CARTA Publications Policy - Draft

Draft Publications Policy of the CARTA Program

In September 2012 the CARTA Board affirmed the desirability of publications emerging from the CARTA program. This document outlines the policy and procedures governing the publications related to CARTA. It also defines the obligations that data recipients incur.

The specific objectives of the policy are to:

• Promote reflection on, critique of and publications about CARTA experiences successes and challenges by CARTA members

• Ensure the availability of data to CARTA program members  and the public so they can support the goal of documenting and sharing experiences and lessons from the program1

• Encourage scientific analyses over a wide range of issues and lessons related to CARTA 

• Preserve core material as an archive for future description and observations, for nondestructive analyses of the CARTA program

Possible papers and authorship 

All members of the consortium are encouraged to work in a collaborative manner to publish.

A closed site on the CARTA web page has been created to facilitate discussion about publications. To access this site you,  kindly follow the url  https://sites.google.com/a/cartafrica.org/publications-about-carta/.  You will require your cartafrica.org e-mail login details, that is the e-mail address and password.  If you have forgotten yours, please contact carta@aphrc.org.

Anyone who is considering a potential article should register a tentative title and brief description of the article on the web page as well as registering themselves as a co-author. Others interested in working on that paper can indicate their willingness to join and contact the other author(s). This concept note will be reviewed by the board or CARTA executive if the board is not able to respond in a timely manner. The Board will review ongoing publications on a bi-annual basis (and may identify additional authors if appropriate).

Authorship will be determined by active participation in the writing of the article and authors being able to describe and defend the papers, methods/approach and findings. No one member of the CARTA team is expected to be on more than three ongoing papers simultaneously. 

Data distribution and use

Data related to the CARTA program shall be given or loaned to persons in the following categories:

• Persons actively participating or who actively participated in the development and implementation of the CARTA program or aspects of it.

• Scientists, including students who wish to conduct research on CARTA and to publish the results, but who are not necessarily or actively associated with CARTA; 

CARTA program members wishing to publish from CARTA data2  must first share their manuscript ideas in the form of an abstract as described above on the web site or can email carta@aphrc.org. This abstract will be circulated to CARTA members to determine their interest in contributing. Program members will have up to 4 days to indicate their willingness to be co-author on a paper. 

All requests for data related to the CARTA program by persons not necessarily associated with CARTA must be made in writing to carta@aphrc.org. Such requests will be accompanied by an abstract of the proposed research. Approval of data requests will be the exclusive responsibility of CARTA program directors. 

All manuscripts resulting from CARTA data should be published in peer-reviewed books and preferably, open-access journals. 

Acknowledgement

The preferred acknowledgement text for publications by program members using CARTA data is:

The Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) is funded by the Wellcome Trust (UK) (Grant No: 087547/Z/08/Z), the Department for International Development (DfID) under the Development Partnerships in Higher Education (DelPHE), the Carnegie Corporation of New York (Grant No: B 8606), the Ford Foundation (Grant No: 1100-0399),Google.org (Grant No: 191994), Sida (Grant No: 54100029) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Grant No: 51228)

1. Defined as persons who have been actively involved in the development, management and implementation of CARTA program activities

2. CARTA data refer to all data created, collected, maintained, recorded or managed by the CARTA program, including data used for planning, managing, operating, controlling, or auditing CARTA activities.