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There is an increasing uptake of digital technologies across African countries. Public, private, and government services have adopted and utilized digital technologies to improve work processes, productivity, create jobs, and better service delivery. This short paper seeks to answer these questions: What is the current state of digital readiness in African countries? Do existing digital readiness assessment tools, indicators, or metrics, help to assess the digital readiness of countries in Africa? Analysis of publicly available data from Cisco index of readiness score and Broadband speed ranking by cable.co.uk, reveal that: 1) African countries' digital readiness score is below the global average of 11.96, on a scale of 0 to 25 (except Tunisia with readiness average score of 12.05); and 2) African countries' broadband speed is below the global mean speed of 25Mbps (mean speed of 4.51 and 3.80 Mbps for sub‐Saharan Africa and North Africa, respectively). Second, analysis of various assessment tools show that the existing metrics can't be used as is to diagnose and evaluate Africa's digital readiness. Instead factors such as availability of adequate infrastructure; last‐mile connectivity to homes, schools, businesses, and government agencies; and skill gaps should be considered. The implications of this study are to show the need for an appropriate assessment tools so countries in Africa prioritize efforts to embrace digital readiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Collaborative research teams working in developing countries rely on information and computer technologies (ICTs), both hardware and software, to overcome barriers to information sharing including, language, distance, time, economic development and politics. However, studies have shown impediments to information sharing between team members from different cultures, nations and institutions. This paper reports on a study in which a model was developed to highlight the most important barriers for communication and information sharing in international research teams, which was the basis for the development of a heuristic evaluation tool. The communication model was created using the results of 30 semi-structured interviews with agricultural scientists working in international research teams based in Australia and Lao People's Democratic Republic. Interview data outline a number of barriers and facilitators for team communication, which informed the development of eight intercultural heuristics. These were combined with Jakob Nielsen's general usability heuristics to form the intercultural heuristic evaluation tool, or I-CHET. The tool was then tested in a pilot study to assess the utility and usability of two ICTs used by international research teams: email and Skype. The initial assessment using I-CHET showed that while email theoretically lacked the richness of cues seen in Skype, email better complied with the needs of international research groups for sharing information and communicating in multicultural teams dispersed over language, cultural and geographic divides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer review plays an essential role in the scholarly publishing life cycle. Using the verified peer review records of researchers on Publons, this study investigated how this scientific endeavor was distributed throughout the world. In addition, we took an initial step toward understanding the length of reviews as a potential indicator of time and effort put into this "scientific gatekeeping" process. The proficiency of English, the scientific Lingua Franca, was found to have a significant effect on the length of reviews. In addition, there was a significant effect of a country's economic development level on review length. Furthermore, we explored a subgroup of reviewers – reviewers in Singapore – in more depth, and found that reviewers in different genders, disciplines, economic and cultural backgrounds wrote reviews of significantly different lengths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Technology transfer is a vital part of knowledge creation. It is the 'process of transferring scientific findings from one organization to another for the purpose of further development and commercialization' (AUTM, 2016). Technology transfer enhances society by allowing universities and national laboratories to contribute to economic development. This visual presentation presents a brief history of information science's study of technology transfer and introduces the Technology Transfer Information Intermediary (T2I2) Model. The T2I2 provides a framework for identifying and understanding information behavior related to technology transfer. The poster also includes a mechanism to dialog with the researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Digital literacy is an increasing area of focus for communities, due to its potential positive impact toward social and economic development goals. Given the unique information needs and potentially burdensome financial, human and infrastructure requirements, the implementation of such initiatives often involves a variety of community stakeholders. However, such collaborations are often fraught with difficulty and seldom result in long-term sustainability or success. This poster presents a mixed- methods research design exploring the implementation of digital literacy initiatives within a specific community context. The main conceptual foundations will be highlighted, including the use of a leadership framework to evaluate the presence or absence of essential social roles within the group. It will be argued that a leadership framework contributes important understanding to the organization and organizing processes present in multi-stakeholder community collaborations. Furthermore, research designs which expand focus beyond single individuals, single entities or formal partnerships are needed to support positive engagement with technology within communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]