African Journals OnLine (AJOL) is a South African

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

with headquarters in

Grahamstown Makhanda, formerly known as Grahamstown, is a town of about 75,000 people in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is situated about northeast of Gqeberha and southwest of East London. It is the largest town in the Makana Local Mun ...

. It is dedicated to improving the online visibility and access to the published scholarly research of African-based academics. By using the internet as a gateway, AJOL aims to enhance conditions for African learning as well as African

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development (music), the process by which thematic material is reshaped * Photographic development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting * Development hell, when a proje ...

Information inequality

Of the 50

least developed countries The least developed countries (LDCs) are developing countries listed by the United Nations that exhibit the lowest indicators of socioeconomic development. The concept of LDCs originated in the late 1960s and the first group of LDCs was listed b ...

in the world, 33 are in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

. There is widespread awareness of the importance of education in addressing poverty in the long term, usually with an emphasis on primary and secondary education. A concurrent focus on higher education on the continent is also needed for African countries to sustainably develop their capacity and economies and lift the region out of

underdevelopment Underdevelopment, in the context of international development, reflects a broad condition or phenomena defined and critiqued by theorists in fields such as economics, development studies, and postcolonial studies. Used primarily to distinguish s ...

. Primarily due to difficulties accessing them, African research papers have been under-utilised, under-valued and under-cited in the international and African research arenas. To date, the main information resources, published journals and journal articles available to and used by researchers, librarians and students in

are the same as those used in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

and

America The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. This is because information from the developed world is usually more readily available than that of developing countries. However, it does not adequately reflect the research output of Africa and is not always relevant or appropriate for higher education in

. Although access to global information resources is essential; equally important and essential is access to the local research output from the continent. Despite the wide range of capacity and resources within and between African countries, a legitimate generalization is that strengthening research and research-publishing are crucial priorities for improving

higher education Tertiary education (higher education, or post-secondary education) is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank defines tertiary education as including universities, colleges, and vocational schools ...

. At the same time as information sources from the developed world are currently made available for free ''to'' Africa (such as

HINARI Hinari Access to Research for Health Programme was set up by the World Health Organization and major publishers to enable developing countries to access collections of biomedical and health literature. There are up to 15,000 e-journals and up to ...

AGORA The agora (; , romanized: ', meaning "market" in Modern Greek) was a central public space in ancient Ancient Greece, Greek polis, city-states. The literal meaning of the word "agora" is "gathering place" or "assembly". The agora was the center ...

, OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment),

JSTOR JSTOR ( ; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources founded in 1994. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary source ...

African Access Initiative, and Aluka), there needs to be a corresponding focus on the online availability of information ''from''

if increased local capacity in research and dissemination is to be attained. To this end, in a high-tech, information hungry and rapidly globalising world, higher education in Africa needs technological tools to share and build on its own research output with neighbouring countries and the rest of the world. Scholarly journals remain a vital and entrenched means of academic communication. In the information age, providing electronic access to journals is becoming the norm if that research is to reach the international audience who need to be aware of it. Many worthy peer-reviewed scholarly journals publishing from Africa lack the means to host their content online in isolation. Others do have sufficient resources but cannot attain the online visibility necessary to increase awareness of the valuable research contained within. There is a need to support the ongoing functioning and sustainability of journals publishing research from

Increasing access to African information

The mission of AJOL is to support African research and counter the "North-South" and "West-East" inequality of information flow by facilitating awareness of and access to research published in Africa. Information from developed countries is not necessarily as relevant or appropriate for Africa as that from within the continent. AJOL provides an online system for the aggregation of African-published scholarly journals and offers global access to and visibility of the research output of the continent. As such, AJOL's primary beneficiaries are scholarly, peer-reviewed, African-published journals, and secondary (also direct) beneficiaries are African and international members of the scholarly community needing to access African-published research. AJOL hosts African-published, peer-reviewed scholarly journals for free – and includes both open access and subscription-based journals. The meta-data of all participating journals is open access on the AJOL website. AJOL also provides an article download service for researchers to access full text of individual articles. AJOL hosts over 350 peer-reviewed journals from 27 African countries covering a variety of disciplines including health, education, agriculture, science and technology, the environment, and arts and culture. The number of participating journals and researchers using the service is growing continuously. AJOL hopes to eventually include all quality, peer-reviewed journals on the continent. The AJOL website receives over 100,000 visits per month from over 190 countries around the world.

Background

The AJOL project was initiated in 1998 by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), a charitable organisation based in Oxford, in the United Kingdom. After a positive evaluation of the pilot in early 2000, AJOL was re-launched and expanded. Through INASP, AJOL formed a partnership with the

Public Knowledge Project The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a non-profit research initiative that is focused on the importance of making the results of publicly funded research freely available through open access policies, and on developing strategies for making thi ...

(PKP) relating to the open source software that underpins AJOL's online services. Following the proven need for the AJOL model in developing countries, INASP is currently establishing similar fledgling "JOL"s in Bangladesh, Vietnam and Nepal.

Partner organisations

* 667 participating African scholarly journals including 371 open access journals. * International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications; Collaborating with a wide network of partners in sister organisations, development agencies and publishers, INASP has implemented programmes in more than 40 countries worldwide. These programmes are designed for stakeholders engaged in all stages of the research communication cycle, with activities targeted to the needs of researchers, editors, national publishers, and librarians as well as ICT professionals. Following on from successfully initiating and establishing AJOL, INASP has established similar online journal projects in other regions, particularly in South and South East Asia. INASP also runs the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERI), which provides support to researchers around the world through access to information and training and support for the use of information. * NISC SA; NISC SA (www.nisc.co.za) is an electronic publishing company specialising in bibliographic database products and African academic literature. * The

; The Public Knowledge Project is a federally funded research initiative at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

and Simon Fraser University on the west coast of

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments. PKP has developed free, open source software for the management, publishing, and indexing of journals and conferences. Open Journal Systems and Open Conference Systems increase access to knowledge, improve management, and reduce publishing costs. The AJOL database was developed using the open-source journal management software called Open Journal Systems (OJS). Working collaboratively with this organisation, AJOL has been able to create a high quality website with greatly enhanced functionality. *The

Association of African Universities The Association of African Universities (AAU) (, ) is a university association of African universities based in Accra, Ghana. With member institutions all around Africa, AAU provides a forum for cooperation and exchange of information on higher ...

Donor partners

AJOL is currently supported by the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a $25,000 (about $550,000 in 2023) gift from Edsel Ford. ...

and through INASP's Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information, by the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (RDMFA), Sida, the UK Department for International Development (

DFID The Department for International Development (DFID) was a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the government of the United Kingdom, from 1997 to 2020. It was responsible for administering foreign aid ...

) and the

Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) is a directorate under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is primarily concerned with offering development aid to international partners, but in matters regarding Norway's Inter ...

(Norad). African Journals Online participates in the WorldWideScience global science gateway.

Hosted journals

Active journals

Some of the journals hosted by AJOL are: * '' Acta Theologica'' ()) * ''African Environment'' () * '' African Journal of Aquatic Science'' () * ''African Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology and Sport Facilitation'' () * '' African Journal of Educational Studies in Mathematics and Sciences'' * '' African Journal for Physical Activity and Health Sciences'' ()

Discontinued journals

AJOL also hosts the archives of several discontinued journals: * ''African Journal of Political Economy'', see ''African Journal of Political Science'' * ''African Journal of Political Science'' (1997–2003, ; from 1986 to 1990 published as ''African Journal of Political Economy'' ) * ''African Journal of Applied Zoology'', see ''African Journal of Applied Zoology and Environmental Biology'' * ''African Journal of Applied Zoology and Environmental Biology'' (1999–2006, ; original title ''African Journal of Applied Zoology'') * ''African Journal of Science and Technology'' * ''African Studies Monograph'' (2001–2007,

References

External links

*
Cognizance Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies
{{DEFAULTSORT:African Journals Online Non-profit organisations based in South Africa South African digital libraries Academic journal online publishing platforms Internet properties established in 1998