Weekly highlights – 4 November 2015

1. Quote

“A female participant came to me after the workshop, thanked me for my effort and said: ‘Sir, there were so many students in the workshop today. They don’t usually attend the classes nowadays due to the upcoming exams, but they attended since you were conducting the workshop’. Needless to say I was humbled and honoured. It boosted my confidence too. Thank you AuthorAID team for your continued support”.

– Dr Farooq Rathore, CMH Lahore Medical College, Pakistan, feedback in relation one of a number of research writing workshops run by Dr Rathore

2. Updates

• VakaYiko consortium member GINKS is holding an evidence-informed policy making course in Ghana. See Twitter for updates from the meeting.
• INASP’s Anne Powell took part in an Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers’ webinar on global publishing last week. See here for a Storify of the lively discussions.

3. Upcoming events

• Monitoring and Evaluation Officer Jan Liebnitzky is in Tanzania as part of a team looking at the outcomes of the Strengthening Tanzanian Publishing (TZAP) project.
• On 9 November Jon Harle will be travelling to Tanzania and then Uganda for discussions with the library consortia about how they are progressing and to plan for the future.
• Veronika Schaeffler will be Kenya between 14-21 November for an African Regional Licensing and Negotiations workshop. The workshop, facilitated by Ann Okerson and Helena Asamoah-Hassan, will include delegates from Ghana, Uganda, Zimbabwe & Kenya.
• INASP is a gold Sponsor for the forthcoming UbuntuNet-Connect 2015, the 8th Annual Conference of the UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking. Taking place in Maputo Mozambique between 19-20 November, the conference will be preceded by a four-day Training-the-Trainer workshop for NREN and campus IT engineers. As part of its sponsorship, INASP will be supporting six engineers – two from each of RENU (Uganda), TERNET (Tanzania) and ZAMREN (Zambia) to attend the workshop and conference. Peter Burnett, Programme Manager for Library Curricula and Network Management, will be attending the event and will be meeting with the CEOs of the three supported NRENs. 

4. Recent publications

• INASP leads evaluation of Strengthening Tanzanian Publishing project – INASP News, 2 November, 2015
  From 2 to 9 November Monitoring and Evaluation officer Jan Liebnitzky will be in Tanzania to lead the evaluation of the two-year Strengthening Indigenous Academic and Digital Publishing in Tanzania (TZAP) project.
• New grant encourages innovation in the use of online research literature – INASP News, 2 November, 2015
  New grant encourages innovation in the use of online research literature.
• Innovation grants at INASP: working across teams to increase use of online research literature – Practising Development, 2 November, 2015
• Some Resources for Finding Travel Funding and More – AuthorAID, 1 November, 2015
• Travel grant recipient Om Basukala from Nepal shares his joy on being able to pursue a PhD and acknowledges the support he received from AuthorAID – Practising Development, 30 October, 2015
• Guest post: from travel grant to PhD – AuthorAID, 30 October, 2015
  Travel grant recipient Om Basukala from Nepal shares his joy on being able to pursue a PhD and acknowledges the support he received from AuthorAID.
• Tip of the Week #257 – AuthorAID, 28 October, 2015 
• Avoiding Predatory Journals and Conferences: Two More Resources – AuthorAID, 26 October, 2015

5. External coverage                                                                 

• What do civil servants in Ghana and Zimbabwe really think about evidence-informed policy making? – African Evidence Network, 30 October, 2015
• EIPM training Intervention: Reviewing Parliament’s Information Support System as preparatory work – GINKS blog, 19 October, 2015
• AuthorAid workshop – RDI website
• GINKS trains civil servants in evidence-informed policy making – Government of Ghana website