Visual
What Is African Research Discovery?
African research discovery is the process of finding, exploring, and connecting research produced in Africa, conducted by African researchers and institutions, or focused on African countries, communities, environments, cultures, economies, and issues. It involves more than locating individual research papers. It can also include discovering the researchers, journals, institutions, topics, disciplines, and ideas connected to that research.
Effective research discovery helps users move from a specific research question to the wider body of scholarship surrounding it.
How Does African Research Discovery Work?
African research discovery can take place through academic journals, research databases, institutional repositories, search engines, indexes, and other scholarly resources.
The process may involve several stages:
Defining a research need
A user begins with a research question, topic, discipline, geographic area, researcher, institution, or other area of interest.
Searching for relevant research
The user searches available scholarly resources using keywords, subjects, author names, journal titles, institutions, or other relevant information.
Identifying relevant records
Search results may include research publications, academic journals, researchers, institutions, or other scholarly records relevant to the research need.
Exploring related information
Research discovery can extend beyond the initial result. Users may explore related researchers, institutions, journals, topics, disciplines, or geographic areas.
Connecting research
Structured scholarly information can help users identify relationships between different pieces of research and understand the wider research landscape surrounding a subject.
What Can African Research Discovery Include?
African research discovery can involve several types of scholarly information.
Research Publications
Research papers, journal articles, books, conference publications, and other scholarly outputs can provide the primary material users are looking for.
Researchers
Discovering researchers can help users identify people working on particular questions, topics, disciplines, or geographic areas.
Academic Journals
Journals provide important channels for communicating research. Finding relevant journals can help users explore scholarship within specific disciplines and subjects.
Research Institutions
Universities, research centres, and other institutions can provide important context about where research is produced and supported.
Topics and Disciplines
Topics and disciplines allow users to organise research around particular subjects or academic fields.
Ideas and Research Connections
Research discovery can also involve identifying related ideas, questions, findings, and areas of inquiry that connect different scholarly works.
Why Is African Research Discovery Important?
The ability to produce research does not automatically mean that the research will be easy to find. Research can be distributed across different journals, institutional websites, repositories, databases, and other publishing and information systems.
African research discovery provides ways for users to navigate this dispersed body of scholarship.
Makes research easier to find
Structured discovery systems can help users identify relevant research without relying on a single publication source.
Connects researchers with relevant scholarship
Researchers can use discovery tools to identify existing work, researchers, institutions, and journals related to their own research interests.
Supports research collaboration
Finding researchers working on related questions can create opportunities for academic collaboration and knowledge exchange.
Helps users explore research beyond individual papers
A discovery process can lead users from one publication to related researchers, institutions, journals, topics, and disciplines.
Supports the visibility of African scholarship
Focused research discovery can help users specifically interested in African scholarship find relevant research produced across different countries and regions.
African Research Discovery Across the Continent
African research is produced across North, West, Central, East, and Southern Africa.
Each region contains different universities, research institutions, academic journals, researchers, disciplines, and research priorities.
Research discovery can therefore benefit from geographic organisation. A user interested in education research in West Africa, for example, may want to explore researchers, institutions, journals, and publications associated with countries across the region.
Research can also cross geographic boundaries. Collaborative projects may involve researchers from several African countries or partnerships between African and international institutions.
African Research Discovery and Research Visibility
Research visibility refers to how easily research can be found and recognised by relevant audiences.
Research discovery and visibility are closely related, but they are not identical. Visibility concerns how accessible and noticeable research is to potential audiences, while discovery focuses on the process through which users find and explore that research.
Structured metadata, indexing, clear publication information, and connections between related scholarly records can all contribute to more effective research discovery.
African Research Discovery at Afropus
Afropus is building an index focused on making African research discoverable.
Its framework brings together four core areas:
- Journals
- Researchers
- Institutions
- Ideas
The index also provides a framework for exploring topics and disciplines across African scholarship.
Afropus describes its geographic scope in terms of five regions and 55 jurisdictions, with regional balance as a goal. Its evaluation framework includes published criteria, integrity gates, transparency, and appeals.
By bringing different parts of the African research landscape into a connected discovery framework, Afropus aims to provide a clearer path for users who want to find and explore African scholarship.
Related Terms
- African Research
- African Academic Research
- African Scholarship
- African Academic Index
- African Research Ecosystem
- African Research Visibility
- Research Discoverability
- Scholarly Discovery
- Research Index
- Research Indexing
FAQs
What is African research discovery?
African research discovery is the process of finding, exploring, and connecting research produced in Africa, conducted by African researchers and institutions, or focused on African subjects and contexts.
Why is African research discovery important?
It helps users find relevant African scholarship and explore the researchers, institutions, journals, topics, disciplines, and ideas connected to that research.
Where can African research be discovered?
African research can be discovered through academic journals, research databases, institutional repositories, search engines, academic indexes, and other scholarly resources.
What can users discover through African research discovery?
Users can discover research publications, academic journals, researchers, institutions, topics, disciplines, and related scholarly ideas.
How does indexing support African research discovery?
Indexing organises scholarly information into structured records, making it easier to search for and connect research with related researchers, journals, institutions, topics, and disciplines.
How is Afropus supporting African research discovery?
Afropus is developing an index focused on making African research discoverable by connecting journals, researchers, institutions, ideas, topics, and disciplines across the African research landscape.