Citation
Blakesley Lindsay, E. (2002), "African Journals Online", Online Information Review, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 430-431. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2002.26.6.430.9
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Sponsored by INASP, this Web gateway offers information about academic journals published in Africa. The site, presented in both English and French, provides tables of contents and abstracts of articles from African journals in agricultural sciences, science and technology, health, and social sciences. Users must register to view content; this is a free service, but some personal data are required.
The site provides a list of the included titles, arranged by topic. Users currently have access to 13 journals in health, nine in agricultural sciences, 29 in the social sciences, and 20 in science and technology. Titles in the health category include the African Journal of Reproductive Health (Nigeria), East African Medical Journal (Kenya), Ethiopian Journal of Health Development, Nigerian Journal of Clinical Practice and the Southern African Journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health. Among the options in the agricultural sciences are African Crop Science Journal (Uganda), Agronomie Africaine (Cote d’Ivoire), Ghana Journal of Agricultural Science and the UNISWA Research Journal of Agriculture, Science and Technology (Swaziland). Social science offerings include Africa Development (Senegal), The African Anthropologist (Cameroon), African Finance Journal (South Africa), African Journal of Library, Archives & Information Science (Botswana/Nigeria), African Sociological Review (Senegal/South Africa), Zambezia: The Journal of Humanities of the University of Zimbabwe, etc. Sample titles in the science and technology category are African Journal of Food and Nutritional Sciences (Kenya), Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia and Ghana Journal of Science.
The site also provides a keyword search feature, which returns a list of issues that match the topic. This feature is not as precise as some search engines, as it does not return results at the article level. A note warns users that, to locate the specific article containing the term searched, users should click on the link, choose “find” from the edit menu and do another search for the same keyword. Apart from this limited search functionality, the site is straightforward and easy to use. Clicking on a title brings up a list of available issues, which links users to a table of contents and abstracts for the articles within. Full‐text delivery service is available for a fee of $10.00.
According to the Web site, INASP has plans to expand the scope of their service. The organization is also providing financial assistance to some journals to help foster academic publishing in Africa. In addition, the site provides a listing of journals that deal with Africa but are published elsewhere, as well as a listing of other Web sites that provide information about publishing and publications in Africa. Although the keyword search functionality is limited, this site will make scholars and researchers aware of a host of academic journals that are not widely available outside Africa.
This review was first published in Reference Reviews Volume 16 Number 6 2002.