviewers Africa (presentation)
Owango, Joy, Munene, Aurelia, Ngugi, Wangari Joyce, Obanda, Johanssen, Havemann, Johanna, Saderi, Daniela, & Korzec, Kornelia. (2021, December 9). Open Reviewers Africa – A workshop to empower the next generation of African Peer Reviewers. FORCE2021: Joining Forces to Advance the Future of Research Communications. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5770712
TCC Africa & AfricArXiv win at ASAPbio sprint
Under the title Encouraging Preprint Curation and Review, ASAPbio has held a design sprint to increase exposure for new and existing ideas for encouraging preprint curation and review. The event was held in collaboration with Wellcome, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, DORA, EMBO Press, PLOS, and eLife. […]
Perspectives on Open Science and Inequity: Who is left behind?
[originally published at zbw-mediatalk.eu] Due to precautionary measures in regard to the coronavirus, the second day of this year’s Open Science Conference got canceled. Luckily, the panellists Johanna Havemann, Anne-Floor Scholvinck, Daniel Spichtinger and August Wierling agreed to submit their opening statements as a blog post for ZBW MediaTalk. by […]
Harnessing the Open Science infrastructure for an efficient African response to COVID-19 [preprint]
With the current coronavirus pandemic, the urgent need for Open Access to research results will increase scientific public domain knowledge to COVID-19 related literature hence enabling African researchers to develop African-centered solutions towards combating the SARS-CoV 2 virus, while at the same time strengthening the local biomedical resources of African countries and increasing their preparedness for future outbreaks. This applies to both global and regional levels. Previous virus outbreaks, such as the recent Western African Ebola and Zika epidemics, ...
African Digital Research Repositories: Mapping the Landscape
The International African Institute (IAI, https://www.internationalafricaninstitute.org) in collaboration with AfricarXiv (https://info.africarxiv.org) present an interactive map of African digital research literature repositories. This drew from IAI’s earlier work from 2016 onwards to identify and list Africa-based institutional repositories that focused on identifying repositories based in African university libraries. Our earlier resources are available at https://www.internationalafricaninstitute.org/repositories.
Open Science Online Training package for African scientists
AfricArxiv is a free, open source and community-led digital archive for African research output in the form of a non-profit open source platform for African scientists to upload their working papers, pre-prints, accepted manuscripts (post-prints), and published papers as well as associated data packages and article versioning. AfricArxiv is dedicated to enhance and open up research and collaboration among African scientists and non-African scientists that work on African topics.
ZBW Mediatalk interview about AfricArXiv and language diversity in Science
The following interview was originally published at zbw-mediatalk.eu and licensed under Creative Commons BY 4.0. Enjoy the read! Fostering transparency, open access and global dialogue in research are crucial to deal with local as well as with global challenges like the ongoing climate change. Practiced open science allows for more […]
Open Science in Africa – Challenges, Opportunities and Perspectives
Justin Ahinon and Jo Havemann, both founders of AfricArXiv, talk in this article about the development of Open Science Services in Africa, initiatives, the current situation and chances in the future. This article was originally published at elephantinthelab.org (doi:10.5281/zenodo.1492745) Open Science is becoming increasingly popular globally and provides unprecedented opportunities […]
re:publica 18 session – Towards Lab Equipment as a Common Good
At this year’s re:publica, we had a session on Open Science Hardware. Our focus was on hardware and software solutions, tools and services, resources and projects that adopt the Open Source approach and have one goal: to increase access to scientific research. Initiatives and visionaries around the globe are putting this […]
TCC Africa training experience
Our institutional partner TCC Africa offers trainings in Science Communication across the African continent, course topics ranging from proposal writing to resource mobilisation, data analysis and communicating to non-scientists. Two participants from a recent BHEARD training share their lessons learned: Mukamurezi Godelieve is a graduate student at Nairobi University with a […]
Moving forward: Research in Africa
In a recent SciDevNet article, Ochieng’ Ogodo reported on the discussion outcomes from this year’s Regional Conference on Balanced and Inclusive Education (BIE) aimed to offer suggestions for addressing Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 (Education). The meeting was hosted in Lagos in July 2017 by the Nigerian Academy of Science (NAS) in collaboration with the […]
Brain research in Kenya
This podcast was originally published at PhD Career Stories. Professor Alfred Orina Isaac is a Pharmaceutical Scientist at Kenya Technical University with a specific interest in Neuroscience. His research is focused on neurotoxicology and neuroprotection mechanisms in the brain. Currently, he is studying the neurotoxicity of Khat in a mouse model and […]
Ocean Acidification Africa
Scientists around the world showed their support to the OA-Africa network and joined the ocean acidification day on June 8, 2017. Ocean acidification is now identified as major threat to marine ecosystems and is one of the SDGs target: “14.3 Minimize and address the impacts of ocean acidification, including through enhanced […]
From #OpenConBerlin 2016 to Africa
Would you agree that the Digital Age and the Academic Internet are bringing the scientific world closer together? OpenCon is the annual gathering of #OpenAccess, #OpenEducation and #OpenData enthusiasts and gives rise to numerous satellite events across the globe each year, many of which were hosted across the African continent e.g. in Ghana, […]
Strengthening academic institutions and research on the African continent.
We work with
- African scientists and research institutions to enhance their positioning within the global research community
- Non-African scientists and institutions who wish to collaborate with African partners
Explore this map at kumu.io/a2p/african-digital-research-repositories
Our goal is to identify synergies between African and European research institutions for mutually benefitting collaboration projects.
Highlighting African scientists’ profiles and achievements
We encourage and advise African scientists to build an online presence for their academic achievements.
Supporting global scientific networking
We assist scientists in identifying collaboration partners in Africa.
Collaboration with like-minded organizations
We offer support and consultation on institutional optimization, career building, research equipment, as well as knowledge exchange on a global level.
African Journals OnLine (AJOL) – An online library of peer-reviewed, African-published scholarly journals and works to increase global & continental online access, awareness, quality & use of African-published, peer-reviewed research.
TCC Africa offers trainings in Science Communication across the African continent. TCCs’ mission is to contribute to the increase in profile–locally and internationally–of African science, and its impact on the life of Africans, by improving skills in technical communication in all forms, at academia and other relevant forums, in Africa.
LabHack Zimbabwe
Equipment built in Africa, by African students for African STEM education
LabHacks are fun, competitive and educational events that challenge undergraduate students to make laboratory equipment for STEM education and research.
Seeding Labs enables scientists with limited resources to conduct high quality research through their flagship program Instrumental Access. Seeding Labs works with people across the world who care about global health and disease, environmental protection and climate change, agriculture and nutrition, and public health; generating social impact through science.
AfricaOSH is a gathering for everyone interested in Open Science Hardware as a means to achieve locally adapted, culturally relevant, technologically and economically feasible production in Africa.
TReND in Africa (Teaching and Research in Natural Sciences for Development) is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving university level science education and research in sub-Saharan Africa.
SynTechBio – Biohacker Spaces Network – supports Biohacking and DIY-Bio initiatives in the global south, enhancing the communication and action of the worldwide community as a group. The first African member is KumasiHive from Ghana.
SynTechBio provides information about how to build a complete Biohacking/DIY-Bio Space. Download the manual in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.
References
Tapfuma MM, Hoskins HR (2019), Open science disrupting the status quo in academic libraries: A perspective of Zimbabwe.The Journal of Academic Librarianship. Volume 45, Issue 4, July 2019, Pages 406-412. DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2019.05.005
SA-EU Open Science Dialogue, Hodson, Simon, Walwyn, David, Wood, John, & Wright, Colin. (2019, February 7). SA-EU Open Science Dialogue Report. Zenodo. 10.5281/zenodo.2559469
Fonn S (2018), Research-intensive universities in Africa? A model of how to build them. theconversation.com
Participants of African Open Science Platform Strategy Workshop, March 2018 et al (2018), The African Open Science Platform: The Future of Science and the Science of the Future. zenodo.org,
Glausiusz J (2018), How to deliver sound science in resource-poor regions, nature.com Career Feature
Joubert, M. and Costas, R., 2019. Getting to Know Science Tweeters: A Pilot Analysis of South African Twitter Users Tweeting about Research Articles. Journal of Altmetrics, 2(1), p.2. DOI: doi.org/10.29024/joa.8
Fourie W (2017), Six barriers that make it difficult for African states to use research for policy. theconversation.com
Eisenstein M (2017), Partnering to promote research where it matters. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 11(4): e0005530. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0005530
de Vries J et al. (2017), Regulation of genomic and biobanking research in Africa: a content analysis of ethics guidelines, policies and procedures from 22 African countries. BMC Medical Ethics 18:8 doi.org/10.1186/s12910-016-0165-6
Chinsembu KCet al. (2011), Indigenous knowledge of HIV/AIDS among High School students in Namibia. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 7:17 doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-7-17
Find more articles at scienceopen.com/collection/Research-in-Africa