A Three-Part Collaborative Peer Review Workshop
AfricArXiv, Eider Africa, TCC Africa, and PREreview are joining forces to bring together scholars from across Africa and scholars engaged in African-related research for a series of 3 virtual discussions and collaborative peer review.
WHAT SHOULD YOU EXPECT?
Expect to join dynamic discussions around current issues and barriers in scholarly peer review, as well as hands-on sessions in which everyone will collaborate to provide constructive feedback to a recent preprint.
In the first event we will introduce this partnership and what motivated us to organize this series. Throughout the series, together we will work on providing constructive feedback to three preprints which have been recently published by African-based research groups or touch on African-relevant content. We will also have the opportunity to reflect on barriers to participation in peer review rooted in colonialism, white supremacy culture, patriarchal systems which dominate scholarship today.
The events will be facilitated by our team and hosted on Zoom conference. Live caption via Otter.ai will be available.
If you need any support to attend these events, please let us know via the registration form or contact us directly at contact@prereview.org.
WHEN ARE THE EVENTS?
- 29 April, 2021 - 15:00-16:30 GMT / 16:00-17:30 WAT / 17:00-18:30 CAT / 18:00-19:30 EAT
- 14 May, 2021 - 15:00-16:30 GMT / 16:00-17:30 WAT / 17:00-18:30 CAT / 18:00-19:30 EAT
- 27 May, 2021 - 15:00-16:30 GMT / 16:00-17:30 WAT / 17:00-18:30 CAT / 18:00-19:30 EAT
WHO IS THIS FOR?
African Scientists and Scholars based in Africa or currently based outside of the continent, and non-African Scientists and Scholars working on African-relevant research problems. Open to all disciplines.
HOW DO YOU JOIN?
Registration to all three events is not required, but it is recommended. We will provide personalized certificates of participation to those who attend all three events. For questions or concerns, please email contact@prereview.org
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?
In January 2021, representatives of AfricArXiv, Eider Africa, Training Centre in Communication (TCC) Africa, and PREreview organizations participated in a design sprint with the following goals:
- Share and dive deeper into our collective resources to design equitable and inclusive peer review processes
- Identify individual first and then collective needs, goals, challenges and opportunities
- Identify 2-4 ideas and/or areas of interest that could be implemented together
The sprint, hosted by PREreview and facilitated by Simply Secure, provided an invaluable opportunity for each organization to take the time to dive deeper into our respective goals and challenges, and share relevant resources with others.
For example, as a necessary step towards creating more equitable practices of research evaluation, the group identified the shared need to provide opportunities to our communities to engage in debate-style learning and access horizontal mentorship that encourage reflection and co-creation of knowledge. Together, we established the foundation for a partnership that is now allowing us to bring this series to life.
This three-part series is the first result of this collaboration and aims at achieving the following three main goals:
- Foster an open and inclusive approach to peer review on research manuscripts (preprints and post-prints) that centers kindness, constructive feedback, and promotes collaboration
- Highlight preprints authored by African scholars or covering African-relevant content and provide an opportunity for the authors to receive constructive feedback from the events’ participants
- Create a safe space for reflection around issues of scholarly knowledge decolonization, biased academic environments, open scholarship tools and practices, and other topics that are relevant and may emerge during these dynamic group discussions.
The sprint and this series are supported by a Wellcome Trust DEI Enrichment Grant via PREreview.
ABOUT THE HOSTS
AfricArXiv is a community-led digital archive for African research, working towards building an African-owned open scholarly repository; a knowledge commons of African scholarly works to catalyze the African Renaissance. We partner with established scholarly repository services to provide a platform for African scientists of any discipline to present their research findings and connect with other researchers on the African continent and globally. Find out more about AfricArXiv at https://info.africarxiv.org/
Eider Africa is an organisation that conducts research, co-designs and implements collaboratively, offline and online research mentorship programs for scholars in Africa. We train mentors to start their mentorship programs. We believe in peer to peer learning, learning research by practice, caring for the whole researcher and lifelong learning. We have grown a vibrant community of researchers in our research journal clubs and work with university lecturers to develop transformative inclusive research training. Our website: https://eiderafricaltd.org/
The Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa) is the first African-based training centre to teach effective communication skills to scientists. TCC Africa is an award winning Trust, established as a non-profit entity in 2006 and is registered in Kenya. TCC Africa provides capacity support in improving researchers output and visibility through training in scholarly and science communication. Find out more about TCC Africa at https://www.tcc-africa.org/about.
PREreview is an open project fiscally sponsored by the non-profit organization Code for Science and Society. Our mission is to bring more equity and transparency to the scholarly peer review process. We design and develop open source infrastructure to enable constructive feedback to preprints, we run peer review mentoring and training programs, and we partner with like-minded organizations to organize events providing opportunities for researchers to create meaningful collaborations and connections defeating cultural and geographical barriers. Learn more about PREreview at https://prereview.org.
