It is a three-year pilot programme to:

• Enhance the profile and discoverability of African journals
• Increase journal usage and submissions
• Mobilise financial support from academic libraries and consortia

The initiative provides a range of publishing services for journals, including promoting their visibility and discoverability, registering DOIs, indexing, user friendly submission systems, detailed annual impact reports, and more. 

 “For us at Ibadan Journal of Sociology, partnering with AJI has given the journal access to international indexing and discoverability. AJI has helped us meet international publishing standards while keeping the journal rooted in African scholarship. The partnership is a classical example of a partnership that works and that is very beneficial”. Ọláyínká Àkànle Editor in Chief Ibadan Journal of Sociology 

An Advisory Board of African Academics with considerable experience of continent-wide programmes has been convened to support the initiative. Journal selection will be guided by an advisory board. We welcome expressions of interest from other humanities and social science journals based on the continent.

The long-term vision is financial sustainability for university journals in the African social sciences and humanities, underpinned by international library and consortia support.

Pluto Journals is an independent publisher owned by the not-for-profit Pluto Educational Trust. It has a strongly internationalist ethos and already publishes twenty diamond OA social science journals. ABC has thirty-five years of experience helping African academic publishers to distribute books globally. Both organisations are committed to building equitable academic publishing partnerships.

Stephanie Dawson of Science Open commented on the ‘huge value for the global community if we can support African journals to more fully integrate into scholarly digital infrastructure to make their voices heard.’ She described how ‘ScienceOpen has been steadily building a network in Africa so we see this cooperation as an important next step.’ 

The Director of JSTOR, John Lenahan, noted how this initiative directly aligned with their mission ‘to help support access to scholarly content to users around the world at the lowest cost’, as well as to ‘participate in collaborations with organisations and university presses that support sustainable open access solutions.’

The initiative continues to welcome expressions of interest. We invite humanities and social science journals based in Africa to apply by reviewing our standard criteria and completing the questionnaire, which you can download here.