Ahinon, J. S., Arafat, H., Ahmad, U., Achampong, J., Aldirdiri, O., Ayodele, O. T., … Havemann, J. (2020, September 25). AfricArXiv – the pan-African Open Scholarly Repository. https://doi.org/10.31730/osf.io/56p3e

Full documentation: ‘AfricArXiv – the pan-African Open Scholarly Repository’ as archived on OSF

AfricArXiv is always looking to the most relevant online infrastructure to adapt and live up to the requirements and expectations of the African scholarly community. Through the building of an open, transparent, reliable, efficient and decentralized discoverability infrastructure, it is our aim to support the connectivity of African scholars – and African scholarship – to a wider audience.  As part of the near future plans, we intend to further diversify tools and applications to work along innovative, globally applicable standards and methodologies to accomplish our mission. 

The AfricArXiv team is looking forward to continuing our work along the following categories in collaboration with our network partner organisations in Africa and other world regions:

Financial sustainability

  • Reach a sustainable financial structure by trust of the African scholarly community
  • Partnering with funders and investors across Africa and around the world

Expanding our Open Access digital infrastructure 

  • Current partner repositories: Open Science Framework (OSF), Pubpub, ScienceOpen, Zenodo
  • Adding Figshare and PKP/OPS 

Interoperability of the digital scholarly infrastructure we create

  • Building integrations with ORCID, DataCite, CrossRef 
  • Seeking ROR and COAR membership

Meeting highest quality standards and research integrity

  • Quality control via submission moderation
  • Community-driven [Open] Peer Review with our partner organizations Decentralized Science, Qeios, ScienceOpen, PREreview, Peer Community in … (PCI)

Increasing networking and partnership building in the growing African Open Science Landscape

  • Liaising with African grassroots and institutional partners such as the African Open Science Platform (AOSP), AfricaOSH, regional RENs (WACREN, ASREN, UbuntuNet Alliance), EARMA, SARIMA, AfLIA and LIBSENSE
  • Establishing Institutional partnerships with 
    • African scholarly libraries and African universities and other Higher Education organisations
    • African studies departments, libraries, and associations outside Africa
    • Research related institutions, organisations, funders, and companies in Africa or elsewhere

Establishing AfricArXiv as a self-hosted Africa-based Open Access platform 

  • Five (5) or more host institutions with at least one host in each region of the continent, for details refer to https://github.com/AfricArxiv/preprint-repository 
  • Data analysis and statistics dashboard (number of users, locations, number of pre-prints, audio/video pre-prints, etc..)

Continuously and steadily increase discoverability of African research

Knowledge exchange, collaboration and scholarly networking between scholars in Africa and other world regions

  • With our partners Bobab, AfricaOSH, African Science Initiative (ASI), WACREN/LIBSENSE, Just One Giant Lab (JOGL), Psychological Science Accelerator, Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (IGDORE), eLearning Africa, Vilsquare Makers’ Hub 

Fostering Science Literacy across the continent

  • In collaboration with TCC Africa, African Science Literacy Network (ASLN), Under the Microscope, AfroScience Network, Science Communication Hub Nigeria (SciComNigeria), Pint Of Science Kenya 

Building capacity in Open Science practices and Open Access scholarly publishing

  • Providing training, workshops, consultancy services, lectures, scientific writing-sprints, calls for submissions, student assignments and other educative formats on OA scholarly publishing and Peer Review in collaboration with our partner organizations TCC Africa, Vilsquare, r0g_agency for open culture and critical transformation, Open Science MOOC, AuthorAid, Science For Africa, Access 2 Perspectives
  • Develop a self-hosted chatbot for community support and Q&A

Fostering [African] language diversity in scholarly communication

  • Encouraging submissions of scholarly works in traditional and official African languages
  • Providing guidelines and information for multilingualism in science in African languages

Encouraging collaboration between Indigenous Peoples and researchers

  • Highlighting the importance of indigenous knowledge in all disciplines
  • Legal aspects: assurance of self-determination, Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and compliance with UNDRIP
  • Providing guidelines and information on the inclusion of indigenous peoples in research project design, planning and implementation

Fostering gender equity in academia

  • Balancing gender equity across all scholarly disciplines 
  • Encouraging scholarly work on gender-related topics across disciplines