This week in the African Studies Toolbox, we'd like to highlight the Scholarly Kitchen guest post Best Practices and Innovative Approaches to Peer Review in Africa by representatives of the community-driven organizations AfricArXiv, Eider Africa, TCC Africa, and PREreview:
"Over the past couple of years, there has been an increased level of criticism around [the 'typical' peer review] approach, particularly its inherent biases, the often insufficient level of quality feedback, and the barriers it creates, making it more difficult for certain groups of researchers (see here, here and here). Dominant perceptions about scholarly research capacity in Africa often begin from a narrative of deficiency, leading to approaches that favor western ways of knowledge production and top-down approaches to capacity support that displaces contextualized knowledge and co-creation processes, including peer review and publication."
For more on new initiatives in peer review, also check out this selection of past contributions of the African Studies Toolbox:
- What is Open Peer Review?
- Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
- What are the benefits of preprints?