Broadening Participation in the Sciences within and from Africa: Purpose, Challenges, and Prospects

Okeke, Iruka N.; Babalola, Chinedum P.; Byarugaba, Denis K.; Djimdé, Abdoulaye; Osoniyi, Omolaja

doi:10.1187/cbe.15-12-0265

Cited by 51 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Industrialization of the microbiome, and its accompanying loss or reduction of certain species, can occur on a time scale of months within an individual, creating some urgency for the banking of vulnerable species (78). An additional challenge is navigating the changing restrictions on the distribution of bacterial strains for research and therapeutic development while protecting the rights and recognizing the contribution of the people from which they came (79,80).…”

Section: Toward a More Sustainable Relationship With Our Microbiotamentioning

confidence: 99%

Vulnerability of the industrialized microbiota

Sonnenburg

2019

Science

226

144

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The human body is an ecosystem that is home to a complex array of microbes known as the microbiome or microbiota. This ecosystem plays an important role in human health, but as a result of recent lifestyle changes occurring around the planet, whole populations are seeing a major shift in their gut microbiota. Measures meant to kill or limit exposure to pathogenic microbes, such as antibiotics and sanitation, combined with other factors such as processed food, have had unintended consequences for the human microbial ecosystem, including changes that may be difficult to reverse. Microbiota alteration and the accompanying loss of certain functional attributes might result in the microbial communities of people living in industrialized societies being suboptimal for human health. As macroecologists, conservationists, and climate scientists race to document, understand, predict, and delay global changes in our wider environment, microbiota scientists may benefit by using analogous approaches to study and protect our intimate microbial ecosystems.

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Section: Toward a More Sustainable Relationship With Our Microbiotamentioning

confidence: 99%

Vulnerability of the industrialized microbiota

Sonnenburg

2019

Science

226

144

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“…As of 2016, research output (as indexed within Scopus) from developed countries accounted for 60% of the worldwide output, a fall from nearly 80% in 2003 (National Science Board, ). The chronic disparities and inequities in the world of scholarly publishing between the developed and developing countries are attributable to several factors, such as the enduring dominance of English‐language journals over the past decades (Henshall, ; Hyland, ); difficult access to tertiary‐level science and quality research training (Okeke, Babalola, Byarugaba, Djimde, & Osoniyi, ); poor collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and industry players (Lavis et al ., ); and the lack of skilled human resources possibly due to the migration of trained professionals from less‐developed to more‐developed settings (Cash‐Gibson, Rojas‐Gualdrón, Pericàs, & Benach, ). The underrepresentation of research from the developing world results in a bias toward the developed world's research agenda, as well as an uneven adoption of new scientific practices in the former (Gwynn, ).…”

Section: A ‘Spiky’ Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

The harsh world of publishing in emerging regions and implications for editors and publishers: The case of Vietnam

Vuong

2019

Learned Publishing

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This article discusses the emergence of academic publishing in a fast‐growing transition economy, Vietnam, where the race has heated up to publish in international journals, preferably with a high impact factor, and to accelerate the indexing of domestic journals. Within the fields of SSH alone, the publication output grew by 17% a year in the 2008–2018 period, encouraged by government policies and financial incentives for researchers. This review demonstrates an environment where there is sufficient financial growth to support increased R&D but limited skills and knowledge of how to increase quality publication output, either within national or international journals. The article highlights the drivers of increasing scientific publication output, as well as the traps and pitfalls that follow this competition. It suggests that there are opportunities for publishers and other organizations to improve ethical and practical publishing issues and to develop co‐publishing agreements that will increase the visibility of the country in international academia. The article indicates the harsh reality of pursuing higher publishing standards in academia, a world that has long been dominated by authors and publishers from industrialized countries.

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“…However, even though early progress in neuroscience began in Egypt 5 , Africa's research capacity remains weak 6 . The reasons for this are diverse, and include low funding 1 , inadequate research infrastructure 7 , the relatively small number of active scientists 8 , and their overbearing administrative and teaching load 9,10 . These barriers limit research and innovations from Africa 11 , and contribute to brain drain 12 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

20 years of African Neuroscience: Waking a sleeping giant

Maina

Ahmad

Ibrahim

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Understanding the function and dysfunction of the brain remains one of the key challenges of our time. However, an overwhelming majority of brain research is carried out in the Global North, by a minority of well-funded and intimately interconnected labs. In contrast, with an estimated one neuroscientist per million people in Africa, news about neuroscience research from the Global South remains sparse. Clearly, devising new policies to boost Africa’s neuroscience landscape is imperative. However, the policy must be based on accurate data, which is largely lacking. Such data must reflect the extreme heterogeneity of research outputs across the continent’s 54 countries distributed over an area larger than USA, Europe and China combined. Here, we analysed all of Africa’s Neuroscience output over the past 21 years. Uniquely, we individually verified in each of 12,326 publications that the work was indeed performed in Africa and led by African-based researchers. This step is critical: previous estimates grossly inflated figures, because many of Africa’s high-visibility publications are in fact the result of internationally led collaborations, with most work done outside of Africa. The remaining number of African-led Neuroscience publications was 5,219, on average only ~5 per country and year. From here, we extracted metrics such as the journal and citations, as well as detailed information on funding, international collaborations and the techniques and model systems used. We link these metrics to demographic data and indicators of mobility and economy. For reference, we also extracted the same metrics from 220 randomly selected publications each from the UK, USA, Australia, Japan and Brazil. Our unique dataset allows us to gain accurate and in-depth information on the current state of African Neuroscience research, and to put it into a global context. This in turn allows us to make actionable recommendations on how African research might best be supported in the future.

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Broadening Participation in the Sciences within and from Africa: Purpose, Challenges, and Prospects

Cited by 51 publications

References 25 publications

Vulnerability of the industrialized microbiota

Vulnerability of the industrialized microbiota

The harsh world of publishing in emerging regions and implications for editors and publishers: The case of Vietnam

20 years of African Neuroscience: Waking a sleeping giant

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