New continental platform for open access publishing

A new continental platform for the open access publishing of journals, monographs and textbooks in Africa has been developed by South Africa’s University of Cape Town (UCT) through its library service. The platform allows the African research community to share their scholarly content, which could advance the growth and development of local research aimed at benefiting African society. “The major publishing houses have inadvertently northernised the publishing landscape,” said Dr Reggie Raju, the director of research and learning at UCT Libraries. “These publishing houses are driven by the fundamental principles of economics; that is, they will publish that which will be bought. It is the Global North that has the buying capacity.” The “unintended but systematic” ‘northernisation’ of the publishing landscape has marginalised the research voices from the Global South, Raju told University World News. He added that the inequalities in publishing for and by marginalised voices are compounded by economic circumstances: the inability of Global South authors to pay exorbitant article processing charges in an environment in which there is a push via the openness movement for the free sharing of research output. “There is a desperate need for the democratisation and de-northernisation of the publishing landscape – a publishing process that promotes social justice and the inclusion of African researchers and research output into mainstream research processes,” he said.

[...]