SN 3 EP 6: Advancing Reproducible Research Through Community-Led Initiatives with Emmanuel Boakye (AREN)

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode, Emmanuel Boakye, co-founder of the African Reproducibility Network (AREN), discusses the role of open science in Africa and the importance of research reproducibility. He shares how AREN is bridging gaps in research culture through grassroots advocacy, training programs, and policy engagement, while addressing challenges like institutional buy-in and funding. Learn how African researchers can take the lead in shaping the future of open science.

Here Are the Key Things to Look Out For:

Building a Grassroots Open Science Movement: Emmanuel Boakye shares how the African Reproducibility Network (AREN) is creating a continent-wide community to drive open science adoption.

Bridging Gaps in Research Culture: Learn how AREN is addressing the disconnect between global open science advancements and the realities faced by African researchers.

Challenges in Institutional Buy-In: Discover the hurdles of securing institutional support, funding, and policy engagement for open science initiatives across Africa.

Empowering Early-Career Researchers: This episode highlights how AREN is equipping early-career researchers with the knowledge and tools to champion open science in their institutions.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Welcome to Mazungumzo, African scholarly conversations, a podcast that highlights the perspectives of various stakeholders in academia, and research fields across Africa through open dialogue or mazungumzo on scholarly communication in Africa.

Joy Owango

Welcome to mazungumzo, African scholarly conversations, where we are joined by an expansive list of African policy makers, science communication specialists, innovators and tertiary institution leads who contribute to this realm of scholarly and science communication. I’m your host, Joy Owango, the Executive Director of the Training Centre in Communication, TCC – Africa. Capacity building trust based at the University of Nairobi, chiromo campus in Nairobi, Kenya.

In today’s episode, we’ll be exploring the growth of community-led Open Science initiatives in Africa, specifically focusing on efforts to improve the reproducibility and rigor of scientific research through local and collaborative networks.

Joining us to discuss this in depth is Emmanuel is a passionate African Open Science champion who has a keen interest in improving research culture across Africa. He is the founder of the African Reproducibility Network (AREN), a community-led initiative bridging the gaps in open science advocacy and adoption in Africa through training and local communities of practice. His journey in Open Science has led to him working with organizations such as the Association of African Universities (AAU), e-Life publishers, the Center for Open Science, and several pro-OS (Open Science) organizations across the globe. He is currently one of two Co-Directors and the Community Engagement Lead at AREN.

Welcome Emmanuel!

Emmanuel Boakye

Thank you so much joy for the wonderful introduction. I’m happy to be here, and I look forward to joining our conversation today.

Joy Owango

Absolutely. To start us off, could you share a bit about your journey in open science and what inspired you to found the African Reproducibility Network (AREN)?

Emmanuel Boakye

I think my journey started quite recently. I got to know about open science in 2021, I think the COVID period and the break that brought got me interested in a lot of online courses. So at the time, I was getting to find out here in undergrad, and I did an online course by Author Aid research writing in the sciences. It wasn’t necessarily focused on insights, but it mentioned it briefly, right? So I think what I got to know about it and what it was trying to do, I got interested because I felt this could actually influence positive change within the African research ecosystem. So from that time, I spend a lot a lot of time exploring the Open Science, I mean world, globally and locally. And that involved attending a lot of a lot of webinars and a lot of online events and conferences, getting to know people, getting to know what was going on. So that was a lot of time, and I also identifying ways to get involved, like communities, that I can maybe become an ambassador. And that is what led me to become ambassador, and ElIfe ambassador. So that was literally what I was doing at the time. And that period helped me realize that there was a huge gap existing between what was really going on in the world of open science and what grassroots future says in Africa. Knew about what is going on in the world of open science. A lot of things were going locally and internationally, but it looks like the researchers at the institutions who are eventually affected by these developments don’t even know what’s going on. So what could happen is that at the end of the day, things will come up, they are compelled to abide by them, but at the beginning, they had no idea this was going on. And I saw the need to bridge this gap by establishing the continent-wide community. And at once I also realized was that during attendance of these webinars and events and etcetera, they were familiar faces, a lot of familiar faces. You’d attend maybe four or five webinars, and you see that it’s the same people that are being invited to come and speak and share their knowledge. And that meant that we had few experts contributing to advocacy within their communities. And that was also a huge gap. We needed more people, because Africa is a very large continent with a lot of countries, a lot of institutions in country. So we needed more people at the local level, at the grassroots level, who are interested, genuinely interested in promoting open science across their community. So that is one of the reasons of two the major reasons, one of the major reasons why I founded AREN and establish it in the way we did. Yeah.

Joy Owango

So why reproducibility? What prompted you to coming up with the with the context of the network being focusing on reproducibility?

Emmanuel Boakye

So I think the name of AREN begs to deceive a bit because our activities have not necessarily focused only on reproducibility, but AREN was established as a reproducibility network because of the AREN model. The AREN model looked like a very good model to engage the researches, which was one of the huge gaps I felt was assisting the model describes a very robust but flexible structure on how you can establish local communities of practice at institutions, both formally and informally, and with descriptions of what each role is doing and how they coordinate and collaborate. And then the model also establishes various national networks across the group to ensure there is coordination across these countries. So choosing the model was a no brainer, because of how the system was established. So that was the reason behind why AREN was established as a reproducibility network, because of the grassroots approach that the iron community was using, and because the model was also very, very adaptable. In fact, AREN is a continent-wide community, right? A continent-wide network, but the iron model was established to build national networks, so trying to adapt that meant we needed to approach it differently. That’s one of the reasons why we established a continent-wide community, separate from, or different from, having these local networks at the institutions and other research organizations. So that was, that was what inspired us. But we did realize that if we decided to focus on only reproducibility, we’ll be missing a lot. We’ll be we will not be really bridging the gap that we wanted to so we’ve been focusing on a lot of other areas. Yeah, in fact, we are covering everything related to open science. So far, mostly in our training, we cover a lot of principles and concepts related to open science. Of course, reproducibility is a core concept that we are trying to focus on, but we try to be as broad as possible so that everyone that is involved in our community will benefit from and get to know what is really going on in the world of open science, and then how they can contribute here.

Joy Owango

so now take us through the regions AREN has, has, has been involved in, and what aspect of your model did you find most relevant to the African context, and how have you adapted it for AREN?

Emmanuel Boakye

Yeah, so AREN, when you look at our community, sign up about five four regions of Africa represented. We don’t have people from Central Africa. Currently, we are hoping that we’ll be able to reach there. So that is how we’ve been engaging. But so far, what we trying to do is to approach it from our community members. So we’re trying to identify community members that we know can become community champions and engage them. And we just started actual engagement after our launch in November last year, so we still have a long way to go, but we are we intend to use our community members, recognizing each of them as an important engagement to a community, and then reach them, reach their communities and region. So that is one of the things that we are doing. And as I said previously, the model seems so good for establishing grassroots networks, and we adapted it by creating a continent-wide community along with the local networks. And the reason was simple. We were trying to establish a continent-wide community, right? But the iron model is for national, national level communities, and that means that we were trying to establish local networks across different countries the same time, and it is very likely that we’ll not be able to have local nurses across all the countries within the first few years of operation, true. So we needed to have a way of getting people from other countries involved in our community. That means that even if there is no local network in my country or at my institution, there is still an opportunity for me to be engaged in the community and contribute. And that is why we established the continent-wide community, which is unique in the in the iron and in the global iron community, because mostly it is the national network, then the local networks and stuff like that. But we try to approach it this way, so that would have more engagement, and then through the community, we can help establish that. So that’s how we were able to adopt the model, and we are still trying to adapt it, and it’s very flexible. We are still trying to adapt it as the least change as our community grows. But so far, it has been working sooner.

Joy Owango

Okay, so and how has the community responded to AREN so far, and what kind of engagement Have you seen? Have you seen from researchers across Africa?

Emmanuel Boakye

Yep. So when AREN first opened up, what is in August 2022 I think by the time we’re launching, we had about 80 members that are signed up. But I think currently we have about 300 members representing 29 countries and from the four regions that I said earlier, which is a very good written within the past few years that we’ve been operating. Of course, we want to get more people, but like I said, our approach is to see each member as a unique gateway, a unique gateway to a new community. So this, this approach makes it very effective considering the numbers that we have, that means we can work with the small numbers and enrich a larger audience, and so far, good. We’ve had a number of community sessions, and the attendance was quiet, quite good. I think the last conversation that we had, we had about 50 people attending from different people. And when you see new faces, that that is what exiles are, when we don’t see the familiar faces, but when we see new faces, new people from the African research community, interested in open science, interested in learning about Open Science, interested in advocacy, that gets us excited. And so that has been that positive response from the community. And when we launched our Eleanor training program, our local electricity training program, in January this year, we had over 100 applications from 20 countries, which was also wonderful, a wonderful return for us. Eventually we after the review, we started with 75 we went on to do the training program, so the response has been good. And even after we closed applications, we were still receiving emails from the community about, I mean, people interested in being part of the training program and wanting to join, that means that what we are trying to do has been, so far working. Not everything has worked so well, but so far, a lot of things have worked so well. And it’s down to how wonderful our community has been, especially our local network leads. I mean, our trainees were just were just blended. I think eventually, when you get to know about them, you realize that they were so committed. They were so keenly interested sharing, to contribute to what we are trying to do. And the idea was that we didn’t want to impose open science principles and concepts on them. We wanted them to know what is going to say, this is not going to work, or this is going to work. So that was quite successful, because we had them critiquing the concepts and the principles of visa and saying, no, we think this is not going to work, because this is our community of operates. And we were so happy about that. That is the response has been wonderful. Has been so well, and we are looking forward to engaging more through our early financial case.

Joy Owango

I right to say that the committee you’re targeting are early career researchers within universities or research institutions?

Emmanuel Boakye

Yeah, we could say that, but our committee is open to anyone, even including under guards. We believe that if they learn about Open Science early, it would help them to adopt their principles early. But the restriction for issuers or people in positions such as faculty comes in when we talk about our local network leads for that, we place a restriction on people who are either faculty and local institutions or research organizations, or people who are in similar rooms across institutions. So that was the only part of our community engagement that there was a restriction. But aside that whatever we’ve done, our working groups, and every other activity that we do, it’s open to anyone, regardless of their background or expertise, the earlier people, the more people will get involved, the better it will be for the African community.

Joy Owango

Fantastic. So when you’re building a community, which is when you’re building a community across such a diverse continent, you must have some challenges that you have faced. What hurdles has AREN faced in engaging researchers from different regions, different disciplines, because you see and how you managed to overcome them.

Emmanuel Boakye

Yeah, I think the first head though that we finished was trying to get a team formed. AREN is a community led initiative. That means you want to see the community actively involved with what we are trying to do, right? It’s not just a small people that we wanted to do, and that was a major challenge. At the beginning, we wanted to have a team of a very wide group, a very wide and large group of people who are coming from different parts of Africa. We had initial response, very good. About 20 people said they wanted to be part of this team. But eventually we had just about four people sticking around, which was a very small number but it was quite understandable, because we were beginning and what we were trying to do maybe was not clear to people. And also, people have a lot on their plate, right? Being a part of the team is a very demanding role. We were trying to do a lot within a short period, so a lot of people could not, kind of add that to their schedule, so they kind of dropped off. It was sad, but that happened. So that was a very major hurdle. But we adapted, right? We adapted, and that also influenced how we operated going forward. So that was one of the first hurdles that we had. Um, aside that to trying to reach as many people across the continent as possible, was a huddle, but I think when we launched the call networking training program, it also helped people know about what Ari was trying to do, and then got them to sign up to our community so locally, it’s been so good. We are we are trying to find a way to also establish strong partnerships with local organizations like research in the. Education networks and other sectoral organizations. But that is in the pipeline because these organizations are important to ensuring that you are known and what you are doing is recognized and may be seen by the relationships between the various communities across the continent. That’s also one of the head doors that we are trying to cross. And as aside that too. Of course, every other open science community has that financial problem. I enjoy, yeah, things we are trying to do require money. And we were lucky enough to have some funding in the beginning. Even before we launched, we were able to get the open research funders with funding about $4,900 to start. And we also had some funding from Elife, that was for it, and that was that has almost inspired so we use that to do our training program, and now we have a very large network that we want to engage their communities locally. Of course, most of these people are volunteering. To do their roles by

volunteering, some of the things that they do is one of the things that we want them to do when we apply them to be supported. So would be financial support is there? But that is a general problem that everyone is facing. These are the challenges. And also sometimes, when you start a new community, it’s not easy to get institutional buy in, right? It takes, it takes a bit of time Yeah, to get the trust and then to get people who are out there in your advocates preaching the gospel of what you are trying to do, that’s also a challenge. I think our local network leads are currently doing so well. We ended the training program in October, but they’ve already started engagement with their community, which is wonderful. We’ve had these committed people that are really, really eager to engage their community. And we are excited about what you’re trying to do, but we are trying to work around it. And I think one other challenge was also resources. We want to try and create and adapt resources that are easy and easily understandable and would have an easier reception by the local communities here. This is a very broad, broad concept, right? There are a lot of things that are there, and it can get confusing sometimes, if you are new, trying to create these simplified resources that would kind of make the concepts not only easier to understand, but also kind of place all the misconception and also address the genuine concerns that the local research has had, but that also requires a lot of time and resources that you need to… these are some of the headers, but we are working around it. Hopefully we’ll be able to expand our team very soon and then get more people on board and involved in what we are trying to do. But so far, it has been good.

Joy Owango

That is really good news. But I think one of the ways to leverage on working with within the university or the academic community is also partnering with the existing academic community networks that are active, you know, like AIMS or OWSD, you know, they exist. They’ve been there for years.

So leveraging with them so that you can engage the academic community, because some of these programs have been there for over 20 years, and they, you know, it becomes easier when you as a new network is working with them to support the same academic community. So, but, yeah, I can see where you’re coming from. But this is really good work. This is good work you’re doing. And so what role do you see for policy makers in advancing open science across Africa, and how can they support initiatives like AREN in improving research practices?

Emmanuel Boakye.

Yeah, I think eventually, to make open science or requirements, there has to be policies like that, right? Like this needs to be done, and policy makers, I think the integral to ensure people adopt of insights. When there are no policies, then the option is left to the researcher to decide whether they want to adopt it or not. So you can do a lot of advocacies. There are a lot of infrastructure that will be built. A lot of frameworks and guidelines and principles will be developed. But since researchers have the option to decide whether I want to do this or not, then a lot of them may stick to the old ways. Because it’s easier to stick to the old ways than to say I’m conducting something. So the policies will ensure that people see the need and the importance of adopters of these principles. I think until we get there, it’s it will be a bit difficult, right? Even if we do the advocacy, people see that it’s good. I mean, community coaches, institutional cultures influence how people go about their research, and how they adopt certain principles, maybe institution policies that don’t factor in. I mean, for. Motion decisions regarding to open science, practical principles, then people may not see the need to do that. If people are not awarded or rewarded for contributing to open science, and people will not be encouraged either. But when this becomes part of policy, institutional policies, into how research is conducted, then people would be eager to adopt this. I think we are we are we are we are on the right track. You see a lot of things going on Africa showing that there is interest. There a lot of organizations, including the AAU a lot of other organizations, are interested in this. They’ve seen this, and they are working towards it. So I think Africa is on the right track, and we are trying to do what we can to support what is going on so far,

Joy Owango

Absolutely. And as we wind up, as you look to the future, what are the key aspirations for parent over the next five years, and what impact do you hope to see, and how do you envision the growth of the network across the continent?

Emmanuel Boakye

Yeah, it’s a very good question. What we really want to do is to reach all the countries in Africa, all the regions Africa. That’s something that is quite important to us, because we do recognize that the level of open science activity is a bit dispersed across some countries with high levels of open size activity, right? Some countries with a lot of experts coming from there, but you realize that there are some countries with no one coming from there little to no activity. And even if there is activity, they are not covered. So we want to reach as many of these marginalized communities as possible within the next five years. Identify people within these communities that are open science champions, already contributing or eager to contribute, help them to also do what they want to do within their communities. That is one of the things that we want to do and reach as many companies as possible. And in terms of impact, we want to have as many local networks as possible.

That is one of the things that you not just informally established local networks, but institutionally recognized local networks, why institutions contribute to what their local networks are trying to do and support. That’s one of the things that we are really hoping to achieve, because we believe that institutions that have a local network established already is better positioned to implement policies when they when they establish them, because you already have people from your institutions who are experts or who are already contributing to promoting open science. So it’s easier to work or it’s easier to get people to do the trainings and etc. But that’s also something that we are really interested in, and that is how we envision our growth over the next few years. I think Aaron has been evolving and will evolve, and maybe in the next year or two, we have the same conversation. Our aspirations and vision may have more things added to it, but for now, I think these are the things that we’re trying to focus on, find a way to get institutional buy and find a way to reach as many marginalized communities as possible.

Joy Owango

Thank you so much. We’ve had Emmanuel Boakye, and he is the co-founder of AREN, and he’s taken us through the objectives of AREN and the activities they’ve been trying to they’ve been hosting on Open Science advocacy, particularly targeting early career researchers. Thank you so much for joining us today in our podcast.

Emmanuel Boakye

Thank you so much Joy. It was wonderful having this conversation with you.

Outro:

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