INASP Links & Resources
PUBLISHING & SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION:
African journals and journal publishing

African Journals OnLine (AJOL) 
AJOL offers free online access to the contents of scholarly journals published in Africa. Its objectives are to: 

• provide access to research undertaken and published in Africa;
• increase knowledge about African scholarship;
• strengthen African journal publishing.

Features include: 

• tables of contents (TOCs) of journals in agricultural sciences, health, science and technology, and social sciences. Journals are mainly in English but titles in French are in process of being added; abstracts of articles;
• links to full text (if available on the Web);
• back files maintained for up to five years;
• key word search of journal contents;
• instructions to authors;
• document delivery service;
• pages in French as well as English;
• links to TOCs, abstracts and full text of journals of relevance to Africa, but published outside the continent;
• links to other current awareness and indexing services covering African published journals.

http://www.inasp.info/ajol/index.html 

Note:
See also entry below for an article describing the scheme.

African Journals Online: Improving Awareness and Access (by Diana Rosenberg)
This paper in the January 2002 issue of Learned Publishing describes the scope and development of INASP's African Journals OnLine (AJOL) project http://www.inasp.info/ajol/index.html , a free service that provides online access to the tables of contents and abstracts of scholarly journals published in Africa, backed by a document delivery service. The service has recently been expanded to take in many more journals, and has now become a showcase for African journal publishing. The article reviews the objectives of the expanded programme, its coverage and components, management, current usage, and the benefits to participating journal publishers. It also examines aspects of the scheme's long-term sustainability, and draws attention to areas of African journal publishing that require improvement, notably journal management, marketing, and improvements in quality of content. The author concludes that it is equally important that "the profile of the journals and their value to scholarship in their own country must be raised and acknowledged" as a first step towards getting them better used and read. 
http://ramiro.catchword.com/vl=17895205/cl=20/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-bin/linker?ini=alpsp&reqidx=/catchword/alpsp/09531513/v15n1/s7/p51  

Digital Imaging Project Africa (DISA)
The aim of the DISA project is to make accessible to scholars and researchers worldwide, South African material of high socio-political interest that would otherwise be difficult to locate and use. In addition, the project aims to provide experience and develop knowledge and expertise in digital imaging amongst archivists and librarians in Africa. The title of the first project chosen is South Africa's Struggle for Democracy: Anti-Apartheid Periodicals, 1960-1990. It covers the three key decades in the growth of opposition to apartheid rule, a period when the African National Congress (ANC), black consciousness, and other resistance movements were very active. Approximately forty periodical titles have been selected for inclusion. (The full list of journals to be covered can also be found at David Bullwinkle's AfricaBib site at http://www.africabib.org/DISA.html). http://disa.nu.ac.za/ 

H-AFRICA
Table of Contents Table of contents service of over 100 African/African studies journals in the humanities and the social sciences, including 25 from Africa. Maintained by Peter Limb. http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~africa/toc/index.html  

Index to African Periodical Literature
Maintained by the Library of Congress Office in Nairobi, provides an index to periodical literature from Eastern and Southern Africa and electronic bibliographic search. service http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Hornet/irin_52098.html

South/Southern African Online Scholarly and Professional Journals
Part of the Yenza! 'Start your Research' pages, this is a comprehensive list of over 70 South African scholarly and professional journals currently online in some form or another (i.e. some full-text, other with table of contents listings and/or abstracts only), with links to their URLs. http://www.nrf.ac.za/yenza/research/sajourn.htm#Journal 

This page was last updated on: 07 July 2003 © International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) 1998-2003.