The role of Open Access in developing African research and publications
How far has the scholarly communications industry come in helping African researchers to publish their work? Inroads have been made but there’s still a way to go – and Open Access has a major role to play. A recent study showed that researchers using different article publication databases would not have access to the same level of content from the Global South ( Basson et al , 2022). This has, sadly, always been the case, as Western countries’ researchers have dominated in terms of article numbers and their respective citations ever since the first journals appeared in England and France in the 17th Century. While India and China have increased their research output markedly in recent years, the imbalance with other developing countries is still significant. In order to help redress this deficit, Digital Science and Dimensions has partnered with the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa) since 2019. TCC Africa is a research capacity Trust based in the University of Nairobi...
