Special Report: Academic Publishing in Africa – Challenges and Opportunities
Opportunities
Challenges
Predatory Publishing
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Open Science
Establishing a Journal
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Universities in Africa should establish research data repositories to archive important information gathered over time for posterity purposes, an important tool that can serve as an alternative to and complement open-access publishing, a webinar on ‘Understanding Open Science and Research Data Management’ heard.
African biodiversity conservation and ecology researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa are under-represented in high-impact factor journals, although a third of primary authors in those fields are based in institutions in the region, a study found. According to the researchers, African authors were inadequately represented in large and multi-country studies.
The documented hijacking of a legitimate academic journal earlier this year shows how the pressure on researchers to publish, combined with the proliferation and development of AI technology, is threatening to undermine trust in research and is even derailing the careers of affected academics.
Distance education can be used to increase the knowledge and awareness of postgraduate students and early-career researchers about predatory publishing and research ethics in under-resourced low- and middle-income countries. A study found that half of the respondents who received training in the field had no prior knowledge of predatory publishing.
Despite the huge untapped potential for a knowledge-driven economy, the African academic and research community is missing out on the numerous opportunities that come with the open-access publishing of books.
Increasing investment in open-access publishing and seeking more opportunities for research collaboration are some of the things that could help academics who are working at institutions in Africa to get published more often, ultimately getting noticed and enabling career progression.
