Most of the knowledge in the library and information science (LIS) discipline is created and published by researchers in developed countries. Two roundtable sessions of ASIS&T SIG-III with the ASIS&T Africa Chapter and ASIS&T South Asia Chapter, in early 2021, confirmed "the lack of a conducive research environment" as the primary reason for this inequality in the discipline and called for systematic efforts, like this panel, to (a) create awareness about this inequality and (b) start building a global support system for LIS researchers in developing countries. In the first 30 minutes of this panel, six LIS scholars with cultural roots, academic training, and research experience in developing countries will illustrate common challenges to conducting and publishing research in developing countries. In the next 30 minutes, attendees will be divided into groups, with each group facilitated by a panelist, to brainstorm solutions for addressing the challenges related to academic training for conducting and publishing research, accessing resources, institutional support, opportunities for research collaboration and funding, fieldwork, analyzing data, composing manuscripts, and finding mentors, among others. In the last 30 minutes, each group will present its findings.
The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is as much an information war as it is a medical war. Members from South Asia and the Asia Pacific countries share their experiences and challenges faced with collaborative responses for the ASIS&T Special Chapter funded project on "Dealing with COVID-19 and saving people's lives in South Asia (SA) areas & beyond-A Health Informatics Promotion Project" awarded to the South Asia Chapter in 2021. The panel discusses the challenges faced within the context of geopolitical, socio-economic, religious, and cultural conditions prevalent within their countries. In the first 40 minutes, panel members narrate their own experiences by sharing their personal stories about this collaborative project and share the challenges of content creation and promotion from within the context of their respective countries. The next 30 minutes will be facilitated by the panel chair inviting a discussion between panel members and the audience to engage and come up with innovative ideas, discuss challenges in creating multilingual content and suggestions for improving the project outcome as well as shed light on initiating future health informatics project in similar regions. The last 20 minutes will culminate with the summarization of these collaborative experiences.
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