Mapping the Production of Knowledge on Women and Gender in the Arab Region (MPK) is a project of the University of California Arab Region Consortium (UCDAR). UCDAR is an organization of six universities founded (and directed for 20 years) in 2001 by Suad Joseph (UC Davis). UCDAR includes the American University of Beirut (AUB), American University in Cairo (AUC), Lebanese American University (LAU), Birzeit University (BZU), American University of Sharjah (AUS), University of California, Davis (UCD). In 2015, Joseph brought the proposal for the MPK to the UCDAR Steering Committee, which gave its approval.

Over the years a number of scholars have contributed at different points to conceptualizing the project. This has included: Suad Joseph (UCD); Charlotte Karam (AUB), Nadia Cheikh (AUB), Sara Mourad (AUB); Eileen Khalaf (BZU), Lena Meari (BZU); Martina Rieker (AUC); Lina Abirafeh (LAU), Myriam Sfeir (LAU), Jennifer Skulte-Ouaiss (LAU), Connie Christiansen (LAU), Zina Sawaf (LAU); Nawar Golley (AUS), Natalie Honein (AUS); Seteney Shami (ACSS), Moushira Elgeziri (ACSS), Nada Chaya (ACSS), Deema Kaidbey (ACSS).

Numerous meetings and discussions from 2015-2016 were undertaken in person and via skype to begin consideration of the project. It took many forms over the first couple of years and chrystalized into the MPK project between 2016-2017. A number of workshops were held to formulate the framework of MPK including April 5, 2016 at the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World (IWSAW); November 1-3, 2016 at the American University of Beirut; April 19-21, 2018 at the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, in Beirut; June 6-7, 2018 at the American University of Beirut. Joseph had won a small planning grant from the Ford Foundation, Cairo for the 2018 meetings in Beirut. It was at the April 2018 meeting that the project took shape and was named the MPK project. The April meeting formulated the three foci of mapping the scholarship on women and gender in the Arab region: the Economic, the Political, and Socialite. The June meeting focused on conceptualizing the research and the research proposal. Those two meetings were critical in developing the framework of the MPK project. From these two meetings, the foundational proposal was developed for the MPK project and submitted to the Society for the Promotion of Open Society in Amman.

Suad Joseph (UC Davis) submitted the proposal to the Foundation to Promote Open Society at several points between 2016-2020. In 2020, FPOS funded the Socialities thematic of the MPK project (2020-2023), leaving the Economic and the Political for future consideration. At that point, the MPK team included: Suad Joseph (UCD), Martina Rieker (AUC), Sara Mourad (AUB), Lena Meari (Birzeit University), Zina Sawaf (LAU), Nawar Golley (AUS).

The Senior Scholars (SS) met weekly, by Zoom, from July 2020 to December 2020 to formulate the project and to chart out the steps that needed to be taken. Central to this work was disaggregating the Socialities thematic into six subthematics that could be searched and mapped and their rationale: 1.) Media and Popular Culture; 2.) Class, Race, Minority, Ethnicity, Tribe, Family, Kin Care, Work, Social Networks; 3.) Sexuality and the Body; 4.) Social Consequences of War, Displacement, Migration, Violence, and Precarity; 5.) Space and Socialities; 5.) Religion. Each GSR was assigned to a senior scholar mentor to work one of the specific subthematics of Socialities.

The team studied the different kinds of literature reviews, search engines, platforms and the like. The decision was to focus on three critical axes to map the production of knowledge on women and gender in the Arab region related to Socialities: 1.) First, carrying out a scoping review of the scholarship to assess the range and nature of the published works on this thematic. The question was to identify who carried out research, on what countries, using what theories and methods and so forth. 2.) The second was to carry out a qualitative systematic review of the scholarship we assembled. 3.) The third was to carry out a critical review of the published research.

In the beginning of 2021, the SS interviewed candidates for the GSR position, finalizing the choices in March of 2021. In 2021, the GSR team included: Meghan Klasic (UCD), Chris Choueiri (AUB), Diana Khanafer (AUB), L’Emira Joanna Abillama (LAU), Maya El Helou (AUC), Zina Zarour (BZU). In 2022, the GSR team included: Meghan Klasic (UCD), Chris Choueiri (AUB), L’Emira Joanna Abillama (LAU), Maya El Helou (AUC), Zina Zarour (BZU). From this point, the GRSs met weekly, at times only with Suad Joseph, at times with trainers, at times with their SS mentors, and often with the full team of SS and GSRs together. Given the range of meetings, the MPK project members were engaged between one and three times a week with meetings, all by Zoom.

Through much of Spring and Summer of 2021, the GSRs undertook intensive training on databases, subject indexes, Scoping and Systematic Reviews, Boolean Operators, Zotero, Covidence, and other tools needed for the project. The trainers came from the UCDAR Transforming Refugee Mental Health project (https://sjoseph.ucdavis.edu/transforming-refugee-mental-health): Patrick Marius Koga (UCD School of Medicine), Bruce Abbott (UCD School of Medicine librarian). All team members, SS and GSRs were given access to the University of California library system.

To launch the searches to build the databases, the team worked with UC Davis librarian Adam Siegel to identify the appropriate databases. To train on the databases to identify which one to start with, the GSRs and SS did “blast” searches, global searches with key terms for each of the subthematics to identify the key terms that could be used for the Scoping Review.

Siegel identified the following databases:

* Web of Science (UCD)
* SCOPUS

International disciplinary indexes
* Sociological Abstracts (UCD)
* Anthropology Plus (UCD)
* ERIC (Education)
* PubMed
* Women’s Studies International (UCD)
* Gender Watch (UCD)
* LGBTQ+ Life (UCD)

European-language indexes
* Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE)
* Cairn Info (France)
* Francis (CRNS)
* Persee (France)
* Gallica (France)

Arabic World / Africa
* AfricaBib
* Shamaa – Arab Educational Information Network
* Access to Scientific and Socio-economic Information in Africa (ASKIA) (Unesco)
* Al-Manhal (AUC)
* AskZad (AUC)

Full-Text Journal Archives
* JSTOR (UCD)
* Project Muse (UCD)

Full-Text Newspaper Archives
Factiva (UCD)

Arabic Indexes
* http://www.dfaj.net/
* http://srv2.eulc.edu.eg/eulc_v5/libraries/start.aspx?ScopeID=1.&

From the review of the available databases, the team decided to launch the work focusing on Sociological Abstracts and to run through all the steps of the project with this one database in order to identify all the steps needed. To begin the work with Sociological Abstracts, the team developed Boolean Operators from the “blast” searches. The Boolean Operators, formed the basis for the Codebook that the team developed to help map the subthematics of Socialities. Each SS and GRS team worked on one of the subthematics to develop the Boolean Operators and to create the Codebook. All the Boolean Operators and the Code Book were revised numerous times as the team refined their work. The searches on Sociological Abstracts often had to be redone, as Boolean Operators were edited and changed, resulting in many months of work doing searches. The search results were uploaded to Zotero. Even with the purchase of extra memory, Zotero had significant difficulties managing the volume of references emerging from the searches. Months were spent on figuring out how to work with or around Zotero.

The Sociological Abstracts searches resulted in ~ 8,000 relevant references, but required GSRs to filter through hundreds of thousands of results. Initially duplicates were removed manually, until the GSRs found that Java Script could more quickly remove duplicates. With the references in hand, the team spent a number of weeks reviewing/reediting the Code Book, and making sure that all the GSRs were coding systematically. The coding took a number of weeks. The next steps were to evaluate the results from the Sociological Abstracts, to develop preliminary mapping and decide whether the results were significant enough to write analyses.