1. University of Nigeria, Nsukka
Open Access Publishing and the Future of Scholarship in Africa A paper presented at the 2017 Open Access Week, University of Nigeria Nsukka, October 24, 2017
Ifeanyi J Ezema (PhD)
Digital Librarian
University of Nigeria, Nsukka
ORCID:

3. Introduction Open access movement began following
Serials crisis which resulted in reduction of library budgets
Maximization of profit margin by publishers
Increased need for universal availability of publications
Marginalization of authors in the scholarly communication process

4. Introduction Free access to scientific information
Propelled by the development of the World Wide Web (WWW)
Supported by ICT infrastructure and the Internet
Meeting of the Open Society Institute in 2001
Budapest Open Access Initiative
Green – self-archiving in repositories
Gold - use of open access journals

5. Introduction contd BOAI notes that open access to literature, means
its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to
read,
download,
copy,
distribute,
print,
search, or link to the full texts of these articles,
crawl them for indexing,
pass them as data to software, or
use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those

8. Open access opportunities for Africa
Opportunities for developing countries
Reduced cost on libraries
Visibility of African research
Wider dissemination of research reports
Increased citation impact
Enhanced global ranking of institutions
Drives creation of institutional repositories

9. Interest of researchers is to share result of his/her findings
Authors are interested in journals that will give wider visibility
Universities and research centre need adequate ranking through wider visibility and research impact
Readers are asking for universal availability of scientific publication
Libraries are suffocating as a result of budget cuts

10. Challenges of OA publishing in Africa
Funding
Institutional Support
Lack of awareness among researchers and authors
Poor ICT infrastructures
Lack of ICT personnel
The question of power supply
The rise of OA predatory journals
Rip-off from publishers (Gold route model)
Very low OA contributions from Africa

11. Predatory Open Access Journals
Journals with serious questionable reputation
Jeffery Beal tracks such journals and updates the list yearly
Majority of the journals originate from developing countries (India & Nigeria)
The journals claim very high journal ranking metrics
List and other details Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open‑access publishers are available at

12. Characteristics of Predatory OA Journals
Prater (2017) identifies eight characteristics of OA predatory journals
Request for submission fee (not publication fee)
Very few members of editorial board or none at all
Large number of journals from single publishers
False promise of publication
Very poor quality website (unprofessionally designed)
Journal affiliation often does not match members of editorial team
Some spelling errors in abstracts and titles of papers
Contents hardly relate with the scope of the journals

13. Gold route Open Access: A Rip-off?
BioMedical Central and Public Library of Science (PLoS) pioneered in 2002
Back to business using gold route model
Gold route OA request for high articles processing charge
The cost of publishing in some of the journals is as much as $3000
Only1 to 2% of eligible authors can publish article using the model (Bjork 2012).