Elsevier Foundation Awards 2013 Grants to Champion Libraries in Developing Countries and Women in Science

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09 Dec, 2013, 11:53 GMT

AMSTERDAM, December 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

$700,000 awarded to Innovative Libraries, New Scholars and Nurse Faculty Programs

The Elsevier Foundation announced today the 2013 grant recipients for the Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries and New Scholars award programs. In total, $700,000 has been committed to ten institutions around the world in addition to five ongoing multiyear grants and the Nurse Faculty program. The Elsevier Foundation is funded by Elsevier, a global provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services.

"We are always on the lookout for game-changing projects that can serve as models with lasting impact on our health and science communities," said David Ruth, Executive Director of the Elsevier Foundation and Senior Vice President Global Communications, Elsevier. "This year, we've identified some very compelling new opportunities to support big data, research capacity building, transparency and evidence-based medicine in the developing world. Our New Scholars grants focus on boosting team science diversity and innovation, targeting STEM inclusion in community colleges and a unique tropical health partnership between Portuguese speaking women scientists in Africa and their Portuguese counterparts. We are excited to able to add these excellent projects to the Foundation's record of support for advancing science and health in new and innovative ways."

Innovative Libraries

The Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries program awards grants to libraries for innovation in improving access and use of scientific, technical and medical information. The 2013 library grant recipients address real developing world issues through the use of STM information resources and include:

Joy Paulson, Director, TEEAL Project and International Projects Librarian, Cornell University, remarked, "We are very excited to receive support from the Elsevier Foundation for the development and implementation of our author capacity building program. Building on the access to Research4Life and TEEAL and the e-resources training connected to them, this new program will focus on developing the skills to enable young faculty in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Malawi to publish the results of their research in international journals. In the long run, this will ensure that the results of African agricultural research are disseminated more widely."

New Scholars

The New Scholars Program supports projects to help early- to mid-career women scientists balance family responsibilities with demanding academic careers and addresses the attrition rate of talented women scientists. The 2013 grants include:

Jeremy Sanders, the University of Cambridge's Pro-Vice Chancellor said, "The New Scholars funding from Elsevier is very welcome as it will enable us to expand and extend some of our most exciting collaborative gender equality projects over the next two years. The University of Cambridge is committed to supporting the advancement of women in STEMM disciplines in recruitment, retention and promotion. Our aim is to develop the best possible practice in this area and the funding from Elsevier will allow us to continue this innovative and partnership work.'’

In 2013, the Elsevier Foundation's Nurse Faculty Program committed to an additional multiyear grant (2014-2016) to Sigma Theta Tau International Foundation for Nursing to continue developing an 18 month leadership academy and alleviate the nursing faculty shortage through retaining and transitioning new nurse educators to the faculty role.

About The Elsevier Foundation

The Elsevier Foundation is a corporate charity funded by Elsevier, a global provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The Elsevier Foundation provides grants to knowledge centered institutions around the world, with a focus on developing world libraries, nurse faculty and scholars in the early stages of their careers. Since its inception, the Foundation has awarded more than 60 grants worth millions of dollars to non-profit organizations working in these fields. Through gift-matching, the Foundation also supports the efforts of Elsevier employees to play a positive role in their local and global communities. http://www.elsevierfoundation.org

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, Reaxys, ClinicalKey and Mosby's Suite, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, helping research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world leading provider of professional information solutions. The group employs more than 30,000 people, including more than 15,000 in North America. Reed Elsevier Group PLC is owned equally by two parent companies, Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. Their shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RUK and ENL.

The Elsevier Foundation 2013 Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries Grant Awards

Towards the Collaborative repository for Ethiopian academic and research institutions, Consortium of Ethiopian Academic and Research Libraries (CEARL) and African Digital Library Support Network (ADLSN).

Over the past few years, Ethiopia has enjoyed substantive growth in both the number of academic institutions and research output. However, the accessibility, usability, management and quality of the research output has proven increasingly challenging. The Consortium of Ethiopian Academic and Research Libraries (CEARL) and the African Digital Library Support Network (ADLSN) propose to scale up some of the exiting institutional repositories at the Addis Ababa University and Forum for Social Studies, to build the Ethiopian national digital repository. By increasing the discoverability and usage of Ethiopian academic research results nationally, regionally and internationally, the goal is to foster collaboration and a global research culture. The project will train a core of Ethiopian librarians to establish and operate digital repositories while providing deep information literacy skills to researchers. This project provides an African approach conceived by librarians and IT experts and demonstrates great promise both in country and as a model for African library development in general.

Author Capacity Building in Africa, Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University, USA Building on access to Research4Life and TEEAL (The Essential Agricultural Library) and on-going information literacy training, the Author Capacity Building project aims to boost research output in sub-Saharan Africa. Critical skills training in citation management, research literature review and scientific paper writing will be delivered to young faculty in agricultural and biological sciences, senior researchers, and librarians at universities in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Malawi. Librarians from Cornell's Mann Library will lead the first Ethiopian workshop and train ITOCA (The Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa) to sustainably deliver these in Nigerian and Malawian universities. A key focus will be on training up African faculty and librarians as in house trainers to provide on-going coaching to researchers to develop the research output skills they need to succeed.

Library Information Resources to Enhance the University of Ghana, School of Public Health Program, Morehouse School of Medicine, US & Ghana

As African research develops, "Big Data" poses an increasing challenge to institutions. This project will tackle this through the creation of a Library Translational Clearinghouse of Ghana's Primary Health Data, Secondary Datasets and Databases. In effect, it will bring national epidemiological data into the University's Public Health Library and train librarians to provide services covering both published information and data. In most public health institutions globally, published information and data are held separately. Bringing the two together with a single-point of service allows for greater access to reliable and authoritative health information and data with the potential to positively impact health outcomes. Researchers, clinicians, and epidemiologists working in the field of communicable diseases will be more able to identify national disease outbreaks and plan rapid interventions. This project is the product of a longstanding partnership between Morehouse School of Medicine and the University of Ghana, building on an established foundation with a commitment to its sustainability after the funding period.

Developing a Globally Connected LIBRARY 4 SAFE SEAFARING (L4SS), Mariners Polytechnic Colleges Foundation, Philippines

Maritime disasters are a continuing cause of global concern despite safety-conscious systems established by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Maritime safety or the preparedness, competence and ongoing education of shipping crews are crucial to the industry and global distribution of goods and services. Since the 1990s, the Philippines has become a major source of seafarers worldwide - one out of every five sailors is Filipino. The Mariners Polytechnic Colleges Foundation (MPCF), a leading maritime institution in the Philippines will develop the "Library for Safe Seafaring" as a globally connected evidence based learning and advocacy facility providing sailors with a continuing education to research the latest maritime trends, relevant references, teaching tools and learning materials. The end goal for the L4SS project is to institutionalize the use of the upgraded library as a valuable learning facility for quality education and training at the MPCF to produce more safety-conscious and trained, licensed officers and crew-- compliant with international quality standards on maritime safety.

Strengthening education, research and practice in emergency care: Information skills integration in the Ghana Emergency Medicine Collaborative

Taubman Health Sciences Library, University of Michigan Library

This project aims to create an integrated, evidence based information skills curricula to enable the Ghana Emergency Medicine Collaborative (GEMC) to strengthen education, research and clinical care capacity of emergency care services in Ghana. It builds on the collaborative GEMC project, a partnership between Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), the Ghana Ministry of Health and the University of Michigan's Department of Emergency Medicine and School of Nursing. Beyond creating a sustainable Ghanaian model for information skills training of emergency faculty, medical and nursing students and information professionals, it will provide a template for assessment, training and retention of skills in emergency and trauma care that needs to be enhanced in low and middle income countries.

The Elsevier Foundation 2013 New Scholars Grant Awards

Strengthening Team Science & Work Life Satisfaction in the UC System, University of California Santa Barbara

Collaborative, interdisciplinary team science-based research has become increasingly central in scientific discovery. Team science garners more funding, more impactful research and publications. Having a strong network of collaborators and mentors is critical to a productive and successful academic career, yet women are both less likely to participate in team science and to do so later in their careers. The UC Team Science Retreat will address these disparities among early- to mid-career STEM women scientists across the 10 campuses of the University of California (UC) system through a three year series of retreats on team science leadership, research design, and proposal writing. Held in collaboration with UC Merced and UC Office of the President, the retreats will accommodate child care and include male researchers, fostering a climate of family-friendly inclusion while science leadership skills, experience and productivity are gained earlier on in careers. The retreats provide the first comprehensive training in the country for this core competency. Sixty participants will be tracked and supported throughout and joint investment will be made by participating institutions. The UC Team Science retreat promises to deliver new knowledge regarding the relative importance of team science and how diverse points of view inform research, innovation and the public support of science, bringing scientific questions and research more in line with social needs and benefits.

African Network of Portuguese speaking women in Tropical Health, Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Portugal

This project will improve tropical health career development for women scientists in five African Portuguese speaking countries: Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea, St. Tome and Principe. With a focus on improving integration into the wider scientific community, the project will be led by the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT), in Lisbon, to develop a critical mass of African women scientists and connect them with mentoring Portuguese academics and the European Platform of Women Scientists. In addition, relevant transferable skills will be offered through distance learning, an in person workshop will be held in each country, a dedicated mobile phone-accessible website and expertise driven database will be developed and childcare grants offered to promote professional visibility. The network proposed here will be the first to include African Portuguese speaking countries, and in an area of research-Tropical Health-- that is particularly relevant to many low and middle income countries. The project addresses the geographic and linguistic isolation of these women scientists and shows great potential as a model for international collaboration, particularly in an area of significant health concern.

Cambridge Equality Collaboration: Advancing Women in Science within & beyond Cambridge, University of Cambridge

The Cambridge Equality Collaborations (C=C) project aims to develop a comprehensive approach to the advancement of women in STEM, aligning the university's many existing initiatives into an integrated program with lasting potential. Over a three year period, primary research investigating the transition from early career researcher to tenure will be conducted as well as resources developed through the expansion of a leadership development programme; high impact opportunities for the professional and personal development of women in STEM; local and national events to develop a support network for parents and carers; collaboration with previous New Scholars grant recipients (Portia and the National Postdoctoral Association); and profiling visible women role models, including delivery of a prestigious annual event and wide dissemination of book/web/virtual resources celebrating women of Cambridge.

Motivating Enrollment of Women into STEM Majors, LaGuardia Community College

The first two years of a college career are considered key predictors for students who wish to major in STEM fields. This project targets women in community colleges, an overlooked demographic providing critical STEM career entry points to students-especially women students-of lower socioeconomic status. LaGuardia Community College (LGCC) has a student population that is 58% female-out of all degrees awarded (in the 2012 academic year), less than 5% of the degrees were awarded to women. Of these students, more than 80% report household income of less than $25,000, hence financial might dictate the low graduation rates in women. Within two-year colleges in particular, the shortage of affordable childcare services and common gender stereotypes discourage women from pursuing careers in STEM. This project is open to all LaGuardia Community College students and will implement a series of workshops, research internships, assistance for scholarships and childcare to encourage women to pursue careers in STEM. Program data will be analyzed and submitted for publication, forming the foundation for a subsequent full grant application to a key NSF program directed at community colleges. For the New Scholars program, this proposal represents a new space-or segment in the academic pipeline.

Womens IS Network, Worcester Polytechnic University

Information Systems is the backbone of our global innovation economy and vital to our future. It is a field of great societal and industry importance which is suffering from an ever diminishing proportion of women as well as a lack of awareness of this gender inequality as a growing problem. With women making up more and more of the workforce, women will be increasingly in leadership roles in Information Systems. Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is nationally and internationally recognized as a leader in educating women in STEM fields. We are proud to be leading an initiative to support women researchers and thought-leaders in the critical field of Information Systems. The Information System Women's Network (ISWN) supported by WPI has four goals: to collect global data on what women in IS academia need to flourish in their careers; to provide an outlet for current research on women in IS; to grow awareness, membership and visibility within the international IS community and to establish a successful self-supported workshop format sponsored by academic and industrial sponsors. This is an interesting, and potentially high impact approach to a global issue in information systems and presents a clear plan to address the issue in a safe context for women in this area.

Media contact
Ylann Schemm
Senior Corporate Responsibility Manager, Elsevier
+31(0)20-485-2025
newsroom@elsevier.com