Driving Inclusivity and Productivity in Global Development Research
A Silver Lining of the Pandemic?
This post was co-written by Constantine Manda (EASST fellow and co-founder of the Impact Evaluation Lab at Tanzania’s Economic and Social Research Foundation [ESRF]), Grieve Chelwa (Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Cape Town), and Bilal Siddiqi (CEGA’s Director of Research).
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, research conferences, workshops, seminars, and other research activities have gone virtual. This is an unprecedented opportunity to dramatically expand access to valuable networks and resources for researchers in the Global South.
Research in the social sciences is more collaborative now than ever, making individual researchers more productive and more likely to publish in top-ranked academic journals. This is great for those with strong academic networks: direct interactions at academic conferences increase the chances of co-authorship and citation especially “for teams that are new or non‐collocated.”
Providing virtual access to research workshops, instruction, and conferences may bolster opportunities for scholars in low- and middle-income countries (referred to here as the “Global South”) to conduct high quality, and highly impactful research. Here’s why:
1. (Being in) the room where it happened.
Apart from quick and convenient access to cutting-edge work and emergent literature, there’s something special about being in a seminar room, watching a speaker present in real time, seeing others react and probe, collectively coming to a common understanding of what just happened. Till recently, lack of information and access inhibited this.
2. Connecting.
Secondly, workshops provide a venue for forging partnerships between researchers that can lead to extensions of the work being presented. Virtual connections, if managed properly, provide Global South scholars exposure to contemporary debates taking place in the social sciences in the “North.” This allows Global South researchers the opportunity to supplement their academic training in methods and the extant literature.
One of us (Manda), along with social scientist Rachel Strohm, has written about how to support African scholars in the social sciences and among the recommendations is the importance of providing linkages with researchers from highly-ranked institutions. This provides positive externalities that are helpful in making African scholars, and indeed other Global South scholars, be more productive by devising, designing, conducting, and publishing impactful research.
Closing this diversity gap in the social sciences is important for research productivity and publication in top-ranked journals. For instance, women economists, because they are more likely to begin their careers in lower-ranked institutions and hence “matched with less productive unique coauthors,” are less likely to publish in top-ranked economics journals. Further, we also know that people of similar ethnicities are more likely to co-author, however, these collaborations are “associated with publication in lower-impact journals and with fewer citations.”
3. Economics has an “Africa problem.”
One of us (Chelwa) has even written about, for instance, how economics has an “Africa problem” in the lack of representation of African scholars in research on the continent. Connecting African scholars with non-African scholars, especially those from top-ranked institutions, may provide benefits to the African scholars but also to the scholarship itself.
Of course these inter-ethnic, international, inter-gender research collaborations may not be fruitful if the existing biases, institutionalized or otherwise, prevent under-represented groups from fully-benefiting. For instance, we know that women researchers are often punished for co-authorship relative to men, and so in addition to possibly expanding access to scholars in the Global South, researchers from top-ranked institutions need to be mindful that the collaboration provides equitable benefits for Global South scholars.
The world is moving rapidly toward expanding access to scholars that would otherwise not have had access. In a survey implemented after a recent CEGA event, we learned that nearly sixty percent of respondents were more likely to participate in virtual than in-person conferences.
What we’re doing.
One of us (Manda) was able to present work at the Working Group of African Political Economy (WGAPE) Regional Meeting on April 24th (organized by CEGA) because of the move to the virtual format. More recently, the WGAPE Annual Meeting was held virtually, featuring paper discussions and presentations by 8 African scholars based in 7 countries (read more here). CEGA’s Summer Seminar Series, a virtual forum for sharing early-stage and recently completed work in development economics, included one participant each from Africa and the US. The CEGA Global Workshop, launching October 14th, will extend this opportunity throughout the fall semester and to additional partner networks.
What you can do.
For those planning a virtual event, here’s a handy guide put together by CEGA. Online events — which are open access, considerate of time zones, and that encourage interaction through break out rooms and slack channels — can have a high impact.
We invite peer institutions to follow in the direction of expanding access to research workshops and other research engagement opportunities across the social sciences. COVID-19 has already put us on a new equilibrium path with respect to maximizing technology for more inclusive interactions and we hope that by being deliberate in expanding access we will foster a more collaborative and diverse scholar community that will provide better answers to some of our pressing questions.
