Open Access Publication of Public Health Research in African Journals: A Collaborative Project
Explore the initiative between PublicHealth Africa and LIBSENSE aimed at enhancing research capacity in Africa by facilitating open access publication of public health research. The project addresses challenges such as limited research capacity and barriers to publishing high-quality research relevant to local populations. Learn about the methods used to identify journals in African countries focusing on Public Health and the research questions being investigated.
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Presentation Transcript
Open Access publication of Public Health research in African journals A collaborative project between PublicHealth.Africa and LIBSENSE Presented by Dominic Agyei Dankwah
What we Know: Relative lack of research capacity in the Global South Lack of research with local relevance to populations in the South Difficulty in publishing high-quality research in an open access format so that it is readily available and the results can be applied where they are needed
Some recent data Open Access papers have drastically fewer lead authors from low-income regions Article Processing Charges are a barrier to Open Access publication for scientists from the Global South
Some recent data PublicHealth.Africa has been established to leverage the strengths of African alumni from international and local online and face-to-face Master of Public Health courses In a survey of African public health graduates, more than a half of the respondents reported barriers to research and writing
Some recent data Survey participants were asked if they would like to publish their research as open access More than 70% said yes, if the journal waived or did not levy publication fees Only a half said yes if their institution had to pay and only a quarter if they had to pay the fees themselves
Research question 1 Research study established in partnership between PublicHealth.Africa and LIBSENSE What proportion of African journals, in the broad field of Public Health, publish articles in various categories of open access?
Methods Identifying the journals expected to publish articles in the area of Public Health: Search for journals published in each country using AJOL (African Journals Online), AIM (African Index Medicus), local knowledge
Methods Country journals investigated: Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Methods Data collection sheet developed and piloted. Data collected by country investigators Data validated by one expert librarian to standardise results
Results Country journals: 150 journals explored with numbers varying from 1 to 97 in each country. 66 published by universities and 77 by learned societies (some jointly) 82 published twice a year or annually.
Results 95 of the 150 journals were open access and available for free download 49 used a Creative Commons licence 16 were indexed in PubMed
Results Full APC: 81 Article Processing Charges Partly waived: 10 Fully waived: 51 Note: information missing for some journals
Conclusions Many journals with Public Health content published in African countries with numbers varying from 1 to 97 Published by universities and learned societies in similar numbers, mostly twice a year or less Two thirds as open access, one third had a Creative Commons licence and very few indexed on PubMed More than one half charge full Article Processing Charges (APC)
Future plans Part 2: Explore articles in the identified journals for selected years Select Public Health articles Record the access type, corresponding author if given, number of authors and their country Experience of open access publishing Part 3: Survey of corresponding authors Views on barriers and benefits to open access Make recommendations based on results
