Abstract
Abstract Open scholarship is a major reform movement within research. This paper seeks to understand how open scholarship might address the challenges faced by research in Africa, through a study based on a participatory collaborative workshop to create a partnership with librarians in Rwanda. The literature review identifies three broad perspectives on the apparent under-performance of Rwandan research: one locating the issue in the unequal scholarly communications system, a second pointing to a country deficit and a third blaming cognitive injustices. The Rwandan librarians see researchers as challenged through the pressures on them to publish, the costs of research, poor infrastructure, lack of skills and limited access to literature. Collectively these challenges constitute a critical barrier to research. These limits fit largely the country deficit perspective. Open scholarship as conceived in the Global North is only a small part of the answer to the challenges faced by Rwandan scholars. To promote equity, notions of open scholarship need to take into account the conditions under which research is conducted in less privileged contexts such as Rwanda.
Highlights
1 Introduction inequities in how science works and improve opportunities for all scholars
There are a number of types of explanations of this in the literature, which we will suggest below centre around three perspectives: one located in the inequities in the scholarly communication system, another focussing on deficits in the in-country research environment and a third more trenchant, potentially transformative perspective that locates the problem in cognitive injustices arising from continuing neo-colonialism
It uses data gathered from a participatory collaborative workshop with Rwandan librarians to explore their perception of these issues and on that basis consider the potential for open scholarship
Summary
1 Introduction inequities in how science works and improve opportunities for all scholars. It identifies three major perspectives in the literature explaining the apparent under-performance of African research (without assuming that this is real) It advances our understanding of the challenges in the research environment in Rwanda, from Rwandan librarians’ point of view, the first such published output to do so. It shows through the example of Rwanda that the definition of open scholarship needs to be shaped by contextual needs, in a way that current definitions, developed for Global North contexts, do not
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
