Publishing was a hot topic. There was a great deal of uncertainty about the process generally, but what struck me most was the confusion around some of the basics, and the impact this essential misunderstanding was having on their work.

The aim of the workshop was to give a group of early career scholars a few days of practical support and advice, with sessions from experience researchers from Ghana, Cameroon and the UK. There were ideas on identifying their niche, selecting the right methods, guidance on how to get grants (and crucially how to cope with rejection), and thoughts on how to find a mentor to guide them in the process (led expertly by AuthorAid’s Ravi Murugesan).

Getting hold of journals and getting published were, unsurprisingly, two themes that generated much discussion.  Some of the work we’ve presented at past PfD conferences formed the introduction to the first of these, followed by a fact-packed session from Helena Asamoah-Hassan from KNUST (and INASP’s country coordinator for Ghana, amongst other things). And publishing was addressed in intensive fashion by an ASAUK writing workshop over the last couple of days.

The conversations around journal access were familiar. But one of the things that stayed with me was how confused many of the participants were about journals as a whole. This fed both into their use of particular resources, and their approach to publishing.

Open access, online, free, international, local… the labels – often terms we don’t use that consistently ourselves – were routinely misunderstood or mixed up.

Free journals were considered low quality – they must be if they were free, surely; after all, wouldn’t you keep the good stuff locked away? This seemed to be the case for OA titles too.  The place to read the better research – and to publish it – must be in the ‘traditional’ titles seemed to be a general feeling.

All of the participants were social scientists or humanities researchers – so aside from handful working in health and population subjects, perhaps this entails a lower familiarity with the higher profile open access movement in health and medical-related research.

‘Online’ seemed to engender a fair degree of distrust and suspicion – perhaps unsurprisingly, and wisely in some cases given the region’s unfortunate reputation for online scams, and the many dubious quality publishing outlets that have sprung up online around the world. But this seems to mean that many high-quality, peer reviewed online titles are being overlooked, or seen as second class options, and even where ‘print’ titles were trusted, if they were encountered principally online, there was a sense that they might be less trusted sources.

This is codified in many institutions by the criteria for assessment and promotion. Panels of older academics might discount articles published online when considering promotions, or in students’ submitted work. ‘International’ journals are routinely considered higher status than ‘local’ journals, but as the boundaries blur, and the terms become less appropriate in an electronic world, there need to be more sophisticated ways for researchers to understand and assess quality.

There’s undoubtedly some essential – and urgent – work to be done in helping both emerging and more established researchers to navigate the journal world more confidently and effectively. Perhaps we need to start with a straightforward “how to” or a “researcher’s introduction to journal publishing”. And at the same time we need to help universities and their senior academics understand some of the changes in the publishing world so that they can respond appropriately – recognising the quality of their researchers’ work, and guiding them to publish in the right places.

[The workshop was a follow-up to the Foundations for the Future report launched by the British Academy and the ACU in February - the full report sets out in greater detail some of the challenges facing early career researchers, and forms part of the 'Nairobi Process' on strengthening social sciences and humanities research on the continent]

Unsurprisingly, South Africa is out in front with 5 million tweets, and twice as many as Kenya. Nigeria comes in next at 1.6 million, neatly mapping to the kind of country rankings we tend to see in measures of research outputs on the continent. Certainly the top countries track some of the largest and growing economies, the largest populations, and those with greatest internet access.

It’s tempting to use this as a way to visualize Africa’s connectivity, and to think of a social media wave sweeping the continent, and all of its implications for research and publishing and access to information. I’m certainly no expert in this kind of analysis – and others can probably offer a much more sophisticated response to this -but it’s worth a few caveats I think.

Firstly, these numbers don’t compare that well against population size. That’s not to say it’s not significant that Twitter use is growing, but that we shouldn’t get carried away too soon and think that more people are connected than really are. 1.6 million Nigerian tweets (not individual Twitter users that is), from a population of around 162 million, suggests it a relatively small group using the service (that’s something like 0.0099 tweets per person over the period). Kenya’s 2.5 million tweets compare a little better against its 40 million population (0.062 tweets per person), but the same point still stands. South Africa’s 5 million tweets are from a population of around 50 million (0.1 tweets per person). Chances are this is a few people tweeting a lot, rather than a lot of tweeters across the country. What’s more, they’re most likely urban (the image doesn’t give us this level of data). Smartphones – which Twitter needs (and 57% of tweets were reportedly from mobiles) – are still not that widespread (although they are growing in use).

The full presentation from Portland, who did the work, offers a number of other findings: that it’s mainly African tweeters being followed, that they’re typically younger than elsewhere – 21-29 rather than 39 years old, and that a lot of its use is for following news, as well as the social contact with friends. So an interesting graphic, and it provokes some interesting questions – but use with care!

19 June, 2012

This one day conference will be collegiate in style and is open to our publishing partners, country representatives from the south and others involved in information provision, access and uptake. We trust it will enable attendees to hear from each other, share experiences and network. It will be divided into the following sessions:

• The importance of cooperation for development
• Publishers for Development in Action – Awareness, Access and Use
• So why are we making journals available? So that researchers can do their work – is that the end of the story?
• Exhibition viewing and publisher/country representative meetings

Space is limited, so, in order to enable as many representatives from different organisations as possibleto attend, discuss with your colleagues who will most benefit from joining us. Download the booking form here:  2012 Conference booking form

For more information see the 2012 Conference page