Academic writing for publication: Putting the ‘international’ into context

There is a growing body of research on the impact of English-medium publication and associated higher education regimes on knowledge construction. However, not much is known about how academics outside the Global North make decisions about how and where to publish. Through a comparative case study, this article sets out to explore how academics in Ethiopia and Oman engage in writing for publication. Taking an academic literacies lens, the analysis reveals that their decisions were shaped by institutional values at the local level, as well as global hierarchies around knowledge construction. However, issues around identity, languages and disciplinary cultures also influenced how academics chose to position themselves in relation to local and international journals. The findings point to the need for new partnerships between journals in the Global North and South to prevent ‘publication drain’, and for universities to explore ways to address inequalities perpetuated through journal ranking and language hierarchies

Ministries of Health and the Stewardship of Health Evidence

This chapter describes how Ministries of Health have been mandated to act as stewards of populations’ health according to the World Health Organization. We argue that this mandate extends to them having (at least partial) responsibility for ensuring relevant evidence informs policy decisions. Yet this requires consideration of the evidence advisory systems serving Ministry needs, particularly whether or how such systems work to provide relevant information in a timely manner to key decision points in the policy process. Insights from our six cases are presented to illustrate the structural and practical differences which exist between evidence advisory systems and how, at certain times, key health decisions may in fact lie outside ministerial authority. These divergent experiences highlight a range of analytical challenges when considering the provision of evidence to inform health decisions from an institutional perspective

Data from: Crop pests and predators exhibit inconsistent responses to surrounding landscape composition

AbstractThe idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are measured. Here, we use a pest-control database encompassing 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide to model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as a function of landscape composition. Our results showed that although landscape composition explained significant variation within studies, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields each exhibited different responses across studies, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in landscapes with more noncrop habitat but overall showing no consistent trend. Thus, models that used landscape-composition variables to predict pest-control dynamics demonstrated little potential to explain variation across studies, though prediction did improve when comparing studies with similar crop and landscape features. Overall, our work shows that surrounding noncrop habitat does not consistently improve pest management, meaning habitat conservation may bolster production in some systems and depress yields in others. Future efforts to develop tools that inform farmers when habitat conservation truly represents a win–win would benefit from increased understanding of how landscape effects are modulated by local farm management and the biology of pests and their enemies