Weekly highlights from INASP – 8 January 2016

Happy New Year! We are pleased to share some highlights from INASP from the end of 2015 and recent days.

1. Quote

“A really useful hour spent and some key points taken on board, thanks to UKSG and their excellent choice of panel members. “

Anonymous feedback on a recent UKSG webinar: ‘Focus on the South: access to, production and use of research information in low and middle income countries,’ which featured INASP’s Anne Powell and Ruth Bottomley

2. Updates

• We have published a Storify of the annual AuthorAID meeting, which was held in Sri Lanka in late 2015. Poster presentations shared at the meeting are now available in the resources section of the AuthorAID site.
• Barbara Gastell presented the nine-year history of the AuthorAID project to the Association of American Publishers (AAP) Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Journals Committee, December 2015.
• VakaYiko partner GINKS has published a series of video interviews from a recent Policy Dialogue Workshop in Ghana:
  • An interview with Felix Adom Boateng, Development Planning Practitioner, Regional Coordinating Council (Ho, Ghana)
  • An interview with Tenasu Kofi Gbedemah, Voice Ghana, (Ho, Ghana)
  • An interview with Abdulai Abdul Gafaru, Internal Auditor, Ho Municipal Assembly, Ghana
  • An interview with Johnson Addison, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Hope for Future Generations, Ghana
  • An interview with Dr. Naalamle Amissah, Crop Science Department, Crop Science Department, University of Ghana (UG)
• A video has been published of a recent workshop in Nepal about scientific writing. The workshop was funded by an AuthorAID grant.
• INASP has a new Executive Director, Julie Brittain.

3. Upcoming events

• VakaYiko partner GINKS will begin training in evidence-informed policy making (EIPM) for the Parliament of Ghana on 11^th January. VakaYiko is now actively involved in building capacity to use evidence in three African parliaments (Zimbabwe, Ghana and Uganda). In all cases the training is based on adaptations of the soon-to-be-published VakaYiko EIPM Toolkit.
• Sioux Cumming and Sangita Shrestha will be travelling to Nepal later this month for a workshop on Improving Journal Quality and Publishing on NepJOL. The workshop, supported by INASP, will be held from 25^th to 27^th  January 2016 at Tribhuvan University Central Library, Kathmandu. The workshop is aimed at the journal staff who wish to load their own content onto NepJOL and manage peer-review processes in an online environment.
• VakaYiko partner ZeipNET is organizing a discussion around evidence-informed policy making (EIPM) with African Evidence Network on 5^th February in Harare.

4. Recent publications

• INASP has a new Executive Director – INASP News, 4 January, 2016 Julie Brittain is the new Executive Director of INASP. Julie brings to the role 30 years of working in the information sector, with a particular focus on the intersection between research knowledge and international development.
• Guest Post: How to Build a Career as a Researcher in a Developing Country – AuthorAID, 2 January, 2016 By Dr. Haseeb Md. Irfanullah
• Three encounters with medical journal editors – Practising Development, 29 December, 2015 Ravi Murugesan reflects on interesting discussions with medical journal editors this year.
• Year-End Thanks and Greetings – AuthorAID, 26 December, 2015 Wishing you all the best in 2016
• Chemistry researchers attend a participatory INASP research writing workshop – Practising Development, 22 December, 2015 Ravi Murugesan reports on an AuthorAID research writing workshop in Nairobi jointly organized by INASP and the Pan Africa Chemistry Network, a unit of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
• AuthorAID: An Overview – AuthorAID, 21 December, 2015 Highlights of a webinar
• Building licensing and negotiation skills supports sustainable access – Practising Development, 21 December, 2015 A recent workshop in Kenya combined licensing and negotiation skills development with training the trainer approaches.
• Goodbye from Sue Corbett – Practising Development, 18 December, 2015 As Sue Corbett comes to the end of her time as Executive Director, she shares some personal reflections from the past four years.
• The Wisdom of Crowds – Part 2 – Practising Development, 16 December, 2015 In her second post of the week, Sue Corbett shares some of the ways that INASP is bringing people together to share ideas and support research systems development.
• My journey from civil war to global health, via AuthorAID – Case study, 15 December, 2015 AuthorAID support boosts mental health research in Somalia. Case Study by Dr Djibril I. Moussa Handuleh.
• The wisdom of crowds – Part 1 – Practising Development, 14 December, 2015 In the first of a two-part blog, Sue Corbett reflects on INASP’s work to encourage collective problem solving at a national level.
• AuthorAID participates in British Pharmacology 2015 Exhibition – INASP News, 14 December, 2015 INASP’s AuthorAID project exhibited at Pharmacology 2015, which will be held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London from 15 –17 December 2015.
• Guest Post: An Update on Resources from Research Square – AuthorAID, 12 December, 2015 By Ben Mudrak of Research Square
• Guest Post: Handy Shortcuts for Microsoft Word – AuthorAID, 6 December 2015 From AuthorAID community member Parvathy Hariharan

5. External coverage                                                                 

• Julie Brittain appointed executive director of INASP – Research Information, 5 January, 2016
• Kudos news – UKSG News, 1 December 2015 (signup required)
• Training the Trainer: Network engineer trainer Patrick Okui explains relevance of UbuntuNet Alliance, NSRC training workshops – UbuntuNet NUANCE, November 2015
• INASP’s Peter Burnett set for January 2015 retirement – UbuntuNet NUANCE, November 2015