University of Ghana Hosts Stakeholder Consultation to Elevate Journal Management and Visibility

A team working on a project to improve the management of University of Ghana-owned journals and faculty publications organised a Stakeholder Consultation and Needs Analysis for the University of Ghana Journal Editors.

The session took place at the University of Ghana Staff Development and Learning Resource Centre.

The programme was sponsored by the International Research Exchanges Board (IREX) in collaboration with the Office of Research, Innovation, and Development (ORID), the Balme Library, and the University of Ghana Computing Systems (UGCS).

The session, which provided a platform for discussions to identify the editorial needs of the University of Ghana-owned journals and the functionality of the Open Journal Systems (OJS), brought together editors for the various UG-owned journals, members of editorial boards, project staff, and other stakeholders. Also in attendance was Professor Felix Ankomah Asante, Pro Vice-Chancellor in charge of Research, Innovations and Development.

In his opening remarks, Prof. Asante expressed gratitude to the editors for their consistent support in promoting the visibility of UG journals. He said, “the University is highly endowed with close to 20 journals, which need to be uniquely positioned to enhance the image of the University’s research and rankings.”

The Project Lead and convener of the session, Prof. Emelia Oppong Bekoe of the Department of Pharmacognosy at the School of Pharmacy, in a presentation, emphasised the need for the University to improve the quality of its journals to enable them to meet the competitive criteria for indexing in desirable high-impact publications and citation databases. This, according to her, would increase the visibility of the journals to the global scholarly community.

Prof. Bekoe expressed gratitude to the funder of the project, IREX, as well as Mr. Tom Dockery Adjei-Mensah of UGCS, Ms. Mawuena A. Abortta of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Mr. Jacob Zuttah, the   Research Performance Team Lead of ORID for their support.

She acknowledged the editors for their active participation and commended them for their immense contribution to scholarship.

The forum revolved around the challenges of the journal management systems, the sustenance of the project after the current support, the improvement of the journals’ image through regular advertising of published journal publications, etc., and subsequent steps to be taken to improve UG-owned journals.