African Journals Online (AJOL)

This initiative uses information and communication technology (ICT) to provide a service to African-published journals by hosting their content online, and actively promoting the website to encourage international discovery of their titles and their articles. These journals publish in a range of academic disciplines, including agricultural sciences, science and technology, health and social sciences.

The participating journals are considered a community and are asked to participate in the development of this service by offering opinions, or answering questions regarding any changes to the service. Through a free process, each journal becomes a member and beneficiary of the service, then generates tables of content and abstracts to send to South Africa's National Inquiry Services Centre (NISC), which took over management of AJOL in 2005. NISC maintains the AJOL website, which includes a search feature, links to full text (where available), instructions to authors, and document delivery options. Each journal has its own home page, where researchers can find information about the aims and scope of the journal, how to submit articles, and how to obtain printed copies. Journals can also be trained to take over management of their own journal on the AJOL website. They are given usernames and passwords to access their own area, to load, edit and correct content as they wish, and to run reports and contact registered users of their journal.

The website includes several features designed to foster further African research. In addition to a search function that facilitates access to articles of interest and relevance, email alerts notify researchers of newly-published issues from their selected titles. Document delivery is provided if the full text is not available on the internet. Finally, a tool accompanying the abstract of each article features links to allow identification of further articles from other websites, definition of terms using online dictionaries, and the automatic generation of citations to the article.

Health, Natural Resources Management, Technology.

Organisers noticed that African journal publishers have not taken advantage of the opportunities offered by the internet, perhaps because of weak technological infrastructures and cost. African research, they say, has suffered because the means to publish research results are lacking and the results on which to develop further research are not disseminated.

Progamme organisers note that, for the programme to continue, journal publishers will have to see financial benefits to justify their investment in the service. Often, they do not have the technical knowledge to upload their own tables of content and abstracts or to publish electronic full text. Organisers point out that the model is cheap to maintain once it has been established.

During 2004, over 3000 people registered to use the service and over 2000 document delivery requests were fulfilled. As of November 2005, 229 journals were included in the AJOL system.