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The Open Science (OS) movement promises nothing less than a revolution in the availability of scientific knowledge around the globe. By removing barriers to online data and encouraging publication in Open Access formats and Open Data archives, OS seeks to expand the role, reach and value of research. The promises of OS imply a set of expectations about what different publics hope to gain from research, how accountability and participation can be enhanced, and what makes science public in the first place. This paper presents empirical material from fieldwork undertaken in (bio)chemistry laboratories in Kenya and South Africa to examine the extent to which these ideals can be realized in a sub-Saharan context. To analyse the challenges African researchers face in making use of freely available data, we draw from Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach. His theorisations of ‘conversion factors’ helps to understand how seemingly minor economic and social contingencies can hamper the production and (re-)use of online data. In contrast to initiatives that seek to make more data available, we suggest the need to facilitate a more egalitarian engagement with online data resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The importance of community involvement in public health research processes is well established. The literature is, however, less forthcoming about processes of community inclusion in public health project implementation, especially when it comes to projects focusing on key populations. The Step Up Project is the first multi-city harm reduction service provision project for people who inject drugs in South Africa. Since inception, the Project has made concerted efforts to work with and alongside people who actively identify as people who inject drugs. This paper outlines two features in relation to project-beneficiary dynamics that emerged in a qualitative project evaluation conducted by an external researcher and a funder representative. The first was that people accessing the project comfortably expressed criticisms of both themselves and the project, and noted when their behaviour contradicted project ideals. The second was the extent to which engagement with the project was reported to be fostering a renewed sense of personhood and right to exist in the world. These findings are, we suggest, in principle related to two forms of community engagement: consistent empathic response and community advisory groups. This implies that programmes need to focus on their mode of approach as much as on the content of their approach. It further implies that programme impact not be limited to quantitative assessment measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Khayelitsha, an economically marginal peri-urban settlement in Cape Town, is home to a number of ‘flagship’ public health interventions aimed at HIV/AIDS and TB. Alongside these high-profile, foreign donor-driven treatment and care programmes are a plethora of NGOs that provide a wide range of community-based carework. Some of these organisations are large, well funded and well connected globally, while others are run by a few unemployed women responding to care needs in their neighbourhoods. This article explores the ways that community health workers (CHWs) who work for these organisations understand and speak about their involvement in carework as volunteers, employees or managers of community-based care organisations. Many CHWs framed their work through discourses of gender, religion or culture (‘African-ness’). They also described forms of material or economic benefits of providing carework, but many were concerned that these might be seen as existing in tension with more socially accepted, altruistic motivations for care. We explore here how CHWs narrate and understand their roles and motivations as carers and members of a resource-constrained community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]