Skip to Main Content

Open Access: Where to Find Quality Openly Accessible Research: tips for researchers

Resources and Information about the Open Access Movement

Why do professors/researchers pick paywalls?

Why do professors pick paywalls?

A Report from the OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association) "Equity in Open Access workshop#2" by Malavika Legge.

My premise and presumption is that professors would not pick paywalls if all other things were equal. They sometimes pick paywalls now because they have no other choice (affordability) OR they are led to believe that paywalls are superior – something that the publishing community and those who are in charge of career assessment are currently reinforcing in ways described above. 

 

General

Journals

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists 12,740 Open Access journals from all over the world. High quality African open access journals are also encouraged to adhere to the requirements, and to apply for inclusion.

Data Repositories

  • The Africa Open Science Platform (AOSP) was established in 2017 with an aim to position African scientists at the cutting edge of data intensive science by stimulating interactivity and creating opportunity through the development of efficiencies of scale, building critical mass through shared capacities, and amplifying impact through a commonality of purpose and voice. The  Academy of Science of South Africa (2019) African Open Science Platform - Landscape Study report identifies 66 Open Access data Repositories on the African continent.
     
  • Data repositories are encouraged to register with re3data.org

Institutional Repositories

Researchers are encouraged to publish research articles with preferred publishers. In addition to publishing their research articles, they are encouraged to also upload a second copy of the published article into the institutions’ institutional repository. The purpose of an IR is to centrally archive all research output by an institution, at the same time increasing the visibility of the institution and the impact it has in addressing research challenges. The following directories provide info on known repositories from all over the world:

  •  ROARMAP: the Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies (ROARMAP) is a searchable international registry of policies charting the growth of open access mandates adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders that require their researchers to provide open access to their peer-reviewed research article output by depositing it in an open access repository.
  • openDOAR is the quality-assured, global Directory of Open Access Repositories
  • BASE search engine operated by Bielefeld University Library, is a search engine for academic web resources that harvests metadata from repositories
  • DSpace Repository: the Association of African Universities (AAU) has implemented a harvester DATAD-R (Database of African Theses and Dissertations and Research) to harvest African Repositories.  The collections of 4 communities (AAU Repository, Africa Centre of Excellence Scholarly Output, Research Africa & Theses/Dissertations) are available on the DSpace Repository. 

Books/Monographs