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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:

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 85 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 (AGORA)
    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.
  • Oxford Journals Developing Countries Initiative
    Provides free and greatly reduced online access to many of our journals (e.g. Journal of African Economies) for low income countries.

Open-Access-Journals:

E-Books:

  • African Digital Library
    Free access to E-Books in Africa, based on the NetLibrary of OCLC.
  • HSRC Press
    South African open access publisher committed to the dissemination of high quality social science research based publications, in print and electronic form. The Press publishes the research output of the Human Science Research Council and externally authored works.
  • Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)
    Sources to find electronic theses and dissertations.
  • BLDS Digital Library
    Full-text copies of developing country research from the shelves of the British Library for Development Studies (BLDS), e.g. reports and working papers of the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi.
  • Open Library
    This website offers many free e-books also on Africa.
  • Ebook and Texts Archive by the Internet Archive
    This sub-site of the Internet Archive offers access to many e-books (often older books that have free copyright / public domain).
  • World Digital Library – Africa
    The Library of Congress and UNESCO offer more than 100 digitized original sources concerning Africa, be it old manuscripts, books, photographs, pictures or maps.
  • Sudan Open Archive
    The Rift Valley Institute offers a large collection of ebooks and full text documents about and from Sudan, also including some videos, maps and pictures.
  • Gallica - Voyages En Afrique
    Part of the digital library of the National Library in France.

Regional and local institutional repositories:

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.

Books for Africa:

  • Books for Africa
    Collects, sorts, ships, and distributes books to children in Africa.
  • The International Book Bank
    The International Book Bank increases literacy and advances education by procuring and shipping books and other educational materials to developing countries.
  • Canadian Organization for Development through Education (CODE)
    Supports libraries and teacher training as well as national and local book publishing in about 20 languages in Africa and the Caribbean.
  • Educational Support Initiative for Africa (ESIfA)
    Charity specialising in delivering all manner of educational materials to libraries and Universities across Africa.
  • Sabre Foundation
    Book donations for Africa.
  • Biblionef
    Biblionef provides global aid for the development of children in disadvantaged areas, who have hardly or no access to reading material.
  • Local Language Literacy
    A nonprofit dedicated to creating, printing, and distributing books in local languages and giving them to students with projects in Mali and Senegal.
  • Friends of African Village Libraries
    The organization funds twelve small rural libraries in four different countries. They do not generally need used books, but they do important focused work to improve access to books in African villages.
  • BooksForSudan
    Project supported SOAS by students in London to sustain Juba University Library, in Southern Sudan.
  • Worldreader - Books for all
    Wants to make digital books available to all in the developing world. A pilot project was initiated in Ghana.
  • Book Aid International
    increases access to books and supports literacy, education and development in sub-Saharan Africa. Provide new books to partner libraries.

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.
  • WikiAfrica
    WikiAfrica is a collaborative and international project designed to africanize Wikipedia through networks, research, projects, publications, and events. WikiAfrica contributes to Wikimedia projects online and offline with texts, quotes, images, audio and video.
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