AuthorAID@INASP: Components and Methodology
The AuthorAID concept will be tested through the use of a three-component demonstration project:
A web-based Knowledge Community
A mentoring system
Outreach and capacity development workshops
ICT-enabled Knowledge Community
Goals
- To develop a global community where a shared interest in communicating science unites participants
- To generate and share the knowledge and skills of all participants including authors, scientific mentors, editors, publishers, scholarly and professional societies, archivists and librarians
AuthorAID@INASPs Knowledge Community activity will be central to the programme, as it provides the backbone for the individualised mentoring, for group learning in workshops, and for strengthening research environments. AuthorAID@INASP will gather, adapt, and create new content for authors everywhere in the world, particularly developing countries, inviting their participation in the Knowledge Community. Materials available there can be further transformed for use in outreach and local capacity development.
The Knowledge Community will address the isolation of researchers in developing countries, and their desire to find help when they first consider publishing their work. It will provide an organised space in which to take part in debates and discussions on scientific communication, and be part of a community of practice. Overcoming isolation is especially crucial for researcher/practitioners in remote locations (e.g. health workers), even more so than for those working within research institutions.
Author's editors will be able to share their insights, materials, and services in an intellectual community that fully appreciates and acknowledges their contributions to communicating science. ICT makes it possible to bring people with common interests together, irrespective of where they live and work. The Knowledge Community concept means that content, access, and communication can be managed to make it possible for anyone to participate as she or he chooses: generating, sharing, and consuming knowledge. AuthorAID@INASPs website/community will enable the programme to interact directly with the stakeholders, and to adapt quickly to address new areas of need. The AuthorAID@INASP Knowledge Community will unite the three programme components and, from the start, extend benefits widely.
Processes
Website pages will enable the following types of interaction and process.
- Allow the discovery and downloading of tools and guides to assist authors communicate their own research
- Provide moderated discussion lists and bulletin boards to enable the exchange of questions and answers about any aspect of science communication
- Facilitate the development of special interest groups and provide a space for the groups to interact
- Encourage the formation of informal author-mentor-editor teams to work together on manuscripts to serve many more authors than will be possible in the formal, monitored, mentoring component
- Host weblogs on topics related to communicating science
- Encourage sharing of experience and lessons from expanding experimentation.
- Provide links to research news through feeds into other websites
- Highlight relevant articles, news and other information, providing information directly to member desktops using Email and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) alerts
- Provide notice of events, awards, projects and articles of interest
- Retain a directory of relevant organisations and websites
- Host the intensively monitored ICT-enabled mentoring system (see below)
- Provide the AuthorAID materials tailored to group learning (see below)
ICT-enabled AuthorAID mentoring
Goals
- To facilitate a greater representation of developing country authors within published literature that will reach the audiences best suited to make use of their findings and ideas
AuthorAID@INASP proposes to test a system for matching young or inexperienced researchers with volunteer senior researchers and experienced editors whose expertise is appropriate to helping researchers become published authors. Together, teams of authors, mentors and/or editors will work on writing projects, 'learning by doing'. In shaping presentation of research and policy commentaries for submission to journals, the teams will strive to build experience and confidence among developing country authors.
These teams can also help authors learn to explain the significance of their work to audiences that may be new for them: scientists from outside their disciplines, journalists, policy makers and practitioners. (It is anticipated that mentors will only work with one author or group per year.)
In the longer term, AuthorAID@INASP will encourage authors who have participated in mentoring relationships and succeeded in publishing their own work to provide similar support for future generations, and to help build systems within their institutions and research networks to assist authors to communicate science.
There are two large populations of willing volunteers to assist authors:
- Scientists at or near retirement, willing to help inexperienced researchers in developing countries
- Author's editors willing to assist these same authors
Experienced and committed senior scientists and editors within emerging countries and within the scientific diaspora are also willing to assist inexperienced researchers from their regions of origin.
Processes
AuthorAID@INASP will use web-based tracking software (similar to that used by many journals), to select the appropriate scientific mentor and/or editor for authors or groups of co-authors requesting assistance.
Outreach and capacity development workshops
Goals
- To reach into communities for face-to-face contact where researchers work
- To learn more about authors' needs
- To gather lessons from local participants to share throughout the Knowledge Community
- To build systems of author support within developing research organisations, networks, local and regional journals, countries, and regions
Outreach workshops will familiarise participants with the full range of AuthorAID resources for subsequent work whether undertaken independently, with peers, with senior scientists or editors, in person, through electronic means, or both. Capacity development activities will bring AuthorAID into emerging country research communities to help adapt, expand and institutionalise support for authors.
AuthorAID@INASP will organise workshops in emerging country research settings, then assist local colleagues to do so. The target populations for the workshops include: authors, those who can provide support to local authors from the start or in the future, and journal editors (present, past and future) within the emerging countries.
Outlined below are two series of workshops with which AuthorAID@INASP will initially experiment.
- Workshop series I: For potential authors and others who can assist authors
- To familiarise inexperienced authors with strategies for improving manuscripts
- To develop local capacity for assisting authors in the publication of their research
- Workshop Series II: Author-friendly journals
- To improve the content and usefulness of journals published from emerging countries
Workshop methodology
The workshops will be fully participatory, combining short talks with extensive participation, exercises, group work and discussion. Each workshop will engage approximately 10-15 participants and last approximately 3-4 days. They will follow the INASP cascading workshop methodology