Research4Life Partners Newsletter November 2016
Table of Contents
- Note from the Editor
- R4L/INASP Advocacy Competition Winners
- Highlights from the General Partners Meeting
- New Research4Life’s Strategic Plan
- The 2016 MLA Research4Life grant winners
- Winners of the Research4Life Draw announced
- PortSys to work with Research4Life on a new Authentication System
- OARE Turns 10!
- Shereen Zorba, new OARE program Manager
- Oxfam Research Guidelines now on Research4Life
- Capacity Development Team Highlights
- Stories of Change
- Social Media and Web Updates
- Latest Stats and Facts
Note from the Editor
Dear Partners,
2016 has brought us our share of birthdays with OARE turning a decade and HINARI hitting 15. We’ve celebrated with an exciting case study competition, this time with INASP, our longstanding partner in research capacity building. In June, we called for stories from doctors, researchers, policymakers and librarians who have successfully advocated for research support boosting the role of evidence across all their sectors. A competition like this not only helps us connect with Research4Life users, it also helps us share their compelling stories with our partners, potential funders, policymakers and journalists.
2016 is also the year we transitioned to a new Research4Life Executive Council Chair and we’d like to send a huge thank you to our immediate past Chair Richard Gedye, Director of Outreach Programmes, International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) for sharing his expertise and energy over the past two years. Thankfully, Richard will continue to drive and participate in many of Research4Life’s teams contributing to our partnership’s impact, fundraising and governance. We are also keen to welcome our brand new Chair, Daniel Dollar, Director of Collection Development at Yale University Library a longtime Research4Life advocate. Kimberly Parker, HINARI programme manager, will serve as Vice Chair, taking over the gavel in two years’ time.
Read on to find out more about our anniversaries, who the competition winners are and what we’ve been up to the last few months. Interested in getting more involved or telling the Research4Life story from your own organization?
Contact us at [email protected]
Ylann Schemm, Chair of the Research4Life Communications & Marketing Team and Elsevier Foundation Programme Director
Research4Life/INASP Advocacy Winners
With more than 150 applications received, the R4L/INASP Advocacy Competition found outstanding stories from users successfully advocating for research support from all over the world. The entries were carefully evaluated by an internationally influential jury panel composed of established scholars and information professionals who devoted great care and attention to details while voting each entry.
After an active deliberation process the judges have selected two winners:
- Alice Matimba from Harare, Zimbabwe (Department of Clinical Pharmacology, College of Health Sciences, University of Zimbabwe.
- Mary Acanit from Kampala, Uganda (Kyambog University)
The two winners, will receive a travel grant from Elsevier, INASP and SAGE to attend the Publishers for Development Conference and the Research4Life General Partners meeting in Oxford, U.K; and a book voucher from Taylor & Francis.
Additionally a honourable mention has been awarded to Dinah Koteikor Baidoo from Berekuso, Ghana (Ashesi University College). She will receive a one-year subscription from a reference collection from SAGE.
Congratulations!
Highlights from the General Partners Meeting
The Research4Life Annual General Partners Meeting was held at Cornell University’s Weill Cornell Medical College on 20 and 21 July 2016 in New York City. The meeting brought together some 50 delegates and observers representing our publishing community, the United Nations agencies, University libraries, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers and two representatives from the user community.
During the GPM, programme managers and working teams presented the results of the year and discussed the plans and challenges for 2016-2017. Some of the highlights of the meeting included the presentation of the Strategy Document “Our Vision for 2020 and Beyond” and a warm welcome to the new user representative, Dr Matseliso Moshoeshoe-Chadzingwa, Librarian at the National University of Lesotho. The GPM ended with Richard Gedye handling over the GPM gavel to the new 2016-18 Executive Council Chair, Daniel Dollar. The next General Partners Meeting will take place on 12 July in Oxford, United Kingdom.
New Research4Life’s Strategic Plan
During the last General Partners Meeting held in New York, a new Strategic Plan: “Our Vision for 2020 and Beyond” was presented by Andrew Czajkowski, ARDI programme manager. The document gives an overview of the context and current structure of the Research4Life partnership, presents some of the findings from the User Experience Review and outlines seven goals that aim to expand the reach and use of the partnership.
The 2016 MLA Hinari/Research4Life grant winners
The Medical Library Association (MLA) and the Elsevier Foundation have announced the recipients of the 2016 MLA Hinari/Research4Life Grants.
Funded by the Elsevier Foundation, these grants will support Hinari/Research4Life training activities that promote the use of the programmes’ scientific research resources in emerging/low income countries. The recipients will use the grants to benefit individuals to obtain skills to effectively and efficiently use the Hinari/Research4Life resources and also become trainers for their institutions or country.
The recipients will be honoured at the President’s Awards Dinner during MLA’17 in Seattle, Washington.
- Martha Cecilia Garcia, Coordinator National Library of Medicine, Honduras, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras.
- Karin Saric, Information Services Librarian, Norris Medical Library, University of Southern California, USA.
- Alemayehu Bisrat, Health Informatics Expert and Project Coordinator, Center for eHealth, College of Health Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.
- Dativa Tibyampansha, Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College, Tanzania.
- Megan von Isenburg, Duke University, North Carolina, USA.
Congratulations to the winners!
Winners of the Research4Life Draw announced
Research4Life provides access to thousands of journals, but it is a rare occasion when it can offer a physical printed publication to one of its registered institutions. Institutions which paid for 2016 access to Research4Life were automatically entered into a special drawing to win a major reference work from one of the publisher partners. The slips with institution names on them were drawn by Dr Christopher Dye, the Director of SPI (Strategy, Policy and Information) of the World Health Organization.
The King Hussein Cancer Center was the lucky winner of the first prize. Prizes included: the ICD-10 International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision, Vol.1-3, 2010 edition (provided by the World Health Organization) and Principles and Practice of Clinical Research, 4th edition (provided by Elsevier).
Read the full blog post.
PortSys to work with Research4Life on a new Authentication System
Research4Life and PortSys announced the adoption of Total Access Control (TAC) to provide secure access to Research4Life’s content. Research4Life is excited to embark on the next evolution of the partnership’s core technology. The migration to Total Access Control will help ensure the continued support of Research4Life’s primary goal – “to provide affordable access to critical scientific research for users from eligible institutions in the developing world,” said Daniel Dollar, Chair of the Research4Life Executive Council, and Director of Collection Development, Yale University Library.
OARE is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Launched in October 2006, OARE has a mission to improve the quality and effectiveness of environmental science research, education and training in low-income countries. In doing so, OARE seeks to support the efforts of low-income countries to achieve development objectives working hand in hand with over 461 partners. For the past decade, OARE has been opening doors for scientists worldwide. Happy Birthday OARE!
Shereen Zorba, new OARE program Manager
OARE has even more reason to celebrate, with Shereen Zorba joining as UNEP’s new OARE program director. Shereen has more than 10 years’ experience in strategic communication. She started working as Chief of Communications and Outreach at UNEP in 2001. Since May of this year, Shereen serves as UNEP’s Global Head, Science-Policy Interface and Knowledge Networks. She is excited to use her expertise in communications to increase OARE’s visibility within Research4Life and thus ensure that it remains a proactive part of the partnership. We’d like to give Shereen a warm and hearty welcome and are looking forward to working closely with her.
Oxfam Research Guidelines now on Research4Life
In November 2012, Oxfam -one of the biggest international organizations working to fight poverty-, launched a series of guidelines to help development practitioners conduct high-quality research. The “how-to” guidelines are available in the Oxfam Policy and Practice website, which offers free access to over 4,000 publications. The research guidelines cover different aspects of the research process including the communication of research.
Since July 2016, one of the guidelines, Reviewing the existing literature now reflects the work of Research4Life and INASP -one of Research4Life’s partners- in making books, journals, and databases more widely accessible to researchers in the developing world. We’re looking forward to keep working with Oxfam in the production of research guidelines. For more information visit the Oxfam Policy and Practice website or check the full list of Oxfam’s Research Guidelines.
Capacity Development Team Highlights
A new Hinari Master Trainer Distance Course, hosted by ITOCA is currently running. We have also held several training workshops in Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal (Hinari), Ghana (AGORA) in addition to TEEAL/AGORA courses run by ITOCA, and shorter courses in Bangladesh, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea (Hinari). One of the highlights of the past months is the massive new input of 1,209 new journals to AGORA This latest addition represents an enormous boost to the online collection, with over six thousand journals and twenty two thousand books. AGORA’s collection of research resources is likely to continue to grow at an impressive rate.
This series of stories detailing the experiences of Research4Life users will be launched in by the end of the year. “Stories of Change”, the outreach project funded by The Elsevier Foundation, has been made feasible through additional support from partners such as IFIS, Oxfam, MLA-Librarians Without Borders and the Research4Life programmes. Through videos, interviews and photo essays, we have been able to develop new channels to showcase our story -how access to information is the change driver for thousands of researchers and librarians in the Global South. If you want to take part in this project email: [email protected]
Our social media community and web presence keeps growing! We have almost 10,000 followers through our social media channels and more than 20,000 webpage visits per month on research4life.org
The Research4Life website is a great platform to share resources and information so let us know if you would like to participate in our initiatives such as Publisher of the Month or would like to write a blog post. During the coming months, we’ll be adding new content to the Training Section, launching a new Promotional Training Video and a series of webinars organized in collaboration with the Capacity Development Team.
