Research without Borders
The African Journal Partnership Program is a high profile mentoring program supported by the US National Library of Medicine and NIH’s Fogarty International Center and coordinated by the Council of Science Editors. AJPP pairs 10 African health journals in Ghana, Malawi, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, DRC, Uganda, Mali, Kenya, Rwanda and Zambia with leading US and UK health journals including, The Lancet, The Annals of Internal Medicine, BMJ, and The New England Journal of Medicine.
Elsevier volunteers provide supplementary training to the African journals for up to-4 weeks in country. The journals include: African Health Sciences, Annals of African Surgery, Ethiopian Journal of Health Sciences, Ghana Medical Journal, Malawi Medical Journal, Rwanda Journal of Health Sciences, Annales Africaines de Medecine, Mali Medical and The Health Press Zambia.
Boosting the impact and discoverability of African health research
One of the great challenges faced by African research is the lack of effective dissemination both within the African research community and internationally. To boost African health research impact and discoverability, the Elsevier Foundation founded “Research without Borders”, a skills-based volunteering partnership with the African Journal Partnership Program (AJPP), a high-profile mentoring program supported by the US National Library of Medicine and NIH’s Fogarty International Center and administered by the Council of Science Editors. Research without Borders collaborates with AJPP by providing Elsevier volunteer expertise in publishing, marketing, operations, technology and strategic guidance.
- Strengthening the impact of African journals by improving quality and discoverability through targeted mentoring teams
- Improving the discoverability of African research by assisting journal editors with applications to Scopus, MEDLINE and other scholarly indexes
Facilitating the collaboration and knowledge exchange between African editors and their counterparts - Supporting the training of authors, reviewers and journalists in Africa
Building journal websites, evolving editorial board practices and improving the pool of authors and reviewers
Developing strategic business plans, usually with a sustainable open access business model
- 13 Elsevier volunteers contributed a total of 22 weeks of time to share expertise with journals across 6 African countries in 2019.
- Since 2017, 34 volunteers have contributed a total of 97 weeks.
A Francophone workshop for the DRC’s Annales Africaines de Medecine journal team was held during the African Health Agenda International Conference (AHAIC) in Kigali, Rwanda, March 2019. - Volunteers Anne Roca (The Lancet Global Health), Christine Sempe and Yasmina Ouharzoune (Elsevier) joined AHAIC delivering research capacity building workshops and panel discussions on moving research to policy and African health tech solutions — along with Dr. Piu Kabututu (Annales Africaines de Medecine).
Volunteers Connie Villalba and Christine Sempe attended the AJPP Annual Meeting in Columbus, OH, May 2019, to provide additional editorial training.
- In 2020, conduct an evaluation of journal needs and continue support of AJPP with a reduced scope.
- Expand volunteer opportunities to a range of Elsevier Foundation partnerships, such as Amref, OWSD and Epicentre.