Status and Performance of Open Access Journals in Africa

Internationalization of the Moroccan Journal of Chemistry: A bibliometric study

“…Scholarly journals are important venues for worldwide research outputs, particularly related to hot topics like COVID-19 [ 10 ] and Bioeconomy [ 11 ]. That is why their analysis can bring insights into readership behaviors [ 12 ], citation-based influence [ 13 ], topical coverage [ 14 ], and research productivity [ 6 ]. Surprisingly, most such assessments are applied to Asian and African journals for searching paths to evolve their research quality and reach in the short run despite the challenges of maintaining them by developing countries in the two continents [ 1 ].…”

“…With the rise of the digital age, more research journals are being founded across the continent, mainly in South Africa [ 2 ], Nigeria [ 3 ], Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria [ 4 ]. Most of these newly created venues and even some of the oldest journals in Africa such as La Tunisie Médicale [ 5 ] have chosen to go open-access for better online visibility and an enhanced citation impact [ 4 , 6 ]. Some of these journals have been successfully indexed in the Directory of Open-access Journals (DOAJ), a community-curated database of trustworthy open-access research journals created in 2003 and available at https://doaj.org [ 7 ].…”

“…Five years earlier, the situation was a bit better with 490 indexed journals from Egypt, 72 journals from South Africa, 38 journals from Nigeria, and 8 journals from Morocco [ 6 ]. The reason behind this is that multiple scholarly journals have adopted predatory behaviors to have less-experienced authors and audiences favoring quantity at the expense of quality of contributions and readership and this negatively affected their reputation instead of increasing impact and reach leading to their elimination from the journal database [ 3 , 8 ].…”

Transition to open: A metrics analysis of discoverability and accessibility of LIS scholarship

“…South Africa is playing a role in the open access movement by being the biggest producer of open access journals on the continent after Egypt, as highlighted by Nwagwu and Makhubela 26 in a study assessing the progress of open access in Africa. However, with Egypt publishing 75.9% of the continent's open access journals, South Africa 11.1% and Nigeria 5.9%, the uptake of open access journals in the rest of Africa is low 26. Nwagwu and Makhubela26 report that, in a global context, the number of African open access journals is small (only 6.3% of journals listed in the DOAJ database are African).…”

“…However, with Egypt publishing 75.9% of the continent's open access journals, South Africa 11.1% and Nigeria 5.9%, the uptake of open access journals in the rest of Africa is low 26. Nwagwu and Makhubela26 report that, in a global context, the number of African open access journals is small (only 6.3% of journals listed in the DOAJ database are African). The small uptake means less competition and therefore an increased visibility for the open access journals already being published, particularly if they are addressing important research areas on the continent.…”