Susan Murray, Director, African Journals Online speaking at Open Access Africa 2010

1. Susan Murray
susan@ajol.info

2. Presentation Outline
 About Open Access
 Why Open Access in Africa?
 How? Some existing solutions to the challenges
 Results of AJOL OA survey
 By whom?

3. WHAT? Definitions of OA
 Budapest OAI (2001), Berlin Declaration (2003) Bethesda
statement (2003)
 In the strictest terms:
 Freely available
 Full rights for users to read, copy, distribute in digital
medium
 The work is included on a website that is backed by an
organisation committed to open access and archiving

4. Green and Gold Open Access
 'green': the author self-archives at the time of submission
of the publication (e.g. in institutional repository which can
include “grey literature”, journal articles, conference
proceedings, monographs etc.
 'gold': the publisher makes the material available online
for free in an Open Access journal immediately
 An article can be available online through both green and
gold access

5. Formal Open Access Models
OPEN ACCESS
Archival OA* Permit authors to archive pre-/postprint in institutional
repository or own website
Delayed OA* Provide free access 6-12 months after subscriber
access to print/online edition
Online OA* Provide free access to online edition, with subscriptions
retained for print edition
Development OA* Provide free access for institutions and individuals in
developing nations
Hybrid OA* Enable authors or institutions to purchase open access
for specific articles
Complete OA* Offer immediate open access without restriction, using
article fees and grants
* OA online with journal print subscriptions (some evidence to date shows no effect on
subscription sales)

6. Open access (OA)
 The principle:
 Free access to full text online
 Universal access with equal opportunities for all to discover
and use information
 Resulted initially from the library serials crisis: institutions
cannot afford to purchase the increased cost and increased
volume of research literature
 .... BUT, AJOL believes the largest & most important
outcome of OA is development in poorer countries.

7. WHY? Challenges to SC in Africa
 The digital divide
 World’s poorest continent
 Information from North to South
 Too little African research output produced &
too little of that being captured by the
Northern measures of quality, impact, and
indexing

8. The challenges cont.
 Lingering effects of bad policy
 Africa’s Higher Education & research not sufficiently
supported by Africans or anyone else
 Too little organised collaboration in Africa
 Strong articles or journals go elsewhere
 Unquestioned beliefs... FOREIGN IS NOT necessarily
BETTER

9. The challenges cont.
> 1 billion people (2010)
Africa is geographically huge
Lowest tertiary enrolment rate in the world at 5%
Numbers of tertiary enrolments has more than tripled …1985
(800,000 enrolments) to 3 million in 2002, imposing great strain
Many Tertiary Education institutions in Africa lack capacity
200 public universities in Sub-Saharan Africa (UK alone with 60
million population has 126 universities and over 1 million
enrolments)
Brain drain, social crises including HIV/AIDS, malaria, conflict, and
corruption
Adapted from Materu, P., (2007), “Higher education quality assurance in sub-Saharan Africa:
status, challenges, opportunities and promising practices”, A Report for the World Bank:
Washington.

11. Tertiary Education Spend
2001
http://www.worldmapper.org

12. Science Research Publishing
2001
http://www.worldmapper.org

13. Human Poverty 2002
http://www.worldmapper.org

14. The challenges to OA in Africa
 Significant, ubiquitous resource shortages of all kinds lead to
 Zero money for online hosting
 Very little money for Article Processing Charges (APC’s)
 Limited awareness and/or understanding of what OA is and
how it can be done
 Intended readership may not have any access to the internet
or to a computer
 Policies, systems, processes, budgeting etc in institutions need
to shift.
 Resistance to change and fear of unknown by journals,
authors, university leaders, etc.
 Unreliable internet and electricity connectivity makes local
hosting unstable for users.

15. OA is online... Few in Africa are!
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

16. But...
 Times are changing!
 Internet connectivity and awareness of OA is increasing.
 Channels for OA are being created in Africa

17. Benefits of OA in Africa
Even more important than in Developed
Global North
 African content shared RELEVANT to developing
country users’ context
 Representative flow of information from the
Global South to the Global North
 Allows access that otherwise not possible AT ALL.
 Evidence accumulating that OA increases use &
impact of research in developing countries that
have reasonable internet connectivity
J.A. Evans & J. Reimer: ‘Open Access and Global Participation in Science’.
Science. 323, 2009. pp. 1025

18. Benefits cont. (from survey)
 Increased visibility and dissemination (NB journal
financial concerns on behalf of readers)
 Increased article submissions to journals
 Reduced production costs when online (printing)
 Reduced postage costs too (very nb in Africa)
 Some journals hope that increased awareness
through being OA will bring in more international
print subscriptions

19. Achievements of OA in Africa
 Quick check on DOAJ and AJOL shows 151 OA journals hosted
from various African countries
 And another 50 or more that we know of not on aggregators
 Many health-related journals in particular have transitioned to
OA from TA (v important in Africa)
 Much greater awareness of OA through INASP, EIFL, AJOL, etc.
Proven by applications to partner AJOL being over 50% OA
now compared to 0% 4 years ago.
 Sustainability fears on OA seem to have dissipated.

20. AJOL = African Journals OnLine
 A website… the world’s largest online aggregator of
African published peer-reviewed scholarly research
(NOT a publisher)
 Non-profit organisation based in South Africa
 A pan-African partnership of journals
www.ajol.info

21. More about AJOL...
 Both Open Access (25%) and subscription titles
(and everything in between)
 Journals cover all academic disciplines, large
content in Health, Agriculture and African Studies
categories
 Has resources sections that link to other useful
websites and tools
 Plenty of exciting new functionality soon.

22.  AJOL works to increase online access to African-
published, peer-reviewed scholarly journals to
support quality research and higher education,
research on the continent
AJOL’s Vision is for African learning
to translate into African development

23. AJOL approved journals are:
 Scholarly and contain original research
 Peer-reviewed and quality controlled
 Able to provide all content to AJOL
 Grant permission for an AJOL article delivery /
download service
 Published within the African continent

24. Open Journal Systems (OJS)
 Developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP)
 Online publishing of journals
 Full publishing workflow:
 Author submits article using OJS
 Editor assigns peer-reviewers (article from OJS)
 Copyeditors, layout & proof-readers get reviewed article
from OJS and then put final version back
 Editor assigns article to an issue using OJS, then publishes
issue online when complete.
http://pkp.sfu.ca

25. AJOL uses OJS to:
 Host and aggregate journals (at no charge)
 Full OJS workflow offered to qualifying journals, hosted
by AJOL – and operated by Editors.
Benefits of OJS:
 Designed for best-practice publishing
 Easy to use, and flexible
 Search engine optimised
 Standards (Counter, DC, OAI-PMH) compliant
 Good support; used by 1000’s of journals

26. HOW? African content OA?
 Researchers want access to quality full text quickly,
easily and affordably (pref OA).
 African authors and journals want visibility of their
content online and to have high readership.
 Universities still grappling with resource scarcity, ICT
infrastructure & skills, systems and policies
 Institutional and Subject-specific IR’s “green route”
still currently in their infancy in Africa
 BUT, the “gold route” OA is doing well in Africa

27. AJOL and OA achievements...
 400 titles from 30 countries currently online
 Two thirds of AJOL partner journals are not online anywhere
else!!!
 Over 25% of AJOL partner journals are Open Access (often not
possible unless free online hosting)
 16,525 Open Access articles on AJOL out of 58,076 (28.5%)
 Over half new partner applicants are OA
 AJOL has a Google PageRank of 8; Alexa.com 89,361th in world
 We thank God for the positive impact of African Journals OnLine (AJOL) on enhancing visibility of our
journals published in Africa. Many research works published in our African journals in the past were
often labelled as local papers because others could not access them. AJOL is changing that notion, in
that African journals and articles published therein are now available globally.
Prof Tolu Odugbemi, Vice Chancellor, University of Lagos (permission to quote granted)

28. Access Options on AJOL
Traditional subscription model
Full open access
Delayed open access
Open access on specified articles (hybrid)

29. Who uses AJOL?
 Over 200 000 people each month!
 Researchers, academics, policy-makers, health
professionals, etc

31. 27%
19%30%
19%
2%2% 1%
Visits by Continent
Asia
Europe
Africa
N. America
(not set)
Oceania
S. America

32. 30 countries with journals on AJOL

33. AJOL Survey of OA partners
 Used Survey Monkey (free version, limited number of
questions) two months ago
 102 OA titles on AJOL were asked to participate in the
survey (we still need to report back to them)
 46 did complete the survey (nearly half)
 30% born digital, averaging 4.2 years publishing
 70% switched to OA after average of 9.9 years Toll Access
 Of all 46, average duration of OA has been 3.9 years.
 Summary follows....

34. Through own internet research and use of other OA journals 16
From AJOL 9
From friend, colleague or other journal 7
From an interested institution (eg. ASSAf, Bioline, Scholarly
Exchange, AERA)
4
Through participating in a training workshop on OA (eg. INASP,
Canadian University)
4
How did you first learn about OA?

35. Other
• Contractual publishing for other organisations
• Mostly institutional support and volunteerism. Advertising and Donor support are
planned in future
• Publisher Support from Scientific Society, as parent body who published, and is still
publishing, the hard copy
• Authors pay for certain services (i.e., translations)
• The journal is supported by the subject-specific community in Africa, the universities,
laboratories grants, personal grants and volunteerism
• Interested public purchases
• Personal contribution of Editor-in-Chief
• The journal is funded 100% by faculty funding.

36. What helped/made OA possible?
Internet access and ICT infrastructure 10
AJOL 9
Own institution funding / in kind support 7
Determination & dedication of journal team 7
Other institution / donor funding 6
Other institution in kind support 6
APCs and willingness of authors to pay 5
Personal / journal conviction of moral imperative to share
research outcomes
5
Publisher funding / in kind support 3
Internet / ICT skills 3
Nothing in particular 2

37. OTHER FACILITATING ITEMS....
 Availability of adaptive ICT that enables me, a person with
total visual disability, to access information without sighted
assistance (I use a screen-reader to do my work on the
computer).
 Impressive cooperation from the operators of the African
Journals online where our journal is based.
 1. Request from contributors; 2. Not to be left behind; 3.
Acceptability.
 INASP, and various other workshops
 Planned to be OA from outset
 Willingness of reviewers to work free of charge
 Authors willing to pay because they need promotion
What helped/made OA possible?

38. Wider accessibility / visibility 35
Developing countries can’t afford to pay and need access 6
African countries can’t afford to pay and need access 6
So that it is free of charge for users 4
For African research to reach the rest of the world 4
To reduce costs 4
To improve journal’s reputation / give wider acceptability 4
To increase article submissions (globally) to the journal 2
Journal received a grant that made OA possible 2
Authors need to publish for professional advancement 2
Improve impact / citation impact 2
Why OA instead of subscription?

39.  OTHER COMMENTS MADE....
 A subscription model would have required personnel which we
do not have.
 1. Authors and their works can be accessed and used; 2. Wider
publicity; 3. Easier to deliver
 Subscription sales were very low anyway
 Hope to get higher print subscriptions
 We have both models
 1. Pay model does not make sense to me. Authors making
journal rich; 2. In Africa, we can't pay anyway.
 Donor regulations
 Broader accessibility, especially in Madagascar (journal's
geographic focus)
 Allows more timely publishing
Why OA instead of subscription?

40. OA and Open Source Software
 It is FREE!
 It does the job
 Lots of online support & upgrades
 Through AJOL and other similar organisations, and
the use of free Open Source Software, African
journals can allow OA quite easily (codicil though).

41. Inferences for other
Developing Country Aggregators
 Don’t be afraid to choose Open Source Software
 Hosting all models of journals helps increase
transition to OA
 Relationships, communication, good organisation
and hard work are still the drivers of success, the
technological tools are just the vehicle
 Teach yourselves!!!

42. Inferences for journals
 Get online
 Use free open source software (particularly
OJS)
 Aim for Open Access
 Join online aggregators – in partnership & co-
operation, so much more can be achieved
 And again, teach yourselves – be pro-active in
learning about ICT options you have.

43. Inferences for authors
 Aim to publish in OA journals, pref in Africa &
try to retain copyright!
 Use your IR’s if you have them, & urge OA – in
partnership & co-operation, so much more can
be achieved
 Re-examine your motives for publishing & how
else you can make your work have impact
 And again, teach yourselves – be pro-active in
learning about ICT options you have.

44. Inferences for policy
 Improve ICT infrastructure
 Increase ICT skills training
 Fund HE & Research
 Fund Research (OA) dissemination
 Build on existing initiatives
 Support research publishing (OA)
 Change publication reward process
 Collaborate more to benefit all
 Fund research AND
 Research dissemination
 Encourage OA & partnering
 Co-ordinate with other donors
African
Governments
Universities
Donors

45. Future potential for AJOL
 Full text online (done – needs adjusting)
 Alternate metrics
 Digitizing and hosting African NPO research
 Hosting African-published OA books
 Hosting data associated with articles on AJOL
 Hosting T and D
 Providing an African OA Article Repository
 Show-casing best practice examples

46. “Helping developing countries communicate and use science is
essential to international aid and diplomacy”
 The biggest single factor limiting developing countries' potential for
achieving sustainable economic growth — or even attaining the Millennium
Development Goals — is their ability to access and apply the fruits of
modern science and technology…
 It also highlights the importance of effective science communication —
crucial for bridging the gap between producing new knowledge and turning
that knowledge into either practice or policy, thus significantly increasing
the returns from initial investments in research…
 Seen from this angle, science, communication and diplomacy can form an
important alliance, particularly in the context of development aid. Putting
this alliance into effect is not easy. But it is essential if the goals of
sustainable economic growth and social development are to be achieved
across the developing world.”
http://www.scidev.net/en/science-communication/editorials/science-communication aid-and-
diplomacy.html David Dickson

47. Thank you!
susan@ajol.infoSusan Murray
AJOL Director