Wits Library Receives Carnegie Grant
682 days ago
The University of the Witwatersrand Library has received a grant of $500,000 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The grant was submitted on behalf of 5 African universities - Makerere University, Uganda, University of Cape Town, University of Ghana, Legon, University of Pretoria and University of the Witwatersrand.
The project, entitled Research Management Tool in Support of Academic Research in South Africa, Ghana and Uganda aims to provide the five universities with essential modern web-based research management tools. These tools will assist African universities in managing research and making strategic decisions at sophisticated new levels of research productivity and the impact of research produced, including the capacity to drill down from institution, faculty and school to the individual level.
The strategic objectives of this project are to:
- .Develop and strengthen institutional research performance.
- Strengthen and improve research management processes.
- Allow the participating universities to identify strengths and weaknesses in specific faculties, schools and disciplines and to determine research priorities.
- Assist the participating universities in targeting regional and international research collaborators, identifying areas of research investment and funding, strategic planning, benchmarking and assessing researchers for tenure and recruitment
The project is thus vital to the strategic missions of the universities as they strive to improve their research productivity. Training on the skills required in creating research metrics for the university, issues related to international competitiveness, collecting and interpretation of indicators, benchmarking, etc. will be provided to librarians, research office personnel, head of schools or departments, research deans and deputy vice chancellors for research. Participating universities will have the skills and knowledge to work with state of the art research management tools and these skills will be used to assist faculties, schools, individual academics and the university management.
The project presents participating institutions with opportunities to collaboratively develop and strengthen their research communities through annual research tool evaluation meetings and workshops. The workshops will be organized in South Africa and Uganda or Ghana covering such topics as pathways to research excellence or South-South research collaborations. The final workshop to be held at Wits will include selected African universities with demonstrated research strengths. This will provide a forum to share project experiences and extend the coverage as well as strengthen research community initiatives among African research universities.
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