African Journals Initiative
Announcing the launch of the African Journals Initiative Internationalising African social science and humanities journals
Pluto Journals and African Books
Collective are
pleased to announce the launch of the ‘African Journals Initiative’, working
with a growing community of no-fee (‘diamond’) Open Access (OA) social science and humanities journals based in African universities,
supported by ScienceOpen and JSTOR.
This is a three-year pilot programme to:
- Enhance the profile and discoverability of African journals
- Increase journal usage and submissions
- Mobilise financial support from academic libraries and consortia
The initiative will work with six established African social science and humanities journals annually. In the first year, confirmed journals include Ibadan Sociology Journal, Journal of Humanities (Malawi), Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies (Tanzania), and Ethiopian Journal of Education.
It will provide a range of services for journals, promoting their visibility and discoverability, indexing, user-friendly submission systems, annual detailed impact reports, and much more. Journal selection will be overseen by an advisory board. Further expressions of interest in participation from other social science journals based on the continent are welcome.
The long-term vision is financial sustainability for university journals in the African social sciences and humanities, underpinned by international library and consortia support.
Pluto Journals has a strongly internationalist ethos and already publishes twenty diamond OA social science journals. ABC has thirty-five years of experience helping African academic publishers to distribute books globally. Both organisations are committed to building equitable academic publishing partnerships.
Stephanie Kitchen, Executive Director of ABC, noted how the collective is pleased ‘to be supporting the dissemination of a small number of these universities’ leading journals, enabled by our publishing partners.’ Roger van Zwanenberg, founding MD of Pluto Journals added that Pluto Journals are ‘delighted that the African Book Collective, JSTOR and ScienceOpen have joined together to make this launch possible.’
Stephanie Dawson of Science Open commented on the ‘huge value for the global community if we can support African journals to more fully integrate into scholarly digital infrastructure to make their voices heard.’ She described how ‘ScienceOpen has been steadily building a network in Africa so we see this cooperation as an important next step.’ Similarly, the Director of JSTOR, John Lenahan, noted how this initiative directly aligned with their mission ‘to help support access to scholarly content to users around the world at the lowest cost’, as well as to ‘participate in collaborations with organisations and university presses that support sustainable open access solutions.’
For further information please contact Roger van Zwanenberg at rogervz@plutojournals.com