Skip to Main Content
It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

Scholarly Communication: Where to Find Quality Openly Accessible Research: tips for researchers

This guide defines Scholarly Communication, and its role in raising visibility of Researcher output and web presence. Scholarly Communication is defined as "the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality,

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