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ilissAfrica » Help & Tools » Open Access Guide for researchers in Africa

Open Access Guide for researchers based in Africa: Cheap or free Access to Databases and E-Journals

More information and further projects:

• Developing Nations Initiatives
  A list of projects to disseminate free or affordable scholarly journals to, or from, developing countries, or both. Maintained by Ann Okerson for the LibLicense (Licensing Digital Information) discussion list at Yale University Library.

Open Access portals:

• OAIster
  OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources not only on Africa. It provides access to these digital resources by "harvesting" their descriptive metadata (records) using OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).
• Connecting-Africa, ASC Leiden
  It provides access to digital resources (full-text of publications) by "harvesting" their descriptive metadata (records) using OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) in about 55 institutional repositories.
• Infothèque francophone
  The catalogue shows electonic full-text ressources relating francophone countries.
• Scientific African
  A non-profit organization founded at Witten/Herdecke University in Germany; it aims at disseminating scientific content from Africa and to enhance the visibility and accessibility of African scholarly material on the Internet.

Cheap or free access to databases and e-journals:

• JSTOR Open Africa Initiative
  JSTOR has adopted a plan to waive participation fees for any academic or not-for-profit institution on the continent of Africa
• Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture
  Provides free access to more than 500 journals to institutions in eligible developing countries, those with annual per capita income less than U.S. $1,000: thus Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, and Senegal are eligible, but South Africa, Egypt, and Botswana are not.
• International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP)
  Different Programmes, e.g. for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERI). INASP negotiates affordable, sustainable access Licences; Publishers provide low-price access to high-value content; Countrywide access available to not-for-profit Institutes; No cost at point of use; Access to over 11,000 full text journals; extensive bibliographic database information.
• Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI)
  Free access to 2300 biomedical and related social sciences journals and other resources for health sector and academic institutions in 120 developing countries. The HINARI program is set up by WHO together with major publishers. Over 3101 journal titles are now available to health institutions in 113 countries, benefiting many thousands of health workers and researchers, and in turn, contributing to improved world health.
• TEEAL
  The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library is a comprehensive full-text collection of core journals in the field of over 140 agricultural and related sciences. TEEAL is offered in two forms: a) a set of compact discs-145 journals (CD TEEAL), b) a local area network system-115 journals (LanTEEAL). TEEAL is available at well below cost to over 100 low-income countries, as listed in the World Bank's 1998-99 World Development Report.
• GDN Journal Service
  Provides researchers working in developing countries with free access to a range of journals services through GDNet; e.g. "Free Journal Access Portal from Project MUSE".
• HighWire Press
  More than 120 Journals, with "free online access to all countries that appear in the World Bank's list of 'low income economies,' plus Djibouti. You do not need to sign up for this service as our software automatically detects the country you are connecting from and grants access accordingly." Additionally, the site contains over 350,000 articles from high quality peer reviewed biomedical journals that are available for free to all readers.
• Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress)
  According to Greg Tananbaum, Vice President, The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) makes its current slate of journals freely available to researchers in the developing world. Interested parties who lodge their requests on institutional letterhead are given unrestricted access to the full text of bepress's published articles.
• eIFL
  eIFL.net is an independent foundation that strives to lead, negotiate, support and advocate for the wide availability of electronic resources by library users in transition and developing countries. Its main focus is on negotiating affordable subscriptions on a multi-country consortial basis, while supporting the enhancement of emerging national library consortia in member countries.

Open-Access-Journals:

• Sabinet's Full Open Access Journal Collection
  The collection comprises 44 South African journals, which may be searched individually, and provides immediate access to the PDF versions of 6 000+ full-text articles.
• Africa, International African Institute
  From June 2008 free electronic access is available to libraries and non-profit research and educational institutions in Africa.
• BioMed Central
  
• Public Library of Science
  

E-Books:

• African Digital Library
  Free access to E-Books in Africa, based on the NetLibrary of OCLC.

Regional and local institutional repositories:

• Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD)
  
• Electronic Supply of Academic Publications to and from Universities in Developing Regions (eSap)
  
• UJ Digispace, University of Johannesburg
  
• Rhodes eResearch Repository, Rhodes University
  
• University of Pretoria Electronic Theses and Dissertations
  
• Further Africa-related institutional repositories can be found in OpenDOAR
  

Free bibliographical databases:

• Quarterly Index of African Periodical Literature
  Articles in over 300 Journals published in 29 countries in Africa (Angola-Tansania).
• African Journals Online (AJOL)
  ToCs and Abstracts of 230 African Journals.
• African e-Journals Project (AEJP)
  Full-text access to eleven scientific e-journals, ToC of more than 100 journals in Africa.
• Persée - Portail de Revues Scientifiques en Sciences Humaines et Sociales
  Persée is a program which was created for the digital publication of scientific journals in the field of the humanities (e.g. Cahiers d'Études africaines). The entire printed collection of journals is digitized and published online through a portal which offers access to the collections.

Infrastructure (making accessible the internet in local area networks and other tools):

• Wider Net
  Organization that loads digital content onto hard drives to be installed at African universities as a LAN The eGranary Digital Library provides millions of digital educational resources to institutions lacking adequate Internet access. Through a process of garnering permissions, copying Web sites, and delivering them to intranet Web servers INSIDE our partner institutions in developing countries, we deliver millions of multimedia documents that can be instantly accessed by patrons over their local area networks at no cost.
• Open Journal Systems
  Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research.
• UNESCO Free & Open Source Software Portal
  A gateway to resources related to Free Software and Open Source Technology movement.