A new scheme aims to put African research on the map by providing free access to a range of the country's top academic journals.
The South African Journal of Science (SAJS) will lead the way, becoming the first high-profile open access journal by the end of March in a pilot project lasting two years.
Robin Crewe of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSA), the publisher of the journal, announced the project at the African Science Communication Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, last month (19 February). ...
Susan Veldsman, director of ASSA's scholarly publishing unit in Pretoria, said the aim is that the African version of SciELO will have 35 journals freely available online by the end of 2009.
The SAJS journal will launch its new open access edition and convert the last two years of print editions into an open access format at the end of March, according to its incoming editor Michael Cherry — a zoologist from South Africa's University of Stellenbosch.
Not all journals are eligible to join the project — only those listed under international indexes are under consideration. A series of independent review panels are assessing journal quality ...
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
