Paper short abstract:

The digital African Open Access portal AfricArXiv utilises existing scholarly infrastructure to provide affordable and efficient publishing workflows for African scholars and scholarly institutions as well as non-African researchers with an African research focus.

Paper long abstract:

AfricArXiv is a digital Open Access archiving portal for African research results. We partner with established scholarly repository services to provide a platform for African scientists of any discipline, as well as non-African researchers with a regional focus on Africa, to present their research findings and connect with other researchers on the African continent and globally.

Besides serving as a fast-track publishing platform that is free for individual researchers and affordable for African institutions, we work on projects and initiatives to further increase discoverability of African research output and provide means to secure ownership of African intellectual property to African scholars and knowledge holders at large.

On of these projects, ‘Decolonize Science’, we collaborate with the three South African organisations, namely Masakhane, ScienceLink and ST Communications, to translate English research articles across various disciplines to isiZulu, Northern Sotho, Yoruba, Hausa, Luganda, and Amharic.

We advocate for use of African languages by African researchers, asking those who submit to AfricArXiv to add a translation of the abstract or lay summary in the African language that is relevant to the context of their work; in accordance with the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication.

Making research results available in regional languages is essential for knowledge equity, ease of access and contribution to research in and about Africa, creating opportunities for science literacy and language learning, development of minority languages and increasing readership and mainstreaming of the respective languages. Using African languages is also important in the discussions around indigenous and traditional knowledge in its various forms.