Exploring publishing practices in Africa

Open Access publishing enables researchers to share their work with an audience who would otherwise have limited access due to the subscription models of closed-access journals. Open Access publishing also enables many researchers to have their work more usable and cited because they are accessible to everyone and are available freely. AfricArXiv is fostering open access publishing for research in and about Africa, working in collaboration with open access repositories including Zenodo, PubPub, ScienceOpen, Figshare, Qeios, and Open Science Framework.

The University World News released a report titled Study highlights concern about publishing practices, expressing the challenges that are faced by Sub-Saharan African researchers that consequently lead to few peer-reviewed articles published in the online publishing industry from the African continent.

Challenges in publishing highlighted in the report include Impact Factor challenges. Despite the radical shift of academic publications transitioning into both digital and hard copy format, African researchers, students and other stakeholders are constrained by the cost of processing fees and journal subscriptions. In response, AfricArXiv is providing a free platform where African researchers and non-African researchers working on research in and/or about Africa can upload their working papers, preprints, accepted manuscripts, and published papers open access; increasing intercontinental and cross-continental collaboration; accelerating discoverability of research output in and about Africa; and promoting the visibility of African researchers.

References

Mitchell, R., Rose, P., & Asare, S. (2020). Education Research in Sub-Saharan Africa: Quality, Visibility, and Agendas. Comparative Education Review, 64(3), 363–383. https://doi.org/10.1086/709428

You can also learn how to publish on AfricArXiv here.