Journal of Advocacy, Research and Education

3-4

Authors: Jacob Owusu Sarfo

Our world has never been the same following the devastating effect of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) since December 2019 in Wuhan, China. Now as a global pandemic, the COVID-19 disease has challenged and altered social, economic, educational, political, and health systems worldwide (World Health Organization, 2020). As of the end of July 2020, there were over 17 million confirmed cases and over 685,000 confirmed deaths globally (Worldometers, 2020). The focus of this special issue is to address the impression COVID-19 disease has on societies worldwide. The four papers included in this special issue present diverse perspectives of the pandemic. The papers are structured as follows:

13-20

Authors: Daniel Otieno, Elizabeth Katam

Most countries worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic adopted online learning as a means for mitigating the challenges facing face-to-face classroom education. The adoption of remote learning is largely informed by the decisions reached by individual country experts in pursuant to health guidelines of social distancing by the World Health Organization. Further, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) suggested recommendations to countries to implement to ensure that learning remains uninterrupted during the COVID-19 period. The paper analyzes critically the Kenyan situation in implementing and adhering to the UNESCO recommendations to enhance learning in all levels of education. Also, it evaluated the challenges faced and possible remedies in form of recommendations for future actions. The paper is largely based on library research to draw practical implications for both education research and policy.

25-29

Authors: Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva

Misinformation in the COVID-19 era may stem from social media, preprints, elite peer-reviewed journals, or predatory journals. In part, this has been caused by an infodemic of information. One extreme case was the retraction of a pseudo-scientific paper on 5G claiming that 5G induces COVID-19 in skin cells, published in a PubMed-indexed journal, Journal of Biological Regulators & Homeostatic Agents. In the COVID-19 era, social media has also catalyzed the spread of misinformation and false conspiracy theories about non-existent or unproven risks. COVID-19-related misinformation might also arise from poorly vetted literature, one reason being the continued failure of implementing an open data (OD) policy. This is a core reason for two high-profile retractions of COVID-19-related literature in leading medical journals, The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine. Despite those retractions, those journals still do not mandate an OD policy, which, unlike an optional one, could instill greater rigor through heightened scrutiny of data sets, and thus fortified scientific integrity and public trust. If data is erroneous, it can negatively impact health policies. Thus, journals publishing original research on COVID-19 need to rethink their OD policies, and critically assess whether they are contributing to the medical misinformation stream, or not, and what this might imply to their reputation.

3-3

Authors: Jacob Owusu Sarfo

The “Journal of Advocacy, Research and Education” [ISSN 2410-4981] is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal that accepts high standard articles. The journal is announcing a call for papers that focuses on the multidisciplinary impact of COVID-19 on societies around the globe.

16-35

Authors: Ajay K. Singh, B. Jyoti Singh, Shah Nawaz Ashraf

Several studies have measured the influence of socioeconomic factors, IPRs, science and technology, and innovation-related activities, and government policies on economic growth in developed and developing economies. However, the manufacturing sector contributes a large share in the GDP of most economies. Growth of the manufacturing sector depends upon socio-economic factors, science and technological change associated variables, and IPRs related activities. For this, limited studies could investigate the influence of aforesaid factors on the manufacturing sector across countries. This study, therefore, provides a vital technique to develop the intellectual property protection index (IPPI), science and technological development index (STDI), and socio-economic development index (SEDI) using composite Z-score technique in selected 41 developed and developing economies during 2005–2013. IPPI, STDI, and SEDI are the combined indexes of 7, 7, and 15 associated factors respectively. The aforementioned indexes identify the relative position of selected economies in IPRs, science and technological development, and socio-economic development. As per the assessed values of IPPI, STDI, and SEDI, this study reports that there is a high diversity in intellectual property awareness, science and technology development, and socio-economic development in 41 economies. Accordingly, it measures the influence of aforesaid indexes on manufacturing value-added using country-wise panel data. Linear and log-linear regression models are used to estimate the regression coefficients of explanatory variables. Empirical results indicate that science and technological development, socio-economic development, and intellectual property protection-related activities have a positive and statistically significant impact on manufacturing value-added. It facilitates several policy suggestions to increase the growth of the manufacturing sector worldwide.

43-46

Authors: Kofi Amoani Debrah

In the area of safety climate, research has mostly focused on safety performance and its antecedents while improving safety performance has been the aim of practitioners in the area. Variables that are examined in safety research as a result of this shift mainly include safety culture, safety climate, safety knowledge, risk perception, management safety systems, and safety practices. Safety climate and safety culture are sometimes used interchangeably by researchers and professionals; these constructs are different though both are predictive measures of safety performance. Also, previous studies have mostly focused on establishing a safe climate and how the safety climate will influence measures of safety performance. This is because researchers often assume that since a relationship exists between safety performance and safety climate, any influence on the safety climate will directly affect safety performance. The problem is that very few of these studies examine the actual antecedents of safety performance. Hopefully, future studies can explore the relationships between safety climate and its established antecedents; safety knowledge, unsafe practice, and employee risk perception.