General information before submitting
Why should you share your research results on a preprint repository?
Preprint manuscripts hosted on the AfricArxiv repository allow for free and quick dissemination and global discussion of research output before publishing in a peer-reviewed journal.
All published articles will be granted a
Please note: AfricArXiv is not a journal and does not evaluate the scientific quality of a manuscript in all details. Once a manuscript passes moderation and is published, it persists on the system indefinitely. We reserve the right to withdraw manuscripts after publication if fraud or plagiarism is identified.
We encourage community interaction through commenting and sharing of preprints. Read more at info.africarxiv.org/peer-review.
Check for journal compliance and embargo periods: Use the SHERPA/RoMEO service to check journal preprint policies for further details on self-archiving options for the journal in which you plan to publish your article.
We encourage submissions from
- African scientists based on the African continent
- African scientists who are currently based at a host institute outside Africa
- non-African scientists who report on research conducted on African territory; preferably with African co-authors listed
- non-African scientists who report on research relevant to African affairs
We accept the following types of manuscript – preprint or postprint:
- Research articles
- Review papers
- Project proposals
- Case studies
- ‘negative’ results and ‘null’ results (i.e. results that do not support a hypothesis)
- Data and methods papers
- Technical notes
- Dataset description papers
- Translations of the above
Other format types will be considered upon submission.
Add supplementary files and data
You can add and link to supplementary files in any format with unlimited storage.
Published research articles
If you want to share a manuscript that was already published as a journal article, go to howcanishareit.com and paste the article DOI in the search mask; check if ‘as preprint’ comes up among the accepted publishing formats.
Most academic journals do accept preprint archiving, some don’t. To find out more check the Sherpa/RoMEO database.
Prepare your manuscript
Upload your manuscript as a PDF file.
If you need help with formatting, you can use the following manuscript template put together by AfricArXiv submission moderation team.
Add a note to the front page stating “This is a preprint that has been submitted to journal XXX” where applicable. Once the manuscript is accepted by a peer-reviewed journal you can update the preprint to the postprint or accepted author manuscript and change this text to “This is a postprint that has been peer-reviewed and accepted at journal XXX.”
Licensing
Please ensure to respect applicable copyright and license conditions for the files you upload. For scholarly manuscripts, the most widely used license is CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Proceed to submit your preprint
Now that you have read all the necessary information you can compare and choose between our partner platforms to submit your preprint manuscript:
We are working towards building an Africa-owned preprint repository and are therefore reaching out to and discussing with various other organizations and partners. Meanwhile, we are partnering with other established preprint service providers as listed below.