Research without Borders

Invaluable research being carried out in African countries is often not effectively disseminated either to African researchers or to a wider international audience. To boost the impact and discoverability of African health research, the Elsevier Foundation created “Research without Borders”, a skills-based volunteering partnership with the African Journal Partnership Program (AJPP) tapping Elsevier expertise in publishing, marketing, operations and technology.

AJPP 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.

With a grant of $204,000 over the course of 3 years, Elsevier volunteers provide supplementary training to the African journals for a period of 1-4 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, most recently, The Health Press Zambia. In 2017, 20 Elsevier volunteers contributed a total of 48 weeks of time to share expertise in publishing, marketing, operations and technology.

Our goals

Elsevier volunteers work with the journals and mentors to provide strategic, editorial
communication and operational guidance:
• Strengthen the impact of African Journals by improving quality and discoverability through targeted mentoring teams.
• Improve visibility of African research by working to submit applications to scholarly indexes.
• Facilitate collaboration and knowledge exchange between African editors and their counterparts.
• Support the training of authors, reviewers and journalists in Africa
• Build journal websites, evolve editorial board practices and improve the pool of authors and reviewers.
• Work to develop a strategic business plan, usually with a sustainable open access business model.

Read about the project development and the volunteers’ experiences on Elsevier Connect:

Partners