The Data Science Without Borders project hosts an Open Science and Capacity Building Working Group for researchers in African countries.
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Data Science Without Borders (DSWB) is an international initiative, funded by the Wellcome Trust and led by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). This project has three overarching objectives: to strengthen data systems in Pathfinder countries, to create a sustainable environment for collaborative AI/ML platforms, and to create a user-friendly platform for AI and Machine Learning (AI/ML) tools. The impact of inequality in data availability and access is evident, particularly in resource-limited settings like many African nations. This African institution-led initiative will leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to bridge existing gaps in data accessibility, infrastructure, and expertise. It aims to foster a collaborative environment that empowers African nations to harness the full potential of AI/ML for improving health outcomes.
We would be working with three Pathfinder Institutions:
- the Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI) in Ethiopia 🇪🇹
- the Institute for Health Research, Epidemiological Surveillance (IRESSEF) in Senegal 🇸🇳
- and the Training and Douala General Hospital (DGH) in Cameroon 🇨🇲
The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Committee on Data of the International Science Council (CODATA) collaborate as delivery partners providing support in platform development. The Africa CDC provides key technical oversight for the project, supporting country engagement, identification of priority use cases and provision of guidance for effective policy engagement.
This project will host the Open Science and Capacity Building Working Group from 2024 to 2025.
- The short-term goal of this WG is to build a shared understanding of open science and reproducibility in data science and AI among all members of the DSWB partners.
- The long-term goal is to build capacity for the DSWB partners and their networks to extend the impact of open science and reproducibility practices in advancing the impact of data science and AI.
Our workgroup aims to educate our various partners on best practices such as:
- open science
- computational reproducibility
- data sharing practices
- AI standards
- project management
- cross-team collaboration
- technical translation skills
- responsible research
- and innovation practices.
In due course, we will provide a roadmap for the WG on this repository. DSWB can only achieve its ambitious goals if it is delivered by health and AI/ML experts working together.
The WG will support the knowledge-building and adoption of open science practices and approaches in DSWB through active connections with existing open science communities and projects.
The Turing Way will be used as a primary reference for curating and sharing practices, as well as identifying gaps where resources can be developed by the DSWB members in collaboration with other interested practitioners.
Community managers and trainers in this working group will be onboarded to become active contributors to The Turing Way, acting as a bidirectional conduit to implement best practices for reproducible, ethical, inclusive and collaborative data science. They will support DSWB community members in the documentation and sharing of best practices via The Turing Way making it useful for their contexts.
The chair of this working group is Malvika Sharan, working as a consultant on the project.
- D1: Engagement with Communities of Practice (CoP) for data science initiatives involved in DSWB.
- D2: Contribute to the development of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and ways of working for the collaborators and stakeholders, drawing examples and resources from open science communities and projects.
- D3: Develop a context-specific roadmap to support the adoption of The Turing Way and develop relevant resources, infrastructure and community to involve researchers from Pathfinder countries in DSWB efforts.
- Guidelines: Contribution Guidelines for contributors will be developed in due course
- Code of Conduct: Code of Conduct will be adopted in agreement with the DSWB members
This repository has been set up and maintained by Malvika Sharan (@malvikasharan) and Precious Onyewuchi (@preshh0) to support the work of WG under DSWB.
Please create an issue to share references or ideas related to the development of this project.
This work is licensed under the MIT license (code) and Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (for documentation). You are free to share and adapt the material for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you provide attribution (give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made) in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use and with no additional restrictions.
This repository uses the template created by Malvika and members of The Turing Way team, shared under CC-BY 4.0 for reuse: https://github.com/the-turing-way/reproducible-project-template.