Guest Post: Measuring the Impact of Our Research Communication Training
[This post is from AuthorAID community member Haseeb Md. Irfanullah. Haseeb works for Practical Action, a UK-based charity, in Bangladesh. He is available at hmirfanullah@yahoo.co.uk. Thanks very much, Haseeb! —Barbara]
Have you ever thought about the impact of a particular training you took part in sometime back? Does it really matter whether you participated in a particular event?
In late December 2011, I designed and facilitated a 2-day research communication training event for 26 young scientists of Bangladesh. It was jointly organized by the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences (BAS) and AuthorAID. At the end of the second day, each participant wrote a letter to herself or himself, promising how over the next 3 months she or he would capitalize on the knowledge and insights from that training. I protected their self-addressed, sealed letters as a trusted guardian and posted those back to them in April 2012—just to remind them about their promises!
But, did these young scientists manage to keep their promises? Could 2-day training make any significant change in their understanding of research communication? Could that really make them enthusiastic enough to publish their unpublished work more?
To answer these questions, I wrote to all of my training participants in the last week of 2012. I asked them whether they had submitted any manuscripts to journals over the last year. I also asked them whether they had any papers accepted or even published during that period. Of 26 participants, 10 responded to my call after a couple of e-mail reminders. (I was not surprised by this level of response; my previous experience has assured me that we researchers are not quite good at being researched!)
The result was just fantastic! In 2012, my respondents collectively published 16 papers in peer-reviewed journals (9 international and 7 local). They further received acceptance letters for 7 papers. And, another 7 papers were under review. So, 10 researchers generated a total of 30 manuscripts in one year!
I agree, submitting and publishing these papers depended on so many things: the researchers’ interest and enthusiasm, the research atmosphere in their institutions and countries, and the editors of concerned journals. But, can we confidently say all these also happened due to an inspiring BAS-AuthorAID training 1 year back?
I will share with you two statistics:
-
In 2012, my respondents on average published (or got accepted) 2.3 papers/ researcher. But, before the BAS-AuthorAID training, their average publication rate was 1.1 papers/researcher/year. In other words, last year, the yearly publication rate doubled!
-
In 2012, 56% of the published papers were international; it had been 37% up to December 2011.
I believe, whatever the other reasons are for this strong rise in quantity and quality of publications, the BAS and AuthorAID can definitely take credit for organizing the training in December 2011, thus inspiring young scientists to publish more and to publish better.
(And, speaking for myself, I am sure you would not mind if I claim some credit just being a part of that exciting venture!)