Open Research Africa – What is the impact of publishing research in the world? The challenge of measuring the impact factor in the global north and encouraging research in Africa

The importance of publishing research is important to us. The open-access publisher F1000 launched Open Research Africa, in which publication is not unnecessarily delayed, ownership rights are retained by authors, and there is transparency throughout the process. It gives publishing homes to those with like-minded African science organizations.

Finally, there is the straightforward scepticism of submissions from less renowned groups of scientists, a reaction often received by African researchers when they are subject to triage by journal editors in the global north.

Selective journals tend to favour big, ‘splashy’ results that are much more likely to be generated from resource-intense research environments. They also demand that submissions provide the sort of complete data analysis and ancillary documentation that results from the work of specialists, such as biostatisticians, that are integral to many research teams in the global north, but less so in the global south.

Many journal editors in the global north still carry the bias that although African labs might know about ‘African’ disease, they have less to offer when it comes to ‘developed-world’ disease. Although communicable infections like Malaria and HIV are still prevalent in Africa, their impact on public health is diminishing rapidly because of non-communicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular ailments.

There is also less of a culture of peer review in Africa than in the global north and African researchers are much less frequently invited to review manuscripts by selective journals. Active participation in peer review allows an early chance to view new findings and gives researchers an insight into how peer review works, for when they submit their own papers.

We must refuse to submit ourselves to the tyranny of the impact factor — at best, an extremely biased measure of actual ‘impact’. Research leaders and administrators must strip journal titles from CVs when considering candidates for grant funding, hiring, awards or promotion. They must encourage submissions to open journals in order to show leadership. Although an investigator’s publication record remains a good reflection of their impact, this can be measured by a variety of alternative metrics, such as views, downloads and collaborations.

Obed Ogega, ARISE’s manager at the AAS, says the initiative is empowering early-career scientists to pursue cutting-edge research in Africa, adding that the researchers funded through ARISE propose their projects and decide what to do with the money. He and his colleagues think the initiative is responding to Africa’s needs. They hope that it could eventually help African science to flourish and reduce research inequality on the continent. Over 50 PhD and 70 master’s students from Africa benefited from various ARISE projects over the course of two years. The real impact on African scientists of the EU–AU partnership has been seen by him.

In recognition of these challenges, the SFA Foundation has invested roughly US$100 million over the past two years in resourcing African institutions in more than 40 countries, helping them to develop the necessary infrastructure and environment, and human capital, to conduct quality research.

Then there is the issue of funding. The agenda was called for to be backed by dedicated investment by over 2,000 leading universities and research organizations in Africa and Europe in June. The hope was to pilot an Africa–EU science fund, specifically for research collaboration between African and European researchers. The universities want the funds to go towards innovation in Africa and Europe. University representatives say existing initiatives should be built into the innovation agenda.

The agenda holds promise for Africa but it needs to be ensured that all universities and industries across the continent work together to harness its benefits for good, says the secretary-general of the Association of African Universities. He worried that only a few elite institutions will benefit.

It could take a few years before such an Africa–EU science fund could materialize, however, especially given the next EU research programme will not start until 2028.

There are some funding mechanisms that exist. ARISE received funding of 25 million from the EU in 2020 as part of a research initiative. In 38 countries across Africa, it supports 45 principal investigators and provides research grants. ARISE helps grant recipients establish links and collaborations with universities and institutions in Africa and Europe, facilitating knowledge exchange.

The AAS told Nature Index that the implementation is being shepherded by an independent committee with representatives from the EU and African Union. “This structure minimizes ARISE’s exposure to internal and external risks, such as governance issues,” the AAS says. The implementation of ARISE went on as usual despite the disruption in part of the work done by the AAS.

African science was woken up by the crisis. EU–AU research collaboration grants should be documented live and in real-time on a public website, with penalties for non-compliance to ensure accountability and transparency, suggests Nadia Sam-Agudu, a paediatrician at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, who works at the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria in Abuja.

Agnes Binagwaho, a specialist in emergency paediatrics and Rwanda’s former health minister, says that because of historical colonial power imbalances, research partnerships between global north and African scientists might perpetuate inequalities, including the extraction of knowledge and a brain drain from the continent. “It’s like having a good white master — it’s still slavery,” she says.

International collaboration is an essential force in science. But the nature and balance of partnerships often determines how beneficial they are to individuals, institutions and societies. Nowhere is this more true than in collaborations involving the global north and south.

There are caveats. The World Bank divides countries into income groups based on the categories of the global north and global south. This inevitably leads to some arguable categorizations: South Africa is an upper middle-income country so is a ‘global north’ country in the data, for instance. The same is true for much of Latin America. The new data from health-sciences journals, which were added to the Nature Index, weren’t available for analysis.