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Partnering with TCC Africa

Author: Roheena Anand, Director, Global Publishing Development, PLOS

Two weeks ago we announced five new journals and their role in our plans to spread our roots deeper and absorb researchers and local practices more fully into our business. However, this is only one part of our work in this area. In the transition to an Open future we need to keep asking ourselves “Open for Whom?” Openness in itself, while valuable, does not tackle inequality in the scholarly communications ecosystem, or increase inclusion.  

Therefore, we need to be intentional in addressing power imbalances and the legacy of devaluing knowledge from particular groups or regions, e.g. from communities often marginalized in North American/Western European publications, including researchers from Low-to-Middle-Income countries. 

Over the course of this year we will be expanding our presence into different continents, embedding ourselves into local communities to work alongside them, listening and learning, so that we can understand and reflect their needs and values.  

Today, as our first major step, we’re sharing the wonderful news that we are formally partnering with the Training Centre in Communication, based in the University of Nairobi, Kenya, commonly known as TCC Africa. TCC Africa is a nonprofit trust that has been doing valuable work across the continent since 2006. They’re committed to improving African researchers’ visibility (and therefore impact) through training in scholarly communication. Like us, they are heavily invested in an Open future and work with stakeholders across the scholarly communication ecosystem to promote and increase uptake of open access and open science more broadly.

Working with TCC Africa will help us to ensure that the interests and values of African research communities are represented in PLOS publications, policies, and services and to ensure that Open Science practices work for local stakeholders. We believe that all Open Science and Open Research activities should be informed and co-created by local communities at a global scale, helping us all to rebuild the system better.

We’ve started to build our strategic plan to achieve our joint goals: it’s the first step on our path to a more inclusive Open Science future.

Please follow PLOS and TCC Africa on social media, and/or follow our blogs, to keep up to date on the progress of this partnership!

TCC Africa Blog | TCC Africa Twitter | TCC Africa LinkedIn | TCC Africa Facebook
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