A Proposed Approach to Facilitate the Accessibility of Scientific Articles to Trainees in Africa

Authors: Mohamed Cissé and Rafiou Agoro; On behalf of African Diaspora Scientists Federation This article authored by the members of African Diaspora Scientists Federation calls for African research institutions to join their financial means to create the conditions for a wide-range scientific contents accessibility. African trainees need scientific content accessibility Let’s imagine for a moment a situation where we are pursuing a PhD degree and we cannot have a scientific content required to validate and/or extend our scientific thoughts. If, at that moment, we are affiliated with a privileged institution where libraries have access to the content; then we could stop by the library’s information desk the next day and request the scientific content. Nice! Or even better, we can just send an email to library professionals and the article could be sent to our way as soon as possible. In contrast, if we are receiving our training in an underprivileged institution, it may be possible that we don’t know where to turn to for the scientific material accessibility. In that case, if we are lucky, we may only have the authorization to read the abstract. Which is not enough for sure for curious minds. Well, the second scenario is far to be an imaginary situation as this is what’s happening in Africa to most undergraduate and graduate students we interviewed from our network of African scientists. https://yoursay.plos.org/2021/09/a-win-win-model-to-facilitate-journal-access-to-trainees-in-africa-through-worldwide-institutional-partnerships/