Call for Submissions, Decolonise Science

The team at AfricArXiv is proud to announce that we are partnering with Masakhane to build a multilingual parallel corpus of African research from translations of research manuscripts submitted to AfricArXiv. Of the articles submitted, the teams at Masakhane and AfricArXiv will select up to 180 in total for translation.

From the grant announcement:

‘When it comes to scientific communication and education, language matters. The ability for science to be discussed in local indigenous languages can not only help expand knowledge to those who do not speak English or French as a first language, but also can integrate the facts and methods of science into cultures that have been denied it in the past. Thus, the team will build a multilingual parallel corpus of African research, by translating African preprint research papers released on AfricArxiv into 6 diverse African languages: isiZulu, Northern Sotho, Yoruba, Hausa, Luganda, Amharic.’

Read more at: www.masakhane.io/lacuna-fund/masakhane-mt-decolonise-science 

To submit your manuscript (preprint, postprint, or book chapter) please fill in the form at bit.ly/decol-sci

Your submission will be reviewed for translation based on the following criteria:

• The research topic of general interest and applicable for 1st-year graduate students
• Discipline distribution across the corpus
• Regional distribution by first author location and nationality 

You can submit your work in English, French, Arabic, or Portuguese. 

All submitted manuscripts will be publicly shared in the original language with a DOI (digital object identifier) and under a CC BY 4.0 license. We will inform the authors of those manuscripts that were selected for translation.

FAQs

1. What is a preprint?
   A preprint is a scientific manuscript that is uploaded by the authors to a public server. The preprint contains data and methods but has not yet been accepted by a journal. Read more

2. What are the benefits of sharing your manuscript as a preprint?

• Establish priority of discovery 
• The article receives a DOI to make it citable
• The article will be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license
• Raise your profile as an African researcher and that of your host institution 

3. Can I still publish my articles in a journal after publishing them as a preprint?
   Yes. After submitting your preprint to AfricArXiv in an Open Access repository of your choice, here is what you can do to decide which Open Access journal to submit your manuscript to. Go to thinkchecksubmit.org and follow the checkboxes. Additionally, you can use Open Journal Matcher and Directory of Open Access Journals to decide on a suitable journal for your manuscript.