Season 1 Ep 9 🎙️🎙️🎙️

Sustaining Scholarly Communications for Future Generations: Approaches for African Libraries by AFLIA’S Dr. Mac-Anthony Cobblah.

Link to the full episode: https://www.tcc-africa.org/category/mazungumzo-podcasts/ | Listen on Anchor FM

PODCAST SUMMARY

On this episode of the podcast, we had the privilege of catching up with Dr. Mac-Anthony Cobblah, an accomplished leader in academic librarianship, as he shares his insights on librarianship and leadership, especially when it comes to promoting open science within the realm of scholarly communication in African universities. He holds the position of chair for Academic and Special Libraries at the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AFLIA), as well as University Librarian and Lecturer at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana.

Dr. Cobblah speaks about the need for sustainability in research and the impact it has on future generations. He questions what literacy we are leaving for the next generation and urges higher education and research institutions to get involved in research that has a lasting impact and can transcend beyond our generation.

Here are the key things to look out for:

1. The evolving landscape of scholarly communication including the rise of preprints, repositories, and the use of digital object identifiers (DOIs) for metadata harvesting.
2. The Importance of investing in ICT infrastructure to support and facilitate scholarly communication landscape.
3. Capacity building and skill development for librarians and researchers in areas like information management and open science practices.
4. Exploring funding models and budget allocation to support open science publishing and infrastructure, considering equity and affordability.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Mazungumzo – African Scholarly Conversations where are joined by an expansive list of African policymakers, science communication specialists, innovators, and tertiary institution leads who contribute to the realm of scholarly communication. I’m your host Joy Owango, the Executive Director of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa), based at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

Join us today as we invite Dr. Mac-Anthony Cobblah from Ghana, who holds the position of chair for Academic and Special Libraries at the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AFLIA), as well as University Librarian and Lecturer at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. He will be sharing his insights on librarianship and leadership, especially when it comes to promoting open science within the realm of scholarly communication in African universities.

Welcome, Dr. Cobblah,

Dr. Cobblah

Thank you very much Joy, it is a privilege once again, to speak to you on these issues.

Joy Owango

Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. You just told me that you just you’re still in the United Kingdom after taking part in the UKSG conference in Scotland. So take us through your experience at that conference, what you are doing, are you giving a talk? What did you learn from that conference? Before we get into the podcast

Dr. Cobblah

It was really a great privilege being part of that conference, and I was speaking on increasing the visibility of sustainable research in Africa. I was happy that I was the second person to speak at the first plenary session, and the response was great. Some of these things were not known to them and they were happy to hear the African story. We had a lot of people ready to collaborate with us on some of the initiatives that we are doing in Africa. It was a great opportunity to tell the African story to the world. And I’m happy for the opportunity. I really enjoyed the conference.

Joy Owango

All right. So for context, everybody, the UKSG conference is the 46th annual conference and exhibition which was held in Glasgow. It is an annual conference, which is a major event in the scholarly communications calendar, which attracts delegates each year from around the world, including librarians, publishers, content providers, consultants, and intermediaries.

So you felt that this was a very great opportunity for you to talk about the activities that are happening in Africa in regards to scholarly communication

Dr. Cobblah

It was and I was happy that they prioritized my presentation and that of a friend for Nigeria, because they felt that in the past, they didn’t hear more about Africa and what’s going on in Africa. I was the second person on the first plenary, and everybody was interested to hear about Africa. And I was happy. I was happy about the collaborations that are coming up after the conference, even from some publishers and funders

Joy Owango

Oh, this is good news.

Dr. Cobblah

That is indeed, good news for us.

Joy Owango:

Oh, yes and that gets us right into the podcast proper. So as someone who has worked as an academic librarian for more than two decades, can you tell us what motivated you to pursue a career in this field initially? Moreover, could you shed some light on the difficulties and the rewards that come with your line of work?

Dr. Cobblah

Some of us came into this profession by default. It was not really planned. I had not sat down and planned to become a librarian. I wanted to do something else when I was in school. Actually, I had to do this because of our initial plan was to study in the US. As a friend of mine based in the US asked me to study librarianship so that when I come I can get a job on campus even though it wasn’t intended for me to become a librarian, if you look at my CV, I’ve studied in other like MBA and I got a job with the Bank of Ghana which is one of the most lucrative places to work in Ghana. I got a job in detail to come and work there. But I still turn it down, because I love what I do. I enjoy what I do as a librarian. So the motivation was not there initially. But when I got into it, I, I’ve enjoyed every time I spent in the past twenty-four years as a librarian, and even to come to the next world, I would still be a librarian. So well, I would say there was no motivation. Initially, I got into it by default, but I’ve never regretted any day for being a librarian.

Joy Owango

Interesting. So you started, you became a librarian by default, and you ended up focusing on other research areas, but then found yourself gravitating towards librarianship. What have been the rewards of choosing between a librarian

Dr. Cobblah

My greatest joy is to see people that I’ve helped, meet me and tell me, you contributed to my career, you contributed to my training, my greatest reward is when I meet people that I’ve helped and supported, I’ve counselled, I’ve encouraged, and they’re now at great places, and they’re doing well. I feel rewarded that this effort has paid off. And, personally, the exposure I’ve had in this career, and the people I’ve met and worked with across the world. If you go into my CV, as early as a few years into my career, I started traveling outside and participating in a number of things. I am a product of Stimulate, I’m a product of DANIDA early career development projects, I’m a product of OCLC early career fellowship, and several initiatives that I have participated in across the world and exposed me to what is going on in the world.  I feel rewarded, that I worked myself for the past two decades, to get to the peak of my career of become a university librarian, work with the Universities’ authority, I also forgot to mention was that I’m also the chair of the consortium of academic research libraries in Ghana and I provide leadership for over 50 libraries, in providing access to resources. And in all this I feel motivated, I feel rewarded, for what I’ve done and I’m happy for my achievements till now.

Joy Owango

You found yourself right in the middle of librarianship and then getting into leadership in supporting not only the academic community, but also librarians and academic institutions that are that have librarians, not only in Ghana but also in the continent. And this is how you ended up becoming the Chair of the Academic and special libraries at the African Library and Information associations and institutions (AFLIA). What has what have you learned so far, by being in this position? And how has it shaped your sense of your priorities in terms of the activities that you host as the Chair of the Academic special libraries at AFLIA, particularly when it comes to Open Science?

Dr. Cobblah

if I remember, there is one presentation at the conference I just attended, and one person was a librarian, saying that librarians are able to cooperate more than any other profession. I remember at the moment, I wasn’t sure that what he was saying was true. But when I thought through the journey of my career and the many associations that we have in how we collaborate, I attempted to agree with him. I think one important achievement that I can talk about is the collaboration that we’ve been able to establish amongst ourselves, on the continent, and even outside the continent. So one great achievement is that we’ve been able to collaborate, this network of Africa is wider than any other network, as many academic libraries in Africa that are interested, and we are even reaching out to those who don’t know about it. And if we’re able to achieve even 80% of academic libraries in Africa, coming together, to collaborate on this AFLIA platform and share ideas and resources, I’m sure the Africa continent will be a different place, because we are dealing with knowledge. And we are managing knowledge. And if we collaborate and know how to disseminate, how to strategize and share knowledge on our continent, I’m sure Africa will be a better place. So there are benefits to these networks that we are leading.

Joy Owango

And what is AFLIA doing right now in promoting open science among its members in the continent, because this is a continental organization?

Dr. Cobblah

To start with members of AFLIA subscribe to the concept of open science we believe fully in it and think is the way to go. And we’ve been doing a lot of promotion, awareness creation. As libraries, there’s a major role we can play in promoting open science is awareness creation, and capacity building of researchers on information management, and I think AFLIA is doing that. Being an advocate for open science, I am beginning to think that we need to do more honestly. Because looks like we are not doing more in Africa. I’ve done a few things and I think I have to spend more time promoting open science, and I think I will take it up to my section, which will do more, but we’ve been doing a lot of increasing capacity building in what is within our capacity, we’ve been doing that.

Joy Owango

When it comes to open science and open access, it has become increasingly significant for any flourishing academic environment to adopt this practice. How do African academic libraries perceive and engage with these concepts? And how do you see the role of libraries in Africa evolving to support the future of learning in this context?

Dr. Cobblah

Yes, as I said in the conference, some of these issues are just cultural issues. People find it very difficult to accept this open science idea because you know, what happens in Africa, everybody wants to be the first to come up with something and the habit of sharing is a bit of a problem for us. Even within our universities, you know, what happens, nobody wants people to know what they are doing. I think that we need to highlight the benefits of open science to even the early researchers to see the benefit, because it is going to bring a lot of efficiencies and cut down duplications. If there’s a bank of data somewhere in Africa, you can just go and assess free of charge in your research. You will cut down the costs of going to the field to collect data, if you have the opportunity to collaborate with a researcher anywhere in the world, it gives a better understanding of your situation. There was a presentation on racism and inequality at the conference among the universities in the UK. It was a brilliant, very good presentation and the question I asked was can we use a comparative study of how we also look at it Africa? because we have our own type of racism, ethnic differences and all that.

(overlapping audio)

So I think there is no understanding yet and most of our universities don’t have open science policies, they don’t even have even in my university, I’m now working on one. I remember when I was trying to put everything we have on the web, the journal was fighting me asking, what about the selling of the journals, what is going to happen? I said we’re not selling again, everything is free now, we have been beneficiaries of open systems accessing things free of charge. So you see that we have a lot of work to do in terms of convincing the people, the researchers, the scholars, the scientists to even understand and accept the concept because it’s about taking our time to engage them and targeting the kind of awareness creation strategy that we need to have, targeting them in groups, and serve the concept to them even more than we are doing now.

Joy Owango

Do you think that other than a cultural change, that it is a behavioral change?

Dr. Cobblah

Of course it is and one thing we need to highlight and is the main thing I wanted to bring across is that we need to do this for the next generation.

Joy Owango

That is true, that is very true.

Dr. Cobblah

If we don’t care, and are selfish, in the next 50 years, most of them will not be here again. What literacy are we leaving for the next generation? What are we leaving for them? That is the issue. So we need to get involved in research, that has sustainability impact, research that can transcend or live beyond our generation.  All these that we are doing is preparing us to leave something down for the lead generation.

Joy Owango

You’re right, Mark, because we’re in a stage where we can actually change the narrative on higher education in Africa, we’re in a stage where we can actually change the narrative on the visibility of African research output. And you know, open science is what is going to help us do that. So we cannot be fighting. We cannot be having internal fights, when we know there is this opportunity that has just arisen to help in increasing the visibility of African research. And also, his is something that will help the next generation as you say, you know, we are actually creating that foundation for the next generation, we want more African researchers investing in Africa to do their research, we want more collaborations happening in Africa. And the only way that can happen is by showcasing our work or publishing in open platforms, that can help increase the visibility of output, showcasing our innovations, using open science infrastructure that could help mitigate the high costs that come with scholarly communication infrastructure, you know, these are small aspects. I call them small, because if you add them up, it’s just one big support ecosystem that will help in increasing the visibility of African research, creating a good foundation, as you say, for the future generation.

Dr. Cobblah

I agree with you totally on this. Yes.

Joy Owango

I’m really passionate about it, so I get where you also come from on that part.

So now, in your experience, what is your attitude and perception of African researchers towards librarians in Africa? How can librarians effectively engage with researchers to promote open science The context for this is also the evolution of the librarian. The librarian today is no longer seen as the one who only buys books, you’re now seen as a digital librarian, you literally evolved. So, what is your perception in that whole ecosystem right now? You’re seen as knowledge managers within institutions. So, take me through what, how we see you as librarians and how we now work with you effectively to make sure that the high education ecosystem has a seamless workflow.

Dr. Cobblah

In my personal opinion I do think the institution is improving. In the past, where the faculty, or the researchers seemed to see librarians as people that must be in the library, must buy books every day.  I think, with digitization and all the emerging trends that are happening, that trend is changing. You have no idea how for the past week I’ve been out of the office, the number of calls I’ve had, the number of missed calls and messages I’m getting from my university. For example, the appointment promotion board want me to check something for them on some publications.

And in my university, I’m leading the digitization of the university beyond even the research, and research papers, we also digitized the university administrative documents as well, and my office is also managing the scholarly communication issues. The scholarly communication office is the library and that’s where we are also trying to digitize journals and all those. So increasingly, our role is expanding as librarians. We are moving beyond just collection development and more into service orientation, which is more than just buying books, the role is changing as as we work closely with the faculty, the situation is improving, though I think there is room for improvement. We need to understand our role and know the role of the faculty. I mean, now that some of the academy librarians are also teaching, yes, they are teaching, but they still have to understand that they teach very minimum, hours for example in my university, most of them are teaching. But I think on a larger scale, the new emerging librarian, who is even clearer to the faculty is there to support their work. We’re not competing with them. We’re just there to support their work. I was happy that while I was presenting one of the participants who knows, one of the big professors in my university took a picture and sent to the professor which was sent back to me thanking me for wearing our university’s jersey and said he was proud that I was presenting the university. I’m happy about the collaboration but I think we could do better.

Joy Owango

What sustainable strategies would you propose to university librarians to leverage changes taking place in scholarly communication? Bearing in mind when I talk about changes in scholarly communication, there’s quite a lot that has happened with- the rise of preprints, we are much more aware of use of repositories, there is increased awareness on how to leverage your digital object identifiers for harvesting metadata. So what sustainable strategies would you propose for the university libraries to leverage on these changes that are taking place currently in scholarly communication, especially, these changes that aid in increasing the visibility of the output of the institutions.

Dr. Cobblah

That is a very good question and I hope that many university librarians listening to this will agree with me. The way the world is going, and the way the scholarly communication industry is growing, we cannot continue to do things the same old ways. We can’t, if we are to survive, if we are to able to deliver services and meet the demands of the new generation, then we need to change our way of doing things. I think libraries, first of all, must invest heavily in ICT infrastructure. You can’t digitize or decide on automation without adequate investment in ICT infrastructure.

Joy Owango

I agree

Dr. Cobblah

We have to invest because the new scholarly communications is digital and we need to also look at our training, our capacity building as librarians and that also places obligations on the library schools, they need to change their curriculum. I don’t know about other places but the last time I checked on from my department in the University of Ghana, they haven’t changed the curriculum. I think it’s about time we, those practicing, engage them and let them know that there’s a need to review the curriculum and teach the students, the upcoming librarians, they often come to the job and know nothing about what is happening in the practice.

Then the issue of our collaboration is another strategy, we need to adopt. Collaboration has a lot of offer us in terms of efficiency, in terms of reduction of costs of operation, in terms of promoting and increasing the capacity of our lectures to cope with the Open Science and contribute to it. So, we need to look at collaboration. That’s why I’m happy that the leadership on Africa platforms, and also Ghana, we need to make sure we have a lot to do in promoting collaboration, ensuring that we bring on board those who are still lagging behind, there are still some libraries who are struggling within the basic operations. I think we need to bring everybody on board, because we need everybody. Apart from just creating awareness to the researchers and scholars, and I use this word interchangeably, there’s the need to also build the capacity for a researcher or scientists to be able to participate in open science, they also need some skills, like information management skills. You can’t work in open science without knowing how to manage information. But there’s so much information there, so much people to deal with that you will need to have the skills to navigate in that world.

Joy Owango

What you’re saying is so true, because we noticed as TCC Africa, that as we were setting up a project called the Africa PID Alliance- where we’ll be providing African DOIs for African research output, we are producing DOI’s locally in Africa- and when I’m listening to you talk, it just espouses what we noted, we do not have the capacity, we do not have the human resource capacity, it is so limited. It is so limited to the point that we either have more mentors from the global north to support us, but we have to make deliberate actions to increase the human resource capacity of librarians or anyone who is working in scholarly communication infrastructure. We don’t have many people in this field. So we are adopting open science, but we don’t have many people who can actually help in implementing these infrastructural systems. And this is something that could actually be falling under the library because it’s actually embedded within the information management systems that librarians would be learning, or are learning or are meant to be learning. So you’re right, there is a need to really increase that capacity. It’s just not an infrastructural aspect of saying, yes, we are adopting open science, yes, we need librarians to be familiar with this. But then we also need to look inward and build the HR, the human resource capacity so that you have manpower that can manage these new new resources that we are adopting. And also, in terms of supporting the universities.

Dr. Cobblah

Yeah, there is a lot to be done. One of the things that I picked up from the conference was these open science publishing models. We know the issue of publishing in Africa- sometimes, my university will ask me to recommend a publishing company in Ghana for instance, and I will look but even the university press is not working, we had a credible publishing press where all public universities came together but it’s now collapsing. One person asked about the printing press but I told them that a printing press is not a publishing house.

Joy Owango

That is something people tend to confuse. A printing press has a completely different dynamic from a publishing house.

Dr. Cobblah

Most people do not know the difference. So someone will ask me to get them a publisher in Ghana, there are some names I will call but I do not know about their capacity to publish. So people send academic books to publish outside. My university once made a mistake and send money to a predatory publishing house to get a book published. This is why I ask them to come to the libraries for advise on where to publish. So we have a lot to do in terms of even funding models. What people don’t know is that there are still some costs in open science publishing. All we are saying is that even when you pay for it, don’t think of the recovery of money and share. I was telling my university that the library is ready to subscribe and coordinate to open science but I need a budget for it.

Joy Owango

Mark, you are so pragmatic in this process because you see, it’s true. Someone somewhere is paying for it. Let’s not idealize it, let’s be pragmatic about it so that the conversation can be about equity, so that even if the person paying for it is contributing to the process, it is something that is affordable and over the top.

Dr. Cobblah

I agree. I got to know that some developed countries are paying over 100,000$ for the platform that TCC Africa promotes, Dimensions, while it is offered to African universities for free of charge, yet we are not even utilizing it

Joy Owango

Yes and that is why we are really pushing for it, because there are a lot of resources and one might not know what works. That’s why we are pushing for some of these resources as a centre because we know that there are some are so good, they have more content on African research and output, so that we can use this. I do get where you are coming from.

Dr. Cobblah

We have a lot given to us free of charge and we don’t even know, some people are paying upto 100,000$ when we are struggling to find people to use it. There is a lot of data in it.

Joy Owango

Yes, it has the largest amount of African output and data out of all the other platforms. But as you said, it is behavioural and we need to look inwards and decide what we want to achieve from the new trends. We should not politicise the process because as you said, the foundation we create will support the future academics who will use these resources to increase the output coming out of the continent, leveraging on the output for collaborations and building knowledge economies.

As we are winding up, could you tell us, what is AFLIA’s vision for the future of Open Science in Africa and how you see it developing over the next few years?

Dr. Cobblah

We certainly, one hundred percent support the concept, we have subscribed the idea and believe in it. Our vision is to promote it to academic libraries and other research institutions in Africa, promote Open Science and ensure that in the nearest possible future, Open Science becomes the practice in our universities and research institutions. What we are going to do in our roles as librarians is promote it as never before and collaborate with like-minded organizations such as TCC Africa, which is doing so well on this, and many others in developing countries. We also want to build capacities for both librarians and researchers, bring policymakers on board, university authorities, work with the Association of African Universities, and even reach out to students themselves, since they are the agents of change and promote open science and collaborate to build the infrastructure. There is a future so long as people like us are taking it up. I told them at the conference to call me to advocate for Open Science, I will live it and work for it. Could you believe that at the beginning, I didn’t believe in it and thought it was something that would take over my job.

Joy Owango

Oh, Goodness! That’s what you thought Open Science was about?

Dr. Cobblah

My Nigerian friend at the conference presented on the preservation of indigenous knowledge and was advocating for there not to be too much openness but I took them on and said there should be more openness. Knowledge is universal, we cannot leave anyone behind in knowledge generation and sharing. If we are all at par in the world, I’m sure the world will be a better place anyway. Giving a hypothetical example with Kenya and Ghana, if either of the countries chose not to disclose information on developments on something novel like a disease, one traveling from either country might end up getting sick without knowing and going back to their country infected. With information sharing we would easily prevent these issues. We all need to be at par in knowledge and not leave any country behind. So AFLIA is committed, they are going to renew my mandate as the Chair for the next two years and I’m going to work harder to ensure that we promote Open Science. Let me pay tribute to the late Professor Christiana Kisiedu, an academic librarian who was also my supervisor and taught at the University of Ghana for many years, you cannot mention the library fraternity in Ghana without mentioning her.

Both

May she rest in peace

Joy Owango

Thank you so much, I really enjoyed this podcast. I hope to get in touch soon in Ghana. Enjoy the rest of your stay in the UK and bye for now.

Listen to the full episode and explore more episodes from the #Mazungumzo podcast on the following platforms:

Spotify (Available Globally):  https://open.spotify.com/episode/2AUGz5n6QJRHjnERSisLA9?si=71cf83552b184c9b

Apple Podcasts (Globally): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-9-sustaining-scholarly-communications-for-future/id1652483621?i=1000613069724

Anchor (Available Globally): https://anchor.fm/mazungumzo—african-scholarly-conversations

Afripods (Available in Africa): https://afripods.africa/episode/ep-9-sustaining-scholarly-commun/77519ec6-4eb7-4c6a-8056-d5e0ed91e5a1

Pandora (Available in Europe & United States): https://lnkd.in/dpWaXHa5

Stitcher (Available Globally): https://listen.stitcher.com/yvap/?af_dp=stitcher://episode/303246708&af_web_dp=https://www.stitcher.com/episode/303246708&deep_link_value=stitcher://episode/303246708

TCC Africa-Training Centre in Communication News Room (Available Globally): https://lnkd.in/d2y7ZBMD

#Sciencecommunication #researchvisibility