Scientific information at the fingertips of researchers and students in SSA

A participant on the Research4Life training
workshop at Kigali Institute of  Education,
 Rwanda, December 2012

Access to up-to-date, good quality scientific information available in international scientific journals should no longer be a challenge to researchers, lecturers and students in public universities and research organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. Research4Life meets most of their scientific information needs.

Research4Life is a public-private partnership composed of four programmes, namely the HINARI Access to Research in Health programme led by WHO, Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) programme by FAO, Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE) programme by UNEP and the Access to Research in Development and Innovation (ARDI) by WIPO. The partnership, whose main goal is to help attain six of the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015, reducing the scientific knowledge gap between industrialized countries and the developing world, is composed of UN agencies, Cornell and Yale Universities, the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers, working together with the technology partner, Microsoft.

Considering that most public universities and research organizations in sub-Saharan Africa lack financial resources to subscribe to international scientific journals, ensuring that their researchers and students have easy and unlimited access to resources made available through Research4Life must be a priority. Research4Life provides access to over 17,000 peer reviewed scientific journals, books and databases, worth millions of dollars. Access to these resources is at no direct cost to most public universities and research organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, training (including training-of-trainers) in how to access and use Research4Life resources is in most cases also provided by ITOCA at no direct costs to the beneficiary institutions.

I do not see any justifications for universities and research organizations for not accessing and using Research4Life resources. Afterall, subscription to access the resources is free, access to the resources is free (for most beneficiaries) and training to access the resources is also free for most beneficiaries. In addition, access to the resources is guaranteed through 2020.

For more information contact partners@research4life.org

HINARI – hinari@who.int
AGORA – agora@fao.org
OARE – oare@unep.org
WIPO – ardi@wipo.org

Also, check the ITOCA website for the training schedule.

Sights from RAILS - CIARD Africa Consultations, 19 - 21 June 2012

Try to ask a research scientist in a public research institute in Africa to provide open access (OA) to his research outputs and you are mostly going to get a very big NO for an answer.  Why? Open access is not well understood by most researchers and information professionals in public institutions. For this reason, I welcome the initiative to organize consultations for the Directors of Research and the Information Managers from agricultural research institutes in Africa to discuss opening access to agricultural research outputs. The three-day consultation (19-21 June, Accra, Ghana) is organized by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) in collaboration with the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA).
Visit this blog for my analysis of the discussions and outputs of the consultations. Meanwhile, here are some photos from the consultations.

Krishan Bheenick (CTA) faciltating a session on
participants' expectations

Franz Martin (FAO) presenting on opening access
 to agricultural research outputs

Participants working in groups

Participants listerning to a presentation

Ajit Maru (GFAR) clarifying a point

"Hunting for Per Diem..."

In August 2010, I wrote a blog post on “Training Workshops and the Culture of Sitting Allowances in Africa”.  The report on “Hunting for Per Diem: the Uses and Abuses of Travel Compensation in Three Developing Countries” published by NORAD goes further on this topic. The report is based on a study covering Ethiopia, Malawi and Tanzania.  The study examined the origins, operation and consequences of per diem compensation in connection with seminars and workshops, with particular reference to effects on development programmes, national budgets and civil service delivery. The report gives insights into the potential for misuse or non-optimal use of the money that is allocated for seminars by governments, civil society and development partners. 

This is recommended reading for development practitioners.