Guest Post: A Simple Touch of Motivation

Guest Post: A Simple Touch of Motivation

[This post is from Dr. David Oscar Yawson, who received an AuthorAID workshop grant earlier this year. Dr. Yawson is a senior lecturer at the School of Agriculture, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Thank you! —Barbara]

From 23 to 25 July 2014, I facilitated an AuthorAID-sponsored workshop on communicating research to technical and non-technical audiences. The workshop took place at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.

Thirty early-career academics from public and private universities and research institutes in Ghana participated in the workshop. Apart from teaching skills in research communication, the workshop also sought to motivate participants to value and communicate their research.

I was glad to learn about the enthusiasm and the frustrations of the participants. Their frustrations arise from technical, administrative, and financial constraints to conducting and communicating research. There were concerns about training, support and mentorship, and financial assistance to publish or attend scientific meetings. A few participants felt they were on the verge of giving up scholarly publishing because of consistent rejections of their articles by journals.

Apart from the written positive feedback, what I took away from this workshop is that there is a huge need and appetite for training, support, and mentorship for early-career academics to communicate their research. The participants were happy to know about the idea of Y-Club, a peer support network of early-career academics, at the University of Cape Coast.

A few weeks after the workshop, a number of the participants have sent their manuscripts and proposals to me for review before they submit. This tells me that the participants have become motivated and confident in communicating research by the training, encouragement, and a simple gesture of local support and mentorship.