African Studies

The field of African studies encompasses interdisciplinarily oriented area studies on Africa in the humanities, the social sciences, and cultural studies. Depending on the discipline (ethnology, political science, linguistics), developments in the area of open access correspond to those in the respective disciplinary cultures: whereas open access often plays only a minor role in many humanities disciplines, developments in linguistics are certainly more dynamic.

For a long time, printed monographs and edited volumes were the primary form of publication in African studies. However, in recent years, the importance of (online) journals has increased greatly. For Africanists, the prestige of a journal is still often the decisive selection criterion. This holds true both for disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals. The Journal Impact Factor is gaining in importance, although it is demonstrably unsuitable for the evaluation of Africa-related publications (Association for African Studies in Germany [VAD], 2019).

The spread of forms of open access publication is of particular importance for African studies, as print publications of African publishers are often difficult to access because of inadequate distribution opportunities. Moreover, publications from the Global North are often difficult to access on the African continent because of the publishers’ high prices and distribution channels. Besides the use of green open access, the expansion of diamond open access offerings is of particular importance in this context, especially because of the obstacles that open access publication fees represent for authors from the Global South.

Despite these circumstances, open access is still somewhat underrepresented in African studies compared with other disciplines, although there are now several important initiatives for the promotion of open access in African studies, for example the African Principles for Open Access in Scholarly Communication in and about Africa. The repository AfricArXiv is another important initiative (see the Disciplinary Repositories section on this page). Best-practice examples of open access were presented in 2017 within the framework of a workshop organised by the Specialised Information Service (FID) African Studies (VAD, 2017). Moreover, in the African Studies Toolbox, the FID African Studies regularly presents relevant information on open access, for example a series on the Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht – that is, the right under German Copyright Law to make the post-print of a scholarly publication available to the public 12 months after first publication – as well as information on open access initiatives of publishers with series of relevance to African studies. The latter initiatives are discussed in more detail in the Open Access Books section on this page.

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 42 titles under the keyword Africa and 218 titles under African history as of March 2024. In addition, there are open access books in African linguistics, for example those published by Language Science Press.

As of March 2024, OAPEN listed the same 25 titles under Africa; the number of titles listed under African History was 116. On the Open Book Publishers website, search results under the keyword Africa include titles from various disciplines.

In addition, there is a series of open access books in the African Studies Collection of the publisher Routledge that were unlocked in collaboration with Knowledge Unlatched. The Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS) publishes a book series with the publisher Brill. Books in the series are available in open access, albeit after an embargo period of two years. In addition to the titles published with Brill, CODESRIA lists a large number of other open access book titles on its website.

African Minds is a not-for-profit, open access publisher of scholarly books based in Cape Town, South Africa. African Minds publishes predominantly in the social sciences and humanities.

The Specialised Information Service (FID) African Studies at the University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg in Frankfurt am Main offers the African studies community an OJS Hosting-Service that provides support in establishing an open access journal. This service includes both the technical provision, maintenance, and regular updating of OJS on a permanently available server as well as advice on and practical support for the conceptual design and the creation of the journal(s).