Editor’s Note: Today’s post is by Daniela Saderi, Joy Owango, Aurelia Munene, Wangari Joyce Ngugi, Johanssen Obanda, and Johanna Havemann. Daniela is the Co-Founder and Director of PREreview, an open project with the mission to bring more equity and transparency to the evaluation of research content, giving systematically excluded researchers better ways to find, train, and contribute to peer review. Joy is the Founding Director of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa) an award winning Trust registered in Kenya set up in 2006 and is the first African-based training center to teach effective communication skills to scientists. Aurelia is a social science researcher and founder of Eider Africa, an organization committed to co-creating research environments where emerging researchers in Africa can take leadership in driving responsible knowledge production and utilization in the continent. She is also the Executive Director of Nascent Research and Development Organization. Wangari J. Ngugi is a Consultant Psychologist and Research Mentor. She is the Lead Research Mentor at Eider Africa, with a Certificate in Research Mentorship, where she is involved in the Design Team curating Research Mentorship programs. Johanssen is a Social Innovator who works with AfricArXiv to build the organization’s scholarly community in Africa. Johanna is a trainer and consultant in [Open] Science Communication and [digital] Science Project Management. Her work experience covers NGOs, a science startup and international institutions including the UN Environment Programme.
There is considerable innovation present and underway in Africa in terms of technology, communication, power generation and delivery of medical services. Rather than recreating the technology and infrastructure of the 20th Century of the Global North, they are leapfrogging into the 21st Century. This Scholarly Kitchen piece discusses how are they doing the same for peer review.
To revert that effect and engage African scholars into discussion of research output from African colleagues and non-African scholars studying topics of region-specific relevance, we (the representatives of four community-driven organizations (AfricArXiv, Eider Africa, TCC Africa, and PREreview) have developed a pilot series of community peer review events to enable equitable practices of research evaluation and review.