The AuthorAID Blog: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well.

Ten years ago, in April 2007, INASP held its first AuthorAID planning meeting. (See photo.) Later that year, the AuthorAID project began, and the first AuthorAID blog post appeared. Since 2008, the blog posts have appeared at least once per week.

At first, I provided all of the blog posts. Most were posts that I wrote. Some were guest posts that I edited. Over the years, INASP staff members have provided more and more posts that they wrote or edited.

Other aspects of AuthorAID also have evolved. In the early years, INASP staff or outside team members (like me) did almost all the AuthorAID work. From the start, though, our goal was to involve a broad community. Of course, we’ve long engaged AuthorAID mentors. Likewise, we’ve given grants to developing-country researchers to conduct communication workshops. We’ve also enlisted multiple facilitators for large online courses, and we’ve worked to embed AuthorAID instruction internationally.

Similarly, INASP will now be including many more voices in the AuthorAID blog. Thus, starting with the current post, I’ll supply blog posts monthly, rather than weekly. Meanwhile, INASP will obtain posts from various people such as AuthorAID mentors, and it will provide these posts in the blog.

I look forward to reading the posts by others. I also look forward to helping more with other aspects of AuthorAID (such as the online course in research writing for environmental health researchers) now that I'll spend less time writing blog posts.

Please join me in welcoming the next phase of the AuthorAID blog.

Until next month—

Barbara