Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the antecedents and aspirations that contribute to the success of scientific journals in Africa, giving particular consideration to communities - real and imaged, place-based and globally networked - and the roles they play in ensuring their sustainability.

Paper long abstract:

The journal Global Africa has published two issues. It is a journal in its infancy and as such faces numerous challenges in establishing itself as part of Africa's scientific landscape. Importantly, the journal describes itself as a community, and aims to maintain an intellectual agenda focused on the African continent. This paper considers the antecedents and aspirations that contribute to the success of journals in Africa. It gives particular consideration to the importance of communities - real and imagined, place-based and globally networked - and the role they play in ensuring the sustainability of newly launched academic journals in Africa. It considers the possible tension between journals launched from within established scientific communities and aspirations for a more inclusive and representative pool of authors, or the tension between providing an outlet for 'local' science while remaining connected to global science. Finally, the importance of communities is explored in relation to other factors such as (the perception of) quality, peer review and access to resources. The paper adopts both a historical and contemporaneous perspective when examining these antecedent and aspirational conditions. Drawing on examples from the 19th century Cape Colony, it highlights historical continuities and key differences as well as the successes and future challenges facing two contemporary African journals.