The African Journals Online pilot project
Diana Rosenberg
Diana Rosenberg manages Africa Journals Online on behalf of INASP, the International Network for the Availability of
Scientific Publications, 27 Park End Street, Oxford, OX1 1HU, England.
Tel +44 1865 249909, fax +44 1865 251060, e-mail:drosenberg@gn.apc.org; http://www.oneworld.org/inasp/
A key problem facing scholarly journals published
in Africa is their lack of visibility. Little is known about their existence
outside their country of publication, and they are therefore not much
used. As well as contributing to the 'invisibility' of African scholarship,
this also means that such journals are rarely able to build up viable
subscription bases. And this, in turn, leads to irregular publication
and frequent closures.
More effective marketing and promotion is the
obvious answer. And this is where African Journals Online (AJOL) comes
in. The Internet can be exploited in various ways to promote journals.
Yet because of weak technological infrastructures and the additional
costs of using the new technologies, few African publishers are able
to make use of this new marketing tool. In 1997, INASP, after consultations
with colleagues in Africa and with the help of funding from UNESCO
and the National Academy of Sciences, USA, established a pilot project
offering access via the Internet to either the tables of contents
(TOCs) or the full text of African-published journals. The AJOL service
went live on the Internet in April/May 1998.
AJOL's objectives are:
- to enable the results of research carried
out in Africa to become more widely known and more easily accessible;
- to strengthen the African academic publishing
sector, by providing income through encouraging both print or electronic
subscriptions and the purchase of single articles;
- to assess the impact of using the Internet
to promote African-published journals.
The pilot project was restricted to journals
in science, technology and medicine in the English language, published
in sub-Saharan Africa excluding South Africa. Journals were selected
on the basis of their past history of content quality and regular
publication, and so that as many different subject areas and countries
of publication as possible could be included. Initially ten journals
were selected in science and technology and three in medicine. Additional
funding made it possible to expand the coverage with a further seven
journals in science and technology.
The AJOL service is offered in two parts, with
TOCs of science and technology journals available on the INASP website
http://www.oneworld.org/inasp/ajol and the full text of medical journals
on the Bioline site http://www.bdt.org.br/bioline/, an existing electronic
publishing service for bio-scientists. Issues for 1997 and 1998 were
included in the pilot project.
The situation at June 1999 is:
TOCs of the following 12 journals are available on the INASP website
http://www.oneworld.org/inasp/ajol
- African Crop Science
Journal (Uganda)
- Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia
- Discovery and Innovation (Kenya)
- Ghana Journal of Agricultural Sciences
- Ghana Journal of Science
- IFE Psychologia (Nigeria)
- Insect Science and its Application (Kenya)
- JASSA: Journal of Applied Science in Southern
Africa (Zimbabwe)
- Journal of Science and Technology (Zambia)
- Malawi Journal of Science and Technology
- SINET: Ethiopian Journal of Science
- Zimbabwe Veterinary Journal
The following journals have been invited
to join the TOC service but no issues have yet been received:
African Environment (Senegal)
African Journal of Tropical Hydrobiology and
Fisheries (Uganda)
East African Agricultural and Forestry Journal
(Kenya)
Journal of Pure and Applied Science (Sierra
Leone)
Tropical Freshwater Biology (Nigeria)
TOCs, abstracts and full text of the following
medical journals are available on the Bioline site http://www.bdt.org.br/bioline/
- African Journal of Neurological Sciences
(Kenya)
- Central African Journal of Medicine (Zimbabwe)
- East African Medical Journal (Kenya)
TOC service
INASP took out subscriptions to the selected journals and TOCs are
placed on the website as each issue arrives. In addition, separate
pages are provided for information about the journal, such as mission
statement and editorial board, and how to subscribe. The user moves
from the AJOL home page to the journal information to the contents
of an individual issue. Links are provided to other sites on the Internet
which display TOCs of or indexes to African-published journals.
Access to the TOCs is free. Users are given
the option of ordering a photocopy of any article listed. Payment
is by article; order instructions, together with a form, are supplied.
Orders can be sent by post, fax or e-mail and articles can be supplied
by fax or post.
Full text service
Abstracts of articles and full text/graphics are offered. Access to
the abstracts is free of charge. Users can take out an electronic
subscription to the journals or pay to see the full text of an individual
article.
Publicity
Publicising the project in every possible way was seen as crucial.
Both print and electronic means were used:
- 6,500 copies of a simple three-fold A4
leaflet were inserted in the May 1998 issue of the INASP newsletter,
distributed at conferences in Europe, Africa and USA, and sent to
appropriate journals, libraries and scholars;
- an article about AJOL appeared in the
May issue of the INASP Newsletter;
- a number of journals agreed to include
an advertisement about AJOL;
- a press release went out to a number of listserves; Africana sites
were asked to provide links;
- details were sent to the major search
engines;
- relevant electronic journals and newsletters
were asked to carry items about AJOL.
Evaluation
An evaluation of the pilot project is underway in July 1999. The reactions
of users are being sought and journals are being asked about any impact
on subscriptions.
The Web Server statistics are encouraging. Page
requests to AJOL on the INASP site rose from 100 per week in June
1998 to a present average of around 500 per week. Most requests come
from the USA, Europe and South Africa. Usage of the medical journals
is somewhat lower.
One disappointing interim result is the low
uptake on requests for photocopies of articles publicised in the TOCs
or purchases of articles or electronic subscriptions from the Bioline
site. To date we have received only two requests for photocopies and
there have been two requests for electronic subscriptions. It could
be that readers are using the sites for current awareness only and
accessing the full text by other means. Another possibility is that
the journal contents do not sufficiently whet the appetite of users;
no matter how well a journal is promoted, in the end its value depends
on the quality of its contents.
Future of AJOL
It is recognised that a year is a very short time for any tangible impact
to be felt. INASP would like to maintain and expand the AJOL service
for a minimum of another three years. In particular it would like to
increase the number of journals offered in science and technology to
25, additionally offer TOCs of ten medical journals, and expand the
service to include ten journals in the social sciences. In the meantime,
the service is being maintained at its present level to the end of 1999,
thanks to funding received from ICSU Press. [end] [BPN, no 25, 1999,
p 19.]
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