AFRICAN JOURNALS ONLINE (RF)

**GRANT CALL: STRENGTHENING NO-FEE OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING IN AFRICA** EIFL, AJOL (African Journals Online) and WACREN (the West and Central African Research and Education Network) invite African organizations - legal entities that own open access (OA) journals that do not charge any fees for either authors or readers (often referred to as Diamond OA journals), and where editorial teams are based - to participate in this call for proposals. This is the first of two open calls for proposals that aim to enhance the quality and strengthen the sustainability of Diamond OA publishing in Africa, while maintaining its diversity. The calls are part of a three-year project launched in November 2023 with funding from Wellcome. Earlier this year, we shared two surveys asking the Diamond OA publishing community in Africa to respond to questions about their challenges and needs. Responses received have been used to guide us in developing this call and we would like to thank everyone who contributed. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA Applications can only be submitted by African organizations - legal entities, e.g. universities, research institutes, learned/academic societies and other public non-profit institutions registered in Africa that own Diamond OA journals and where editorial teams are based, and / or manage platforms that host Diamond OA journals. An organization may submit a maximum of one application. Organizations can apply for support for a single Diamond OA journal or more than one Diamond OA journal they publish. We also invite applications from organizations hosting journal platforms that include Diamond OA journals. The deadline for applications is 23:59 GMT on June 17, 2024. For more information, please see the links below: - https://lnkd.in/dMAdhTcp - https://lnkd.in/dNifhtV8

The Society for Scholarly Publishing's Global Perspectives Task Force, a team of volunteers spanning different continents, has launched. The objectives of the GPTF are: - To analyze what global perspectives are absent or underrepresented in SSP, and understand the reasons for this; - To propose a set of recommendations outlining how SSP can engage more effectively with the global community. The survey linked below aims to gather ideas for the activities and initiatives that can improve the GPTF's collaboration with similar organizations across diverse regions and countries, especially in terms of specific challenges and aspirations that characterize scholarly publishing in our region. Please take the time to complete the survey below! https://lnkd.in/dvpcnCqY

The Open Access Journals Toolkit, developed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), is a useful and usable set of guidelines for Open Access Scholarly Journal publishing. Read more and find the toolkit at https://lnkd.in/dP_eJ-GA.

Surveys on diamond OA publishing in Africa. Complete these two surveys to help us better understand challenges facing the diamond OA community in Africa and to plan two grant funding calls Respond to these two surveys to help us to better understand challenges faced by the diamond open access (OA) community in Africa and to plan for grant funding calls for projects to strengthen African diamond OA publishing initiatives. The surveys support the ‘Collaboration for sustainable open access publishing in Africa’ project, which aims to develop and deliver a participatory funding approach that will enhance the quality and sustainability of African diamond OA publishing initiatives while maintaining their diversity. Diamond OA means that authors and readers pay no fees to publish or read articles. Your responses will feed into development of two calls for proposals for grant funding that will be co-designed with the diamond OA community in Africa. The first call will be issued later this year. If you are publishing a diamond OA journal in Africa please fill in this survey https://lnkd.in/d2K4Qxuv. If you are based in Africa and manage an institutional, national, regional and/or discipline specific portal/website that hosts/indexes/aggregates African diamond OA journals, please fill in this survey https://lnkd.in/d6EEJ87p. The deadline for submitting responses is 29 February 2024. The ‘Collaboration for sustainable open access publishing in Africa’ project is implemented by EIFL, AJOL (African Journals Online) and WACREN (the West and Central African Research and Education Network) with support from Wellcome. More https://lnkd.in/eGXRxHfA

This year's International Open Access Week theme is "Community over Commercialisation", and at AJOL we believe that for knowledge to benefit humanity, it must be accessible to as many people as possible. For that reason, we strongly support Open-Access initiatives in Africa and the world as a whole. We strive to guide and support African journals that wish to embrace Open Access, particularly Diamond Open Access, principles and practices. AJOL is small but mighty, with over two million article downloads each month — and our reach is global: AJOL CEO, Susan Murray, is speaking at the 2nd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access, being held this week in Toluca, Mexico. https://lnkd.in/d_YT_aUr

Webinar Alert! Editors and publishers, join us on Thursday, September 28, 2023, at 10am CAT to explore the world of ISSN with Gaëlle Béquet, the Director of the ISSN International Centre, to gain valuable insights into the significance of ISSN and eISSNs in the ever-evolving publishing landscape. If you can't make it, do not fear — the webinar will be posted to our YouTube channel later. #ISSN #eISSN #Publishing #Editors #AJOL #KnowledgeSharing

https://lnkd.in/ddYASddB

AJOL’s vision is to amplify African scholarly voices within the international research publishing sector. This Africa Day, we at AJOL renew our commitment to our central mission of serving African researchers and editors by confronting systemic challenges and barriers, developing Africa’s research publishing capacity, and in doing this, contributing towards greater equity within the global research system. AJOL receives another African-published journal's application for assessment and inclusion every couple of days, and already hosts content from 38 African countries. Happy Africa Day!