Research culture must be inclusive for a number of reasons. If the end goal is to improve people’s lives, we must understand the broad demographic nuances of the society we are helping. This requires both engagement with the public to understand their needs and challenges, and representation from people of all backgrounds and lived experiences in research. Only then can we fully understand what research must be carried out, what impact this could have, and how easily it could be adopted by people.

Recruiting and retaining a research workforce

The research workforce currently does not accurately reflect or represent all of society, with a wide range of groups underrepresented in research. Our work with RoRI looks at how we can improve research culture by analysing career progression pathways, looking at how research success is measured, and by critically examining established processes, such as obtaining grant funding and navigating the peer review process. However even at this stage, much of RoRI’s work relies on researchers having joined the profession in the first place, and for them to have remained long enough to have published their work. How can we encourage people to work in, and remain working in, research?

One way we support the next generation of researchers is through our community partnerships. We work with organisations that support and mentor the researchers and innovators of the future. Let’s shine the spotlight on three of our partners, and the work that they are doing. 

Ada Lovelace Day

Ada Lovelace Day has been a member of the extended Digital Science community since 2015 when it was awarded one of our Catalyst Grants. It is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Its goal is to increase the profile of women in STEM, create new role models showcasing STEM careers, and support women already working in STEM. The day itself takes place in October and usually features a live cabaret show of STEM role models in London, along with several global satellite events taking place on the same day.

Given that live events are not ideal in this current climate, not only have the team pivoted to a series of practical online offerings throughout the year, they have also been working hard on developing their mentoring platform, the Finding Ada Network. We have continued to sponsor Ada Lovelace Day and are thrilled to see that their latest Finding Ada Conference had more than 720 registrations. Attendees spent on average over six hours logged in, which is testament to the organisers and their ability to create a useful and engaging programme including Elisabeth Holm, Jannie Fernandez and Lauryn Mwale who discussed how to run coding workshops, Gillian Hunt who spoke about leadership and developing talent, and Margaret Dawson who shone a light on where to start with equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives to make the most positive impact.

The STEM Fellowship Big Data Challenge for High School students and Undergraduates

STEM Fellowship is a Canadian charity that empowers young innovators through ‘crowdsourcing science’. As digital literacy and data analytics become increasingly essential to all researchers, the charity’s Big Data Challenge offers teams of both high school and undergraduate students hands-on opportunities to engage with data science, and work with a team of mentors to solve real world challenges, learning about data citizenship as they work. These competitions allow students to learn and apply some of the fundamental principles of data analytics and communicate their work to a range of audiences. The Big Data Challenge fosters social entrepreneurship and innovation, and gives students a chance to contribute to a more sustainable future for all through data analysis. 

In 2021, like so many other programmes, the High School Big Data Challenge was conducted entirely online and focused on inequality in education. However, that didn’t stifle the innovative potential of participants. The Digital Science Excellence In Analytics Award for their project on Educational Inequality Between Urban and Rural Areas was awarded to Joshua Lakdawala and Yash Jagirdar. Check out their manuscript and video for inspiration.

The Undergraduate Big Data Challenge had participants from 34 post-secondary institutions across Canada, including some international institutions such as the University of Hong Kong, the University of Texas at Austin, and more. 100 teams and 309 participants took part in projects focused in infodemiology for the future of digital and public health, with 40% of the participants identifying as female. Data science is a research field in which women are historically underrepresented. It is hoped that initiatives like this will go some way towards eliminating this gender imbalance.

Following on from the Undergraduate Big Data Challenge, the winners of the Undergraduate Big Data Day were announced earlier today, with winners of the Outstanding Science Communication Awards sponsored by our friends at Overleaf.

The NISO Plus Scholarship

The National Information Standards Organization, or NISO, is a not-for-profit membership organisation responsible for the management of information in all aspects of data, including those that underpin research infrastructures and scholarly communications.

NISO initially created a scholarship in 2020 to actively encourage underrepresented parts of the data  and research information community to attend the NISO Plus conference. It’s aim was to have everyone’s thoughts and views represented in discussions and future work, and to learn from and better understand the challenges and successes of a broad range of communities and use cases. Though initially created to boost conference participation, the programme has expanded to include practical workshops, networking opportunities and mentoring schemes. Digital Science sponsored the 2021 scholarship, seeing the programme as a great example of how to continue your networking and professional development even during a pandemic. The scholarship supports 15 individuals from across the world, each working towards greater data citizenship and a more open and collaborative information ecosystem for all.

Alice Meadows, Director of Community Engagement at NISO, says: “In early 2020, as part of our commitment to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in the information community, we launched the NISO Plus scholarship program. With support from the Sloan Foundation, the scholarships were originally intended to enable individuals from un- and under-represented parts of our community to attend the in-person NISO Plus 2020 conference. But we quickly realized that we could – and should – do much more to support the scholarship winners on an ongoing basis. 

“We were incredibly impressed by how engaged our first cohort of 12 information professionals were during the conference, and how enthusiastic they have been about continuing to engage with us since then — including participating in this year’s conference as Planning Committee members, speakers, and moderators, as well as joining our Education Committee and our newly formed DEI Committee. Some also helped select this year’s cohort of 15 scholarship winners (sponsored by Digital Science) who, I’m delighted to say, already look to be every bit as engaged and engaging as the first! They’re also even more international, hailing from Australia, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, The Netherlands, Romania, Uganda, and the USA. 

“It is a pleasure and a joy to be connected with such a wonderful group of individuals from around the world — and to be able to connect them with each other and with the wider NISO community!”

We are certainly looking forward to seeing what these 15 winners do next!

Do you help support a more inclusive research culture? Tell us about it!

Through supporting scholarship programmes and mentoring schemes, Digital Science is playing a small part in helping make research more open, inclusive and collaborative. However, to truly nudge research culture towards a more positive direction, we must continue to support people at every stage of their careers, and to provide opportunities where we can hear from everyone about the challenges they are facing, so that we can tackle them together.
Are you taking part in a scholarship programme or mentoring scheme? Would you like to shout about it? Perhaps you are running a scheme of your own. Let us know about it and we’ll help amplify your message and share your successes. Together we can make open, collaborative, and inclusive research possible.

The post Breaking barriers through progressive partnerships appeared first on Digital Science.

For Black History Month USA, Digital Science’s Suze Kundu and ReadCube’s Olivia Bates wanted to celebrate the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) heroes from the USA and the UK that are making history. They asked some of our STEM heroes what changes they would like to see in research culture in 2021, with a view to revisiting them in October, Black History Month UK, to celebrate the progress that has been made, and highlight the work that still needs to be done for greater equality, diversity and inclusion of Black people and other underrepresented groups in STEM.

In this final part of the series, we meet mathematician Dr Nira Chamberlain. Dr Chamberlain is the current and first Black President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (the IMA, one of the United Kingdom’s learned societies for mathematics).

Career Highlights and Successes

As well as his role at the IMA, Dr Chamberlain is a Visiting Fellow of Loughborough University’s Mathematical Sciences Department. In 2019, the Inclusive Tech Alliance named Nira as one of their Top 100 Most Influential Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Leaders in UK Technology.

Dr Chamberlain has also been named in the PowerList Top 100 Most Influential Black Person in the UK list for four years running (2018-2021). Other awards include an Honorary Doctorate in Science from the University of Greenwich, given for his unique and inspirational contribution to the field of mathematics. In 2018, Nira won the title of World’s Most Interesting Mathematician at the Big Internet Math Off, an invited international mathematical communication tournament with awards voted for by the general public.

Dr Chamberlain is also one of the Science Council’s ‘Top 100 UK Scientists’ and in 2015 joined the elite list of distinguished mathematicians to have featured in the biographical reference book Who’s Who. As well as this, Dr Chamberlain is one of the few British Mathematicians to feature in the Encyclopedia of Mathematics & Society. The encyclopedia highlights two of Nira’s mathematical models and their impact on the field of naval engineering.

Dr Chamberlain, who currently works for SNC-Lavalin Atkins as a  Principal Data Scientist Consultant, has over 25 years of experience at writing mathematical models/simulation algorithms that solve complex industrial problems. Dr Chamberlain developed mathematical solutions within industries such as the defence, aerospace, automotive, retail and energy sectors. This has included periods in France, the Netherlands, Germany and Israel.

During his career, Dr Chamberlain has been invited to speak at several prestigious events such as New Scientist Live, The Royal Society’s Destination STEMM, Oxford University’s Reddick Lecture, and at King College London’s Maxwell Lecture to name a few. Popular talks include “Saving Aston Villa”, “The Black Heroes of Mathematics” and “The Mathematics that can stop an AI apocalypse!”

A geomap showing the range of countries across the world that SNC-Lavalin and their researchers are working in (Source: Dimensions)

What changes would you like to see in research culture in 2021?

We need more Black Professors
In my research for The Black Heroes of Mathematicians, I have come across past and current Black Mathematicians who were not or are not given equal opportunity and denied a chance to shine! Is this a result of conscious or unconscious behaviours within the system? Either way, we need more Black Professors. We need to recognise them for what they have done, and we need to celebrate them so they can be the role models and beacons of aspiration to the rest of the community.

Don’t just collect data; do something with it!
Collecting data and reporting underrepresentation is a comfort zone. We having been doing this for decades. Now we need to do something about it to make a difference! For those in Leadership, you kill diversity when you utter these words “that person reminds me of myself when I was younger!”

Trust and Faith
Someone once told me, even if a Black Mathematician is as clever as Einstein, they would not trust them to deliver the solution. As scientists, we live by evidence, but if we can’t exercise trust and faith in the first place, young Black mathematicians will never be given an opportunity to shine.

CATCH UP ON THE REST OF OUR BHM 2021 SERIES

The post Black History Month STEM Celebration 2021 – Dr Nira Chamberlain appeared first on Digital Science.

For Black History Month USA, Digital Science’s Suze Kundu and ReadCube’s Olivia Bates wanted to celebrate the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) heroes from the USA and the UK that are making history. They asked some of our STEM heroes what changes they would like to see in research culture in 2021, with a view to revisiting them in October, Black History Month UK, to celebrate the progress that has been made, and highlight the work that still needs to be done for greater equality, diversity and inclusion of Black people and other underrepresented groups in STEM.

In this third part of the series, we’re focusing on the E in STEM with an article about engineer Bantam Elias Kagabo. Elias is a young engineer located in Rwanda. He recently completed a degree in biomedical engineering at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. During his time at Trinity College, he presented at Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) with his project “Equal Access to Education for Transformation (EAET)” which outlines a path towards education access to adolescent girls from rural neighbourhoods of Rwanda. After graduating, Elias moved back to his home country of Rwanda where he currently works at King Faisal Hospital.

Current Research and Future Projects

In his current role, Elias provides services to the selection and acquisition of medical equipment. He applies principles of engineering and design to aid in the selection and acquisition of healthcare machines for the hospital. He also plays a vital role in preventive maintenance (both planned and unplanned) and corrective maintenance on the machines. He works with a wide range of medical equipment, from electrosurgery machines and ultrasound machines to infant warmers and hemodialysis machines. Elias also trains clinical staff on the operation of the hospital’s medical equipment and technologies. His work also involves calibration, testing, and installation of medical equipment.

Elias trained at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, USA, which has a strong focus on biomedical engineering and health sciences (Source: Dimensions)

Elias originally got into biomedical engineering because it was the perfect unity of his interest in healthcare and engineering. He sought to contribute to the healthcare sector from a technological perspective. Looking ahead, Elias’s long term dream is to help within healthcare/clinical settings by either working as a medical technology and infrastructure consultant and/or start his own medical device company.

What changes would you like to see in research culture in 2021?

Elias said, “I would like to see more women in the biomedical engineering field, especially in developing countries like Rwanda.” He also wants to see more mentorship programmes to enable more young women to initially pursue the field, and also support the retention of women within it.

CATCH UP ON THE REST OF OUR BHM 2021 SERIES

The post Black History Month STEM Celebration 2021 – Bantam Elias Kagabo appeared first on Digital Science.

For Black History Month USA, Digital Science’s Suze Kundu and ReadCube’s Olivia Bates wanted to celebrate the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) heroes from the USA and the UK that are making history. They asked some of our STEM heroes what changes they would like to see in research culture in 2021, with a view to revisiting them in October, Black History Month UK, to celebrate the progress that has been made, and highlight the work that still needs to be done for greater equality, diversity and inclusion of Black people and other underrepresented groups in STEM.

The second part of the series continues with some thoughts from technologist Dr Erinma Ochu. Dr Ochu is the Interim Director of Engaging Environments, creating spaces and capacities for knowledge exchange and co-production between diverse communities and NERC environmental scientists to reset equity and inclusion agendas around the climate crisis. Dr Ochu is also a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Communications at MMU and holds a Wellcome grant focused on Stewarding the Digital Commons.

Research Background

Dr Ochu’s research seeks to reconfigure the ways in which the digital revolution (including automation, interconnectivity, sensing technologies and real-time data) can be shaped creatively to generate new cultural forms, stories and worlds. This work has implications for articulating a digital commons to inform shared values from which to redesign how we live together equitably in a warming world.

This work is enthused with queer, black feminist and situated perspectives, and has ethical implications for stewarding new digital literacies at the intersection of art, science, technology and health. Dr Ochu’s ambition is to broaden the field of cultural neuroscience to extend human intelligence with perceptual tools for stewarding our local environments.

Alongside their roles with Engaging Environments, Dr Ochu also co-founded Squirrel Nation, which was recently awarded one of 4 Ada Lovelace / Just AI creative fellowships funded by AHRC. They hold a PhD in Applied Neuroscience from The University of Manchester and are an EAVE alumni of AudioVisual Production. They somehow also find the time to be a champion of open research and an active global ambassador for Figshare and Digital Science.

Dr Ochu’s work crosses many different research areas. It is through this interdisciplinary approach that they have been able to make so many positive changes in how we think about technology, data and community across all areas of research. (Source: Dimensions)

What changes would you like to see in research culture in 2021?

This is a huge question. My response would relate to the policy work I’ve collaborated on recently with my UK colleagues, Professor Dawn Edge and her postdoc, Jamal Alston. There are so few black female professors in the UK and it was such a pleasure to be able to work with Dawn, who is a Professor in Mental Health and Inclusivity, during the pandemic. Dawn invited me to get involved in producing this policy piece around ‘Scientific Racism’ and structural inequalities: Implications for researching Black mental health’. This work traces a link from American researchers mainstreaming false claims about racial differences and intelligence which have informed modern views on contemporary mental health services, which has impacted the treatment of black people in education and healthcare.

Dawn and Professor Ijeoma Uchegbu outlined the crucial role that funders and funding panels play in enabling or preventing culturally adapted health research or ethnically diverse researchers to get funded to UK Parliament. However, COVID-19 is not the only time that health inequalities and systemic racism in research against black folks are evident in the UK and in the US, and must now be addressed. So for me, I’d like to see research culture – whether in funding, within a lab, or within our communities – to create strategic mechanisms, including funding, and partnerships, that better consider our cultural contexts and lived experiences, to improve and innovate research to be more representative of the populations who pay for and can benefit from research. I’d love to see more people actively supportive of work undertaken to decolonise scientific knowledge beyond the white imperial research canon, which currently shapes research culture.

Alongside that, quickly embracing postcolonial and culturally adapted ways of generating knowledge with adequate funding for that work, counting in securing tenure and attracting research students with a community partner who contributes and frames health research. It shouldn’t be a battle for Black researchers, and our communities, to do this work when it could be the norm. There are amazing community organisers and companies strategising around this too, including BlastFest, and BlackInNeuro. I look forward to seeing the innovations that emerge, at the intersection of these kinds of platforms, alongside the traditional neuroscience lab out there.

Two of my funders, Wellcome and UKRI, put out anti-racism statements in response to the Black Lives Matter movement we saw in 2020. I’d like to see this progress into more Black researchers funded to develop new contexts for doing research beyond the traditional lab, with our communities, and for that to be as valued and as invested in as a $20 million high-facility lab that again COVID19, and my field of community and citizen science, has disrupted. In the UK the evidence is clear. I am grateful to work with supportive researchers like Dr Lia Li, Dr Hope Bretscher, and Professor Rachel Oliver who want and back change that will benefit everyone.

CATCH UP ON THE REST OF OUR BHM 2021 SERIES

The post Black History Month STEM Celebration 2021 – Dr Erinma Ochu appeared first on Digital Science.

Black History Month is a time to remember and celebrate Black figures in history. It takes place in the USA in February, and in the UK in October. This year, Digital Science’s Suze Kundu and ReadCube’s Olivia Bates wanted to celebrate the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) heroes from the USA and the UK that are making history. For Black History Month USA, they asked our STEM heroes what changes they would like to see in research culture in 2021, with a view to revisiting them in October, Black History Month UK, to celebrate the progress that has been made, and highlight the work that still needs to be done for greater equality, diversity and inclusion of Black people and other underrepresented groups in STEM.

The series kicks off with some thoughts from scientist Wilfred Ngwa, MS, PhD. Dr Ngwa is an African American professor in Radiation Oncology with faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School, University of Massachusetts where he is Adjunct Full Professor, and ICT University where he holds the post of Distinguished Visiting Full Professor. He recently held guest professorships at the University of Pennsylvania USA and the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and an Associate Professorship at the University of Massachusetts.

Research Background

Dr Ngwa is the founding Director of the Global Health Catalyst dedicated to catalyzing high-impact international collaborations to reduce global health disparities in research, education, and oncology. Some major outcomes of this include the award-winning Global Oncology University and the International Phytomedicines Institute he has co-founded.

Dr Ngwa has published 5 books, and over 100 research articles including in leading journals like Science, Nature, Lancet, and PNAS. He currently serves as a chair of the Lancet Oncology Commission for Sub-Saharan Africa and is widely recognized for his strong commitment as a leader to enhance diversity and inclusion, and catalyzing high impact collaborations between USA, European and Low and Middle Income Country (LMICs) Institutions to eliminate disparities.

Dr Ngwa has been awarded 8 honours over the past 6 years alone at Harvard, including 2 “Best in Physics” awards by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, two research excellence awards from the United States National Institutes of Health, and the 2019 Brigham and Women’s Hospital Physician Organization award.

One of Dr Ngwa’s notable inventions is on Nanoparticle Drones for Targeting Cancer during radiotherapy, for which he won the 2015 Bright Futures Prize. His article “Flavonoid Derivative of Cannabis Demonstrates Therapeutic Potential in Preclinical Models of Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer” has gained more views than 99% of all Frontiers articles over the past year. His recent article on “The role of Black people in ending systemic racism in oncology” was the Lancet Oncology Editor’s Pick for February 2021.

A quick Dimensions search reveals the breadth and depth of Dr Ngwa’s work, including his paper, Flavonoid Derivative of Cannabis Demonstrates Therapeutic Potential in Preclinical Models of Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer, which has received his highest Altmetric attention score

What changes would you like to see in research culture in 2021?

I would like to see a greater culture of collaboration both within the Black researcher community and between Black researchers and researchers of other racial groups. For this to happen, research institutions and related organizations need to do three things: Reparations, Recruitment and Recognition.

Reparations in research mean that institutions must purposefully make substantial financial investments in addressing systemic racism or inequalities in STEM and related fields. These inequalities are evidenced in the disproportionately small percentage of Black people in STEM¹ and the lack of recognition for that small percentage of Black people. I would like to see such reparation investments go towards greater recruitment and recognition, as these game-changing commitments by institutions advance a greater culture of diversity and inclusion.

In recruitment, organizations should invest in making sure that the percentage of Black people in the population ( e.g. 13.4 % in the USA) is also reflected in the institution at all levels, from trainees through faculty to leadership positions. With respect to recognition, a recent analysis of data² from nearly all US PhD dissertations across three decades shows that demographically underrepresented students are more likely to develop novel contributions to science than majority students such as White students, but their novel contributions are less likely to earn them academic recognition or promotion.

This paradox might partly explain the underrepresentation of Black scientists in influential positions in academia. This culture can be changed by purposefully investing in creating opportunities that recognize minority populations. Increased recognition can, in turn, inspire greater participation of Black people in STEM, thus creating new role models and a positive cycle of growth. So, altogether, I would like to see more collaborations, which can result from a significant investment directed towards recruiting Black people to influential positions at institutions and empowering them with the resources to lead more recruitment and recognition at all levels of the organization collaborating with other colleagues.

Learning From History

As we celebrate Black History Month, history teaches us that an analogous approach promoting a culture of collaboration across racial groups was crucial in ending slavery. During the American Civil War, a large contingent of Black people was recruited and fought gallantly alongside White people to end slavery. However, the recruitment of Black people was slow until Black leaders, such as Frederick Douglass, connected with, encouraged and inspired Black men to become soldiers. The government invested in establishing a Bureau of Colored Troops in May 1863 that helped manage the recruitment and burgeoning numbers of Black soldiers.

Nowadays, investments in purposefully recruiting influential Black leaders like Douglas in each organization to lead recruitment and recognition of Black researchers at all levels can also help and is a sine qua non for ending systemic racial inequalities in STEM and other fields³. In some ways, the new administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris seems to be setting a good example. Biden has been very purposeful in recruiting leaders in his administration that reflect the USA population, and his government has committed to making significant investments to achieve racial equality as a top priority for the USA in years to come.

1: The Lancet. Medicine and medical science: Black lives must matter more. Lancet. 2020. DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31353-2
2: Hofstra B, Kulkarni V V., Galvez SMN, He B, Jurafsky D, McFarland DA. The diversity–innovation paradox in science. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2020. DOI:10.1073/pnas.1915378117
3: Ngwa W. The role of Black people in ending systemic racism in oncology. Lancet Oncol 2021; 22: 172

CATCH UP ON THE REST OF OUR BHM 2021 SERIES

The post Black History Month STEM Celebration 2021 – Dr Wilfred Ngwa appeared first on Digital Science.

Using the 900k+ publications, Hélène Draux carried out a bibliometric coupling analysis which identified clusters, which were then organised into 28 groups. The groups were named during a workshop organised with mental health research. Hélène presented this work on an
interactive network, which could be used to understand where Australian research is

Dive into the data

Find out more about Digital Science’s consultancy team’s work

Our consultancy team

We deliver reports and solutions to research policy and management clients.

Find out more

Read our blog

Keep up-to-date with our latest reports, analysis and work in the Digital Science Blog.

Find out more

Supporting REF2021

Discover how our portfolio
companies support UK HEIs.

Find out more

The post Bibliometric coupling of mental health research appeared first on Digital Science.

Our interactive tool allows researchers, departments and institutions to easily visualise the gender splits in all fields of research and across all UK research institutions.

The gender analysis was produced using the Dimensions API (on 11th Jan 2019) and the gender of author names were obtained using the python package gender guesser.

Access the Tool

The post Gender Representation in UK Institutions Tool appeared first on Digital Science.

Joy is an experienced award-winning Founding Director, skilled in team building, management, data analysis, and business strategy. She has experience in Research Capacity, Higher Education, Research Analytics, and Donor and Government Relations. She is the Executive Director of the Training Centre in Communication, based at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. The centre provides capacity support in improving researchers output and visibility through training in scholarly and science communication.

Accessing Research Information in Africa

A few years ago, when I was working on my post-graduate degree in Mass Communication, I vividly remember struggling to access research papers relevant to my assignments. I felt so frustrated that the only place I could access these papers was through the library of an international research institute in Nairobi. I would sit outside the library after it had closed, just to access the e-resources using their WiFi. At the time, I thought that was the norm – part of the struggle of doing a postgraduate degree. It wasn’t until a decade later that I found out about the Open Access movement. What an eye-opener! One of those “how did I not know about this?” moments.

One of the most frustrating (and, let’s face it, borderline annoying!) parts of research is in attempting to access relevant academic literature, only to find that it is unavailable. This is not a new problem. Paywalls have been prevalent in academic publishing. Looking at Africa, the average university cannot afford access to e-resources to conduct research and are limited to data that has been donated by publishers and research industry partners. Unfortunately, some of this data is not even up to date, so there is a further limitation in accessing knowledge of the latest trends in research.

Overcoming Challenges through Collaboration

Despite these challenges, most of the Sub-Saharan countries have come together to create a library consortium that supports their respective academic and research communities. They negotiate with publishers and research industry partners for access to resources for research discovery. However, despite the existence of these library consortia, and with the exception of the South Africa National Library and Information Consortia, most still struggle to get access to useful, but expensive, data for research discovery. South Africa as an exception is not surprising as, according to the 2018 UNESCO Institute for Statistics, it has spent 6.16% of its GDP on education – quite a significant expense compared to most other African countries.

In comparison, library consortia in Europe are able to come up with transformative Open Access agreements, such as Projekt DEAL in Germany, which created a partnership with Springer Nature that resulted in access to paywalled articles and Open Access publishing for German researchers via one payment. According to the agreement, researchers at Projekt DEAL institutions will be able to publish in around 1,900 Springer Nature journals for €2,750 (or about $3,000) per paper. This fee is prohibitively high and definitely not affordable for African library consortia.

Quality Education and SDG 4

How can the UN’s fourth sustainable development goal around Quality Education help catalyse positive changes in this area? SDG4 has the following targets:

• By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy
• By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

According to the African Economic Outlook Report of 2020 by the African Development Bank, less than 10% of the population aged 25 years and older have a university education across most African countries.

This is somewhat expected. Postgraduate programmes are not cheap, costing between $4,000 and $18,000, depending on the course and the university. Most postgraduate students are self-sponsored and tend to work alongside their studies. Paying for access to paywalled publications is simply not feasible, and may be a cause for concern for many students, as limited access to research forces students settle for the information that is available rather than that which is most relevant.

Sponsored postgraduate students tend to be more fortunate, as most of their funders are able to pay for access to required resources to conduct research, and for the author processing charges required to publish their research. The result is a dichotomy of researchers between those that are sponsored postgraduates and those that are not. Open Access could minimise this inequality, ensuring that students get the best possible education, and that and are not artificially limited by the selection of scholarly journals their campuses are able to provide access to, regardless of whether they are financially supported or not.

Reducing Inequalities in Accessing Research Information

Open Access research information is able to democratise higher education through the provision of equitable resources to students and researchers. Normative academic and research ecosystems include infrastructural and human capacity support. The glue that holds this together is data. In particular, Open Access data offers a boost in increasing the quality of research output being produced by providing additional insights into existing research. Researchers are able to avoid duplication of work. They are able to increase their visibility and impact for scholarship through citation. Their research is easily shared. Most importantly, if the data is available as Open Access, text mining is easier.

Incentives for Progress

In 2007 the African Union mandated that African countries must spend at least 1% of their GDP on Research and Development (R&D). This was part of the Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA-2024) launch which addresses the future of Africa to promote and respond to opportunities for increased financing of science, technology and innovation (STI) across the continent. At the end of the day, resources (financial, in-kind and human) will determine the success of STISA-2024, and of STI and industrial development on the continent. While recognizing the value of international support and foreign direct investment, the level of African funds and finance underpinning the financial resources will determine the degree of African ownership of STI developments and, consequently, the directions for future socio-economic and environmental developments on the continent (STISA Report 2019).

This mandate has led to 15 African countries committing to spend at least 1% of their GDP on R&D. These countries are part of the Science Granting Councils Initiative whose equal objective is to promote open science and data in their respective countries. The Association of African Universities, the umbrella body for all African academic institutes, has equally committed to promoting open science and data as a way to increase African research output and improve its visibility.

In September 2019, Ethiopia adopted a national Open Access policy for higher education institutions. In addition to mandating Open Access to publications and data, the new policy encouraged open science practices by including ‘openness’ as one of the criteria for assessment and evaluation of research proposals. This makes it the first African country to have an open access policy, which mandates Open Access to all published articles, theses, dissertations and data resulting from publicly-funded research conducted by staff and students at universities that are run by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education – over 47 universities located across Ethiopia.

Looking Ahead

Africa is promoting Open Access academic publishing through the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), which has an Open Research Platform in partnership with Faculty of 1000 (F1000). Organisations such as Research4Life (which Digital Science supports through access to Dimensions) also provide access to research information, while TCC Africa continues to support researchers by building their confidence and knowledge around accessing research information. It provides a platform for rapid publication and open peer review for researchers supported by the AAS and programmes supported through its funding platform, the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa. Africa also has an Open Access preprint repository called AfricaArxiv, which accepts academic submissions from African researchers and anyone who conducts research in Africa.

These developments in open science are helping to improve the quality of education and in Africa, and most importantly are giving African researchers an increased level of autonomy in their research. By focusing on meeting these SDG goals, it is hoped that African researchers, and in turn the global research community, will benefit from more equal access to research information, and therefore better research.

References

African Academy of Sciences Open Research
African Economic Outlook 2020, by the African Development Bank Group
AfricArxiv
Association of African Universities
IndexMundi
Open Knowledge Foundation
Science Granting Councils Initiative
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
The Scientist
Third Ordinary Session For The Specialized Technical Committee On Education, Science And Technology (Stc-Est) 10th to 12th December 2019, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 

The post Accessing Research Information in Africa appeared first on Digital Science.

Mike Taylor is Head of Metrics Development at Digital Science. Before joining us he spent many years working in Elsevier’s R&D group and in the Metrics and Analytics Team. Mike works with many community groups, including FORCE11, RDA and NISO, and is well known in the scholarly metrics community. He’s also notorious amongst the Oxford theatrical scene as an actor, producer and director with ElevenOne Theatre. In his spare time he provides the entertainment for many a hen night with the murder-mystery company, Smoke and Mirrors. Mike is studying for a PhD in alternative metrics at the University of Wolverhampton.

MeToo and the Scientometrics of Sexual Harassment

Until the Harvey Weinstein scandal of October 2017, the field of sexual harassment will have been unknown to most academics and bibliometricians. Indeed, the fact that it is a known topic of funding and research – albeit on a very small scale indeed – will have largely been a mystery to most of us. A chance conversation with a colleague who wanted to look at the influence of feminist theory lead us to examine the field of sexual harassment, and the influence of the #MeToo phenomenon on research funding and focus. This sheds a particular light on the interaction between academia and society, the need for readiness and a willingness to adapt to new circumstances amongst the academic community, and the way in which social media can shape and communicate public discourse in a research field.

Examination of Google search engine queries for the terms “sexual harassment” and “MeToo” produces an interesting graph with several features. The two most prominent peaks for ‘MeToo’, a term that had previously not been widely used, occur in October 2017 and late 2018. Although queries around ‘MeToo’ fall quite sharply in both cases, it remains a substantial search query. The ‘MeToo’ phenomenon has had a clear impact in searches related to sexual harassment, boosting the number of queries by around 25% compared to the baseline average. It is interesting to note that the second peak in 2018 doesn’t have any effect on the volume of searches around ‘sexual harassment’, which remains relatively steady during this time.

Figure 1 Worldwide search engine results for ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘MeToo’

If we dive deeper into this data, we can start to make more sense of it. By filtering the data to show only results from the USA, the second peak disappears. We can clearly see the direct influence the volume of searches for ‘MeToo’ has had on the volume of searches for ‘sexual harassment’. Following an increased number of searches for ‘MeToo’, we see an even more dramatic increase in the number of searches carried out for ‘sexual harassment’. This trend is common for most European and predominantly English-speaking countries.

Figure 2 USA-located search engine results for ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘MeToo’

Figure 3 India-located search engine results for ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘MeToo’

So what about the second peak? Where does this come from? Further analysis reveals that the late 2018 peak in global searches was a down to separate wave of the #MeToo phenomenon which occurred in India. Although its impact on Google search volume was larger than the original October 2017 peak, it did not result in a long-term increase in searches for ‘sexual harassment’ in India, nor was there any sustained rise in the number of ‘MeToo’ searches in this country.

This analysis shows that the #MeToo phenomenon was a global phenomenon, but one that has had different qualities and different levels of impact in different countries around the world. In the USA, UK, and other countries, #MeToo appears to have unlocked a substantial discourse around sexual harassment; in other countries, it has not had that effect. Interestingly however, from a scientometric perspective, #MeToo has also had an additional effect: this social movement has stimulated explosive growth in research on sexual harassment.

The altmetric data for research in this space shows a number of interesting trends in discourse in this field, and in particular shines a light on activity within different communities. Using the Timeline feature in Altmetric Explorer, we can see that the number of tweets linking to research being carried out in this area largely mirrors the volume of related searches in the USA: they rise dramatically in October 2017, and remain at this higher level. In this case, it is possible that the higher volume of research being published may lead to increased levels of Twitter engagement in itself.

Figure 4 Tweets linking to research about ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘MeToo’ in Altmetric

The number of mentions about this research in mainstream media and blogs shows a less dramatic trend, but nevertheless shows consistently higher coverage in the months following October 2017. Interestingly, it also shows a separate phenomenon, not easily visible in these graphs due to lack of space; the growth of discourse about this research area in the two years preceding the Weinstein scandal. This growth is reflected in the volume of research output in the years 2015-2017 when research volume doubled, albeit from a very low number).

If you spend just a few moments looking at this research on the free version of Dimensions, you will have a good grasp of the nature of work being carried on in this space: very practical, multidisciplinary, and with a very strong focus on the downstream effects of sexual harassment on women, women’s careers, professions, and societies. Likewise, by spending a little time on the blogs that were reporting the research in the years before 2017, you start to sense both the frustration and the anger experienced by people working in this space, but also the coherent and focussed nature of their work. Research published in the decade before 2015 is very different:  although we hesitate to make judgements, it feels like a more coolly academic area of work.

Figure 5 Mainstream media linking to research about ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘MeToo’ in Altmetric

Figure 6 Blogs linking to research about ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘MeToo’ in Altmetric

The altmetric data suggests that there is a shifting discourse and sense of rhetoric within this research community as it moves towards the formation of a unified community of people with shared interests; a proto-network of academics who are willing and able to address a real-world crisis with research. The publications output in Dimensions confirms this suspicion: we can see the growth in annual output of sexual harassment research up to 2017, and then the explosive growth in academic publications following the Weinstein scandal, rising from 500 publications a year to 5,000. Mendeley Readers suggests a similar growth in academic interest, presaging a substantial expansion in future citation rates and usage for this relatively small research community.

Figure 7 Publication growth for research in ’sexual harassment’ OR ‘MeToo’

Figure 8 Research grants in ’sexual harassment’ OR ‘MeToo’

The annual rate of publications and readership has multiplied tenfold. A similar rise can be seen in the growth of research funding in this area, with total funds rising from $1.8M in 2014 to $6.3M in 2019 – a number already exceeded by an unprecedented $6.9M of funding in 2020.

The different pieces of research data available to us using Altmetric and Dimensions can be woven together to create a fascinating narrative of a small and previously poorly funded research topic. The years leading up to the events of October 2017 are characterised by a relatively small group of researchers, growing steadily, but able to connect their research with issues in the wider world, and with their research able to find an audience in both mainstream media and the blogosphere. In the aftermath of Weinstein, that community finds a new audience in the general public, who are willing and able to engage with existing research. This, in turn, enables academics to create more research, getting more attention from the public, from other academics and, crucially, in research funding.

The post #MeToo and the Scientometrics of Sexual Harassment appeared first on Digital Science.

This latest article in our blog series on Natural Language Processing comes from the co-founders of 2019 Catalyst Grant winners Paper Digest. Dr Yasutomo Takano is a project researcher at University of Tokyo. Dr Cristian Mejia is a specially appointed assistant professor at TokyoTech. Nobuko Miyairi is a strategic advisor at Paper Digest, and a scholarly communications consultant.

What is Paper Digest?

Paper Digest is an automated summarisation service specialised in academic literature. It aims to help non-native English-speaking researchers by reducing the burden of reading the ever-increasing pile of research articles written in English. As ‘English as a second language’ (ESL) researchers ourselves, we keenly felt this disadvantage, and decided to develop this tool. To our surprise, it has been well-received by native English speakers as well, because everyone can benefit from such a time-saving tool.

At its core, Paper Digest helps users assess whether a given academic article is worth their time for more careful reading. This is done by offering a list of sentences picked verbatim from the document, which are expected to provide more information than those shown in the abstract. In the NLP parlance, this is known as extractive-based summarisation.

How Paper Digest works

In order to find the key pieces of information, instead of reading the article in a linear manner from introduction to conclusion, we use the analogy of networks. Imagine if we decomposed the article into sentences and mix them together in a box. As we draw sentences from the box, we use string to tie together those sentences that are similar to another one previously drawn. By scrambling the sentences we have lost contextual information. However, we can still assess whether a pair of sentences are similar by looking into their vocabulary: they use the same keywords, synonyms, or refer to the same concepts.  The more similar they are, the shorter the string we use to tie them. Once the box is empty, we end up with what resembles a network of sentences. Here and there we may find some groups of sentences tightly connected, where at least one sentence is playing a central role in keeping the bundle together. What Paper Digest presents, as a result, is a list of those central sentences.

As a baseline, the above approach works, but lots of efforts have been put in to optimise our methodology; from how to better split the document into sentences, to better definitions of what being “similar” means. Typical NLP evaluation methods such as Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation (ROUGE) and Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU) show that our algorithm performs well. However, we refrain from using those evaluation scores because in the end there is still a gap between what a machine and a human can understand as to what makes a good summary.

The future of Paper Digest and NLP

Our current focus is to better understand our users’ needs and optimise the algorithm accordingly. For instance, a Ph.D. student who is interested in writing a review article might be looking for methods and statistical significance tests, while someone writing a science communication piece might be interested in other things. They may both have different opinions about what they deem to be the ‘most important’ sentences from the same document. To capture these nuances, we have put in place a feedback system in our interface, so that users can give a ‘like’ to each of the extracted sentences to indicate their agreement. By accumulating this feedback from our users over time, they play a huge role in helping us improve the algorithm, and making this application of NLP as useful for as broad a range of people as possible.

The post NLP Series: Natural Language Processing and Paper Digest appeared first on Digital Science.