What role can Open Science play in enabling South-North dialogues?

Transparency and open access in research are crucial to make the economy, medical services and thus society more effective and efficient. This applies to individual municipalities and regions within countries, nationwide, and ultimately also to the global society. The elephant in the room is evidently the ongoing climate change, as well as related global challenges and issues such as migration, environmental degradation, single nation economics, and conflict resolution. These topics are only partially separable; which is why transparent data collection and the utilisation of research results in our digital age are not only possible, but also urgently needed. Global threats and challenges resulting from climate change and political crises call for a new agenda to find solutions that work for not just a few but the global community.

To provide more visibility and more opportunities to world-wide scientific discussions to African scientists we founded a region-specific preprint repository. Having a repository specific to the African research community can trigger interdisciplinary research within the continent as well as globally with research institutions overseas. The repository is a platform for African scientists to publish their research output immediately and free of cost. This makes it possible for them to receive feedback on their work, improve the manuscript for submission to a peer reviewed journal and identify potential collaboration partners for future projects.

The repository can be used for project management in a local language for the manuscript to be submitted in a field specialized repository in English. We encourage submissions in languages that are commonly used by the scientific community in the respective country, such as English, French, Swahili, Zulu, Afrikaans, Igbo, Akan, or other native African languages.

Researchers in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia now have the opportunity to find up to date research results through online publishing systems, databases and scientific service providers, make their own research output more visible and build transcontinental collaborations more effectively.

Therefore, practiced Open Science allows for more diversity in research output and the convergence of the global scientific community.