UCT Libraries’ new platform supports publishing of African-centric research | UCT News

The University of Cape Town (UCT) Libraries has developed a new continental platform for open access publishing in Africa. The platform allows the African research community to take ownership of creating and sharing its own scholarly content (including open access journals and open access monographs and textbooks), which contributes to the growth and development of local research for African societies.

The publishing platform is driven by social justice principles and addresses the challenge of Africa’s low production by practising diamond open access, ie, knowledge is free to access for the reader and the author does not pay to publish. In this model, diamond open access is a community-based publishing alternative model that disrupts the commercial publishing system. This shift returns the control of publishing back to the researcher community and is free from third-party publishers imposing their restrictions to access.

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