The seed for AfricArXiv was planted during the 2nd AfricaOSH summit in Kumasi, Ghana on April 14th, 2018.
AfricArXiv is a community-led digital archive for African research, working towards building an African-owned open scholarly repository; a knowledge commons of African scholarly works to catalyze the African Renaissance. We partner with established scholarly repository services to provide a platform for African scientists of any discipline to present their research findings and connect with other researchers on the African continent and globally.
Vision
A decentrally managed pan-African open Access platform that serves as a credible, reliable, and viable multidisciplinary archive of research works from and about Africa. The contents of AfricArXiv are accessible and interoperable across platforms within and beyond the African continent, while they are owned, hosted, and curated by the African scholarly institutions on the continent.
Mission
Establishing an independent and open research repository and interoperable source of contributions for and from researchers as well as innovators working on pan-African advancement with the goal to increase the discoverability of African researchers’ output and for all scientists who work in an African context.
Governance structure
AfricArXiv is envisioned to be entirely independent of and non-reliant on any national, legal, political and infrastructural restrictions, thus ensuring around-the-clock accessibility and functionality of the database to researchers in Africa and worldwide. All African researchers will have unrestricted access to the whole database at all times.
AfricArXiv is managed and coordinated by a team of scholars and experts in the field of scholarly publishing and digital infrastructure on the continent, positioning AfricArXiv to serve the scholarly community on the entire continent and increase collaboration with researchers across Africa and worldwide. To date, AfricArXiv hosts more than 180 scholarly works on six (6) repository platforms, demonstrating viability to promote the sharing and visibility of African research. For details, see https://info.africarxiv.org/team/
A decentrally organized pan-African repository platform
To ensure and enable distributed and decentralized hosting of the database(s), legal partnerships with scholarly institutions are being set up in all five regions on the African continent.
Currently, AfricArXiv is managed and coordinated via Access 2 Perspectives (A2P), a training consultancy based in Berlin, Germany. For legal liability status and additional information refer to access2perspectives.org/contact/.
A2P is actively looking to transition legal and financial ownership to regional African hosting partner institutions. The semi-independent status of AfricArXiv’s operational modus and services will be postulated in partnership agreements. Each partner institution will serve as a regional fiscal host, and manage finances and administration for AfricArXiv in that region together with a dedicated contact person in the core AfricArXiv team.
AfricArXiv will be governed by a Board of Trustees, an Advisory Board, and the Executive Team. The Board of Trustees will consist of representatives from the regional hosting institutions, key financial contributors, and individuals appointed by the team.
Our open-access digital infrastructure
AfricArXiv was launched in 2018 in partnership with the Center for Open Science (COS),
As of 2020 we are now also partnering with ScienceOpen, PubPub and with Figshare. Furthermore, we curate a community on Zenodo, and are currently planning to expand further with Figshare for Institutions and PKP preprints.
The Open Science Framework (OSF) is a free and open-source project management tool that supports researchers throughout their entire project lifecycle. AfricArXiv on OSF: https://osf.io/preprints/africarxiv
ScienceOpen is a discovery platform with interactive features for scholars to enhance their research in the open, make an impact, and receive credit for it. AfricArXiv on ScienceOpen: scienceopen.com/collection/africarxiv
PubPub socializes the process of knowledge creation by integrating conversation, annotation, and versioning into short- and long-form digital publications. AfricArXiv on PubPub: africarxiv.pubpub.org
Zenodo is a simple and innovative service enabling researchers to share and showcase research results from all fields of science. AfricArXiv on Zenodo: zenodo.org/communities/africarxiv
AfricArXiv’s response to COVID-19
The Covid-19 pandemic, which was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020, brought about novel disruptions in the academic and research world. This pushed organizations to navigate through new barriers and find innovative ways to contribute to minimizing the impact on public health. Here below are some of the ways AfricArXiv rose to the challenge to limit these disruptions and embrace the changing research landscape:
ScienceOpen Collection on COVID-19 in Africa
AfricArXiv team members curated a collection of COVID -19 research articles automatically sourced through our repository partner Science Open’s search algorithm. The articles included in the collection deal specifically with challenges and achievements on the African continent
AfricArXiv collaborated with other stakeholders in curating a preprint “ Harnessing the Open Science infrastructure for an efficient African response to COVID-19”, which advocated for the urgent need for Open Access to COVID-19 related literature.
The AfricArXiv website was redesigned to provide a COVID-19 related Q&A section as well as a chatbox that readily avails information on questions about how African researchers are responding to the pandemic. The chatbox, an initiative of the DialogShift and AfricArXiv collaboration, operates on Natural language Processing(NLP) thus accommodating questions in various languages. https://info.africarxiv.org/covid-19/
Multilingual COVID-19 information
Dissemination of information about best practices and behavioral suggestions to reduce the spread of the disease were mostly provided in English whereas there are about 2000 local languages spoken in Africa. AfricArXiv made a call to action that proposed to address this issue by providing short and consistent messages on relevant information in as many languages as possible through video or text format. https://info.africarxiv.org/multilingual-covid-19-information-videos/
Community Mobilization
In addition to the call of action proposed, AfricArXiv also provided platforms where researchers could have COVID-19 specific in-depth discussions and share resources as well as collaborate with each other.
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (sfDORA) whose recommendations focus primarily on practices relating to research articles published in peer-reviewed journals and extended by recognizing additional products, such as datasets, as important research outputs. These recommendations are aimed at funding agencies, academic institutions, journals, organizations that supply metrics, and individual researchers. Website: https://sfdora.org/read/
FAIR principles: The FAIR principles are a guide to enable digital resources to become more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable for machines and thus also for humans. These four foundational principles are more explicitly and measurably described at https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/
CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance emphasize the control over the application and use of Indigenous data and Indigenous Knowledge for collective benefit. These principles complement the existing FAIR principles encouraging open and other data movements to consider both people and purpose in their advocacy and pursuits. Website: gida-global.org/care
Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism: this initiative has three tenets to recognize multilingualism in scholarly work. This includes the promotion of language diversity in research assessment, evaluation, and funding systems. https://www.helsinki-initiative.org/en
COAR Community Framework for Good Practices in Repositories: whose aim is to bring together relevant criteria into a global, multidimensional framework for assessing best practices that can be adopted and used by different types of repositories (publication, institutional, data, etc.) and in different geographical and thematic contexts. https://www.coar-repositories.org/coar-community-framework-for-good-practices-in-repositories/
Fostering a strong community of open science scholars
AfricArXiv maintains a multi-platform approach to fostering communication and networking between its different user groups. The platforms include use of project management tool Trello to outline specifics of its internal projects and encourage collaboration with contributors, Slack to boost sharing of updates and other channels as outlined in communication channels at https://info.africarxiv.org/contact/
AfricArxiv metrics 2020: The growing follower base is composed of Twitter, Facebook page, Facebook group, LinkedIn institutional page, Youtube, WhatsApp, Slack, Github, and newsletter subscribers.
Chart
Building capacity in Open Science practices and Open Access scholarly publishing
In order to foster science literacy and promote open science practices, AfricArXiv has collaborated with its partners to provide an array of services such as training through workshops and webinars, lectures, and calls for submissions.
Webinars
In the course of 2020 AfricArXiv in collaboration with its partner TCC Africa co-hosted two webinars which were broadcast over Zoom and live-streamed to a Facebook audience. The webinars were:
The webinar was a collaborative effort between the Training Centre in Africa, AAS Open Research, Hindawi Publishers and AfricArxiv. The event was live-streamed on June 3, 2020 to over 600 registered participants over Zoom and Facebook platforms with additional e-resources provided. Guest speakers included: Dr. Osman Aldirdiri – AfricArXiv, Mr. Matt Hodgkinson – Hindawi Publishers, Ms. Elizabeth Marincola – AAS Open Research. DOI:10.21428/3b2160cd.845bf0c3
What are the new technologies for research quality assessment?
Promoting African language diversity in scholarly communication
The need for integration of African indigenous languages in academics and especially higher education has been part of the conversation predominantly in recent years.
African scientists realize that there is a need for a framework that clarifies the relevance of African indigenous knowledge sharing and production in the era of open science.
There is also the issue of bias on contribution from African researchers to global scientific production due to the lack of visibility of the research content being produced in Africa.
In accordance with AfricArxiv’s mandate of fostering African language diversity in scholarly communication, our platform publishes preprints exclusively submitted from African scientists whose research is relevant to the continent and disseminates research results in African languages. This is in an effort to promote the use of local African languages in science while highlighting the relevance of indigenous knowledge and research context and at the same time protecting the collective intellectual property of indigenous research.
Supporting Research
AfricArXiv supports research by providing a collaborative platform for multi-disciplinary research and enabling access to a worldwide collection of research output items.
African scientists and scientists working on Africa-specific topics can upload preprint and postprint manuscripts as well as review papers, case studies, and datasets. They can also search through the repository to learn what their fellow scientists on the continent are working on in their field of research. This is also in a bid to encourage knowledge exchange and support scholarly networking.
The figure below shows the different submission metrics since 2018 across our partner repositories.
Chart
Partnership building and network growth
AfricArXiv has steadily cemented its place as a significant component in the growing African Open Science Landscape by establishing strategic institutional partnerships with funders, research organizations, African studies departments, scholarly libraries as listed below.
User Identification
ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier known as ORCID iD which allows you to connect and share your professional information (affiliation, grants, publications, peer review, etc.) with other systems, ensuring you get recognition for all your scholarly contributions.
Discoverability
Africa in Science serves the scholarly community by promoting collaboration between scientists in Africa and its diaspora around the globe.
The Knowledge Futures Group builds technology for the production, curation, and preservation of knowledge in service of the public good.
The International African Institute is committed to making its scholarly materials as widely available within Africa as possible.
Open Knowledge maps provide an instant overview of a topic by showing the main areas at a glance, with relevant papers and concepts attached to each area.
Peer Review Services
PreReview provides ways for feedback to preprints to be done openly, rapidly, constructively, and by a global community of peers.
Peer Community In (PCI) aims to create specific communities of researchers recommending, for free, preprints in their field.
Decentralized Science provides a public repository of Open Peer Reviews and a reviewers’ reputation network
Capacity Building
COAR provides support for the Open Access repository community and participates in numerous conferences, events, and workshops around the world to help to build capacity and share good practices.
TCC Africa provides capacity support in improving researchers' output and visibility through training in scholarly and science communication.
Access 2 Perspectives provides novel insights into the communication and management of Science as well as equips researchers with the skills and enthusiasm needed to pursue a successful and joyful career.
Vilsquare uses cloud technology and digital media to move businesses to the digital economy.
Eider Africa develops responsive online and offline research mentorship programs for researchers in Kenya and Africa that help improve research capabilities as well as the quality and impact of research outcomes.
Science 4 Africa builds scientific research capacity for African researchers.
This program advances Open Science and develops as well as delivers MOOC modules to the academic community
AuthorAID provides support for researchers in low and middle-income countries by offering free online mentoring and collaboration, online courses, and resources.
Scholarly networking
OpenCIDER is a knowledge space where they highlight communities and resources related to several aspects under the umbrella of Open Data from a global perspective with a strong focus on Low-Middle Income countries (LMICs).
ASI is an African-led project seeking to facilitate and promote networking between young African scientists from all around the world by enhancing the visibility of African contributions to science and catalyze the establishment of productive collaborations between African scientists to develop science and technology.
The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects.
eLearning Africa is a global network of professionals working in the field of ICT-supported education, and a leading resource for the transfer of knowledge about eLearning to Africa.
Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (IGDORE) is an independent research institute dedicated to improving the quality of science, science education, and quality of life for scientists, students, and their families.
Just One Giant Lab is an international community, a non-profit, open-source, collaborative platform, and a bastion to open-science and impact innovation.
Bobab brings science and business professionals together in person and online, exploring challenges, promoting innovative solutions, and enhancing collaboration to accelerate technology and innovation in Africa.
Africa OSH is a community for Open Science and Hardware in Africa whose goal is to create a conversation and set of actions on OSH, among African actors, and between them and the international community, in order to adopt OSH principles and practices appropriate to our context.
The AphrikeResearch is a database and networking portal that provides a centralized platform for information that profiles and records African scientists, students, and research managers in order to promote intra-Africa collaboration and interventions for SDG realization.
Science Literacy
The African Science Literacy Network (ASLN) is a partnership between scientists and journalists that supports more accurate science communication to the general population.
AfroScience Network is an online platform for sharing, analyzing, and communicating science in Africa. This platform is a bridge between African scientists and the general public interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) on the continent of Africa.
Under the Microscope is a science communication initiative that promotes the creation of science content, particularly in Africa, providing a platform to educate, network, mentor, and innovate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) on the continent of Africa.
Publications
Preprints
Bezuidenhout, Louise, & Havemann, Johanna. (2020, September 3). The Varying Openness of Digital Open Science Tools. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4013975
Havemann, Jo et al. (2020). Harnessing the Open Science infrastructure for an efficient African response to COVID-19 [preprint]. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3733768
Bezuidenhout, Louise, McNaughton, Anna, & Havemann, Johanna. (2020, March 26). Multilingual COVID-19 Information Videos. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3727534
Bezuidenhout, Louise, Havemann, Jo, Kitchen, Stephanie, De Mutiis, Anna, & Owango, Joy. (2020). African Digital Research Repositories: Mapping the Landscape [preprint]. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3732274 // dataset DOI 10.5281/zenodo.3732171
Datasets
Havemann, Jo, Ksibi, Nabil, Maina, Mahmoud Bukar, Obanda, Johanssen, Okelo, Luke, & Owango, Joy. (2020). Higher Education & Research in Africa – the stakeholders [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3743348
Bezuidenhout, Louise, & Havemann, Johanna. (2020). The Varying Openness of Digital Open Science Tools [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4013812
Bezuidenhout, Louise, Havemann, Jo, Kitchen, Stephanie, De Mutiis, Anna, & Owango, Joy. (2020). African Digital Research Repositories: Mapping the Landscape [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3732172
Akligoh, Harry, Havemann, Jo, Restrepo, Martin, & Obanda, Johanssen. (2020). Mapping the COVID-19 global response: from grassroots to governments [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3732377
Jon Tennant, Bruce Caron, Jo Havemann, Samuel Guay, Julien Colomb, Eva Lantsoght, … Cooper Smout. (2019, March 16). OpenScienceMOOC/Module-1-Open-Principles: Second release (Version 2.0.0). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2595951
Presentations
Owango, Joy. (2020). To what Degree are African Researchers Publishing in Open Access Journals since the launch of Plan S?. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3973528 (audio/visual)
Hodgkinson, M., Marincola, E., Aldirdiri, O., & Owango, J. (2020). State of Open Access in Africa and its Implication on Researchers. AfricArXiv. https://doi.org/10.21428/3b2160cd.845bf0c3 (audio/visual)
Havemann, Johanna, & Ahinon, Justin Sègbédji. (2019, December). What role can Open Science play in enabling global knowledge exchange?. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3582040
Havemann, J., & Ahinon, J. S. (2019, October 27). What Role Can Open Science Play in Enabling South-North Dialogues?. https://doi.org/10.31730/osf.io/5hvgx
2020-03-13 African preprint server creates info hub for coronavirus research, Research Professional News (en)
2019-10-15 Multi-directional academic knowledge exchange from and about Africa, eLearning Africa News Portal (en)
2019-10-15 Échange multidirectionnel de connaissances en provenance et à propos de l’Afrique : à la découverte de la base de prépublications AfricArXiv, eLearning Africa News Portal (fr)
2019-09-24 Open Access: AfricArXiv facilitates knowledge exchange between Africa and Europe, ZBW Mediatalk (en)
2019-09-24 Open Access: AfricArXiv erleichtert den Wissensaustausch zwischen Afrika und Europa, ZBW Mediatalk (de)
2018-08-24 Introducing AfricArxiv – a preprint repository for African researchers, AuthorAID guest post (en)
2018-06-29 Africa’s preprint platform: a gateway for mother tongue science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Africa (en)
2018-06-28 Africa’s preprint platform: a gateway for mother tongue science, Research Africa (en)
2018-06-27 A research platform for African scientists will take papers in local languages, QUARTZ Africa (en)
2018-06-27 AfricArxiv: la plateforme qui veut partager la science en langues africaines, AfroTribune (fr)
2018-06-27 La plateforme des chercheurs africains pour donner plus de visibilité à leurs travaux, Courrier International (en)
2018-06-25 African scientists launch their own preprint, Nature Index (en)
Press Releases
2020-12-17 AfricArXiv receives JROST Rapid Response Award
2020-12-04 TCC Africa & AfricArXiv win at ASAPbio sprint
2020-12-02 AfricArXiv supports COAR on their Input to “Data Repository Selection: Criteria that Matter”
2020-11-23 AfricArXiv supports the virtual Chatbot Africa & Conversational AI Summit 2021
2020-11-19 COAR, TCC Africa and AfricArXiv sign partnership agreement
2020-10-22 AfricArXiv and COS partner to support pan-African research
2020-10-13 AfricArXiv in a nutshell – what we do, our achievements and our roadmap
2020-09-22 Call to action: COVID-19 Rapid Review
2020-07-08 Addressing Science Literacy in Africa Through Open Access
2020-04-23 Knowledge Futures Group and AfricArXiv launch Audio/Visual Preprint Repository on PubPub
2020-03-13 Why African researchers should join the Psychological Science Accelerator
2020-02-27 ORCID integrations on OSF, ScienceOpen and Zenodo via AfricArXiv
2020-01-27 Strategic partnership with ScienceOpen
2019-05-23 Strategic partnership with Open Knowledge Maps
2019-04-18 Strategic Partnership with IGDORE
2018-06-25 The Center for Open Science and AfricArXiv Launch Branded Preprint Service
Roadmap 2020-2022
Ahinon, J. S., Arafat, H., Ahmad, U., Achampong, J., Aldirdiri, O., Ayodele, O. T., … Havemann, J. (2020, September 25). AfricArXiv – the pan-African Open Scholarly Repository. https://doi.org/10.31730/osf.io/56p3e
Full documentation: ‘AfricArXiv – the pan-African Open Scholarly Repository’ as archived on OSF
AfricArXiv is always looking to the most relevant online infrastructure to adapt and live up to the requirements and expectations of the African scholarly community. Through the building of an open, transparent, reliable, efficient and decentralized discoverability infrastructure, it is our aim to support the connectivity of African scholars – and African scholarship – to a wider audience. As part of the near future plans, we intend to further diversify tools and applications to work along innovative, globally applicable standards and methodologies to accomplish our mission.
The AfricArXiv team is looking forward to continuing our work along the following categories in collaboration with our network partner organisations in Africa and other world regions:
Financial sustainability
Reach a sustainable financial structure by trust of the African scholarly community
Partnering with funders and investors across Africa and around the world
Expanding our Open Access digital infrastructure
Current partner repositories: Open Science Framework (OSF), Pubpub, ScienceOpen, Zenodo
Community-driven [Open] Peer Review with our partner organizations Decentralized Science, Qeios, ScienceOpen, PREreview, Peer Community in … (PCI)
Increasing networking and partnership building in the growing African Open Science Landscape
Liaising with African grassroots and institutional partners such as the African Open Science Platform (AOSP), AfricaOSH, regional RENs (WACREN, ASREN, UbuntuNet Alliance), EARMA, SARIMA, AfLIA and LIBSENSE
Establishing Institutional partnerships with
African scholarly libraries and African universities and other Higher Education organisations
African studies departments, libraries, and associations outside Africa
Research related institutions, organisations, funders, and companies in Africa or elsewhere
Establishing AfricArXiv as a self-hosted Africa-based Open Access platform
Strategic implementation of our partnerships with the Center for Open Science, ScienceOpen, ORCID, Open Knowledge Maps, Code for Africa, Knowledge Futures Group, International African Institute (IAI), Open African Repository (OAR)
Knowledge exchange, collaboration and scholarly networking between scholars in Africa and other world regions
With our partners Bobab, AfricaOSH, African Science Initiative (ASI), WACREN/LIBSENSE, Just One Giant Lab (JOGL), Psychological Science Accelerator, Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (IGDORE), eLearning Africa, Vilsquare Makers’ Hub
Fostering Science Literacy across the continent
In collaboration with TCC Africa, African Science Literacy Network (ASLN), Under the Microscope, AfroScience Network, Science Communication Hub Nigeria (SciComNigeria), Pint Of Science Kenya
Building capacity in Open Science practices and Open Access scholarly publishing
Providing training, workshops, consultancy services, lectures, scientific writing-sprints, calls for submissions, student assignments and other educative formats on OA scholarly publishing and Peer Review in collaboration with our partner organizations TCC Africa, Vilsquare, r0g_agency for open culture and critical transformation, Open Science MOOC, AuthorAid, Science For Africa, Access 2 Perspectives
Develop a self-hosted chatbot for community support and Q&A
Fostering [African] language diversity in scholarly communication
Encouraging submissions of scholarly works in traditional and official African languages
Providing guidelines and information for multilingualism in science in African languages
Encouraging collaboration between Indigenous Peoples and researchers
Highlighting the importance of indigenous knowledge in all disciplines
Legal aspects: assurance of self-determination, Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and compliance with UNDRIP
Providing guidelines and information on the inclusion of indigenous peoples in research project design, planning and implementation
Fostering gender equity in academia
Balancing gender equity across all scholarly disciplines
Encouraging scholarly work on gender-related topics across disciplines
A special thanks to our contributors
We are grateful to our contributors for their dedicated support and generosity at every level and for enabling AfricArXiv to continue growing as much as it has.
ASAPbio
Access to Perspectives
Joerg Heber
Egon Willighagen
Hugues Abriel
Oksana Iamshanova
Center for Open Science
Stefan Skupien
University of Bern
Philipp Zumstein
Nora Schmidt
Felix Schönbrodt
Aaron Caldwel
Moin Syed
Ã…se Kvist Innes-Ker
Wolfram Seidler
Ignazio Ziano
Daniel Lakens
Neil Lewis, Jr.
Rickard Carlsson
Jens Bemme
Various anonymous contributors
A special thanks to the AfricArXiv Team
We would like to acknowledge and thank the entire team at AfricArXiv for their significant efforts which have helped AfricArXiv attain its goals.
Luke Okelo
Justin Segbedji Ahinon
Olabode Omotoso
Ohia Chinenyenwa
Nada Fath
Fayza Mahmoud
Osman Aldirdiri
Mahmoud M Ibrahim
Dr. Sara El-Gebali
Umar Ahmad
Johanssen Obanda
Michael Cary
Niklas Zimmer
Obasegun Ayodele
Jo Havemann
Kevina Zeni
Hisham Arafat
Carine Nguemeni
Financial Report 2018 - 2020
Building and managing AfricArXiv involves expenses for human resource, technology development, partner services, third-party services like web hosting, digital communication tool fees, etc.
From 2018 to 2020, these expenses were covered by direct financial contributions, conference participation and partner service fee waivers, and a highly dedicated in-kind workforce by the team.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
