Purpose
The African Reproducibility Network (AREN), a member of the Global Reproducibility Networks (RN) family, is a community-led initiative bridging the gaps in open science advocacy and adoption across Africa.
The "Bridging the Gap" agenda involves complementing existing efforts through highly collaborative and unique sustainable approaches that offer measurable long-term impact. This prevents duplication of efforts, promotes effective partnerships and collaboration, and ensures our activities meet local and global standards - helping move the African research ecosystem closer to becoming one that can fully support reproducible and open research practices.
This approach is necessary because transitioning to an open research ecosystem can be difficult for researchers and institutions. A lack of infrastructure or awareness of existing ones, institutional culture and several other factors make it difficult for researchers to adopt open research principles while institutional policies require infrastructure and support (human and financial) to make their implementation possible, requirements few institutions can meet.
Our goal, in summary, is to provide African researchers and institutions with the necessary support and resources through training, local networks and programs tailored to suit local needs, enabling them to meet the global requirements for open and reproducible research.