From November 27 to December 2, 2017, a training course was held for researchers from Africa on the writing of scientific articles in the BECA-Irli Hub, IRLI Campus in Nairobi, Kenya. This training was provided by two agents of the International Foundation for Science (IFS) in the presence of an AIDS agent (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency). Researchers from Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Tanzania, Tanzania, Kenya, Tanzania, Kenya, Tanzania, Kenya, Tanzania, Kenya, Cameroon, Cameroon, DRC, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Nigeria, Eritrea, Somalia, Niger, Niger, Niger, Niger, Niger, Niger, Niger, Niger, Ivory Coast, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Tanzania, Tanzania, Tanzania, Tanzania, Tanzania, Tanzania, Tanzania, Tanzania, Tanzania, Tanzania, Kenya, Tanzania, Tanzania

 

The activities of this training began with a word of welcome from the director of the BECA-Irli Hub, Professor Jacob Mignouna followed by that of the Director of the Africa Biosciences Challenge Fund (ABCF) Program, Dr. Ekaya Wellington who gave an overview of BECA-Irli Hub and the ABCF program. He did not fail to highlight the objectives of this workshop and then asked the participants and the trainers to introduce themselves.

 

The training continued with a mini-presentation session by the participants. Each participant had 7 minutes of presentation including the question and answer session. This presentation session was followed by group discussions on our expectations in this workshop as well as the presentation of the results. After these presentations, the trainers initiated a discussion on the training plan and procedure during the week. An assignment was given and consisted in formulating a title for the article that everyone will work on throughout the week.

 

During the five days of training, the two IFS trainers, Ingrid Leemans and Karl Harmsen, addressed the following topics:

 

• Introduction to the writing of scientific articles;
• How to prepare the main lines of a scientific article;
• How to read a scientific article;
• How should an introduction to a scientific article be
• How to write a good title;
• How to write materials and methods, results, and graphs;
• The importance of a good literary review;
• Bibliographic reference management programs;
• How to find scientific information on the web;
• online learning tools;
• Open access and predatory newspapers
• Selecting a newspaper for publication;
• Understand the review process for scientific articles
• How to write a discussion
• How to write the summary of a scientific article;
• How to write a manuscript for a scientific article in six months.

 

Each time, the presentations by the trainers were followed by questions, comments and suggestions from the participants.

 

During this workshop, individual or group work was always given to allow participants to master the material and thus correct and/or shape their articles during writing. This work involved writing an article title, designing the outline of the content of the introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion and bibliographical references. Individual or group work was always followed by a session to report the results. Apart from the work on site, homework was also given at home. It should be noted that throughout the training, an AIDS officer, Mr. Nils Ohlanders, closely monitored all the activities of the workshop.