Relaunch of the AuthorAID chat platforms: A revolutionary collaborative mentorship space

As an AuthorAID Steward, my work entails mobilising, recruiting and facilitating the online community of AuthorAID scholars. I remind members of the overarching vision to enhance respectful interactions amongst members through their various voluntary roles and tasks. I lead a team of co-facilitators of the AuthorAID Social Sciences Journal Club, aiming to design and implement a host of meaningful, vibrant journal club programmes that meet the needs of members as much as possible and that intensify the connections and collaborations amongst scholars.

AuthorAID chat platform members comprise an amorphous team arising from various disciplines across the Global South. They include a diversity of scholarly fields of study, levels, countries and institutions, among many other facets. The INASP motto, “Research and knowledge at the heart of development”, is well encapsulated in the semi-formal AuthorAID chat platforms. There are currently three AuthorAID Journal Clubs: Environmental Biology, Chemistry and Toxicology; Social Sciences; and Biomedicine/Healthcare.

Combining an online learning platform with a knowledge exchange platform experience for participants works very well.

Combining an online learning platform with a knowledge exchange platform experience for participants works very well, judging from members’ feedback of their online experiences. Historically, the online groups were formed spontaneously by members who were working through tutorials at the same time. Members launched informal WhatsApp groups to discuss the content of AuthorAID's Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and to celebrate together when someone completed their course and earned a certificate. This seemed to improve completion rates and enable people to discuss ideas that come up – and a lot of ideas come up when discussing critical thinking! Over time, forming WhatsApp groups centred around common interests was suggested as something communities might want to try with students and researchers who may enlist in pursuit of a common goal, journeying together.

On Friday, 11 November 2022, the AuthorAID Social Sciences Journal Club hosted its online relaunch event. Members were treated to an engaging conversation on what's possible going forward, so as to actualise the full potential of the team. Embarking on actionable steps to enlist, and register to lead various activities, members also co-created timelines to proactively engage over an agreed period of time. 

The chat platform space is curated to also increase members’ experience in multidisciplinary collaborations.

Aside from deepening expertise in members’ specialties, the chat platform space is curated to also increase members’ experience in multidisciplinary collaborations involving research and publishing. From time to time, various assignments are designed and implemented by members whose role allocation, activity outcome and output levels are measured over a time period of one year.

The leadership of online communities has curated messages for incoming members to feel welcome from the outset. As regards members’ experience in research, the clubs attract those who are new to research (less than 1 year), those with some experience (1 to 5 years), experienced researchers (6 to 10 years) and those who are very experienced (more than 10 years).

In relation to querying members as to why they would like to be an active member of the online journal club, the recruitment process manages to elicit an appropriate level of commitment to facilitate and engage in active participation. Members list reasons such as a desire to learn about new results in their field of research or interest; to improve their ability to read and critically appraise research papers; for peer learning on how to conduct and write quality research papers; to improve debating and leadership skills; and to contribute to a community of learning.

To this end, there is a re-application survey whose goal is to establish a small group of active members after a period of one year, so that members can enlist to re-commit to active participation. All general members (not including those who are already coordinators or leaders) are asked to complete a short survey to ‘re-apply’ for the next year, and they reflect on how they would like to contribute in the coming year, or they could suggest ideas they would have to fulfill the roles of Reviewer, Co-facilitator, Mentor, Technical Expert or Other. Essentially, members inform how they would like to contribute further to the online journal club in the forthcoming year, through such tasks as reviewing papers, presenting a paper, suggesting papers for review, contributing technical expertise, facilitating discussions or any other means.  

Dr. Joyce Wangari Ngugi, PsyD, is a Consultant Psychologist and Research Mentor, AuthorAID Research Steward, Mentor and Social Sciences Journal Club Co-Facilitator. She is based in Kenya: see www.wangari.africa.