The third edition of the Open Science in the South “African scientific publishing we want” conference will be held from 9-11 December 2024. The event will focus on the theme of African scientific publishing.
The second event at the 2nd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access is African Scientific Publishing We Want, an Open Science in the South conference from 9 – 11 December 2024. The hosts of this event are the National Research Foundation of South Africa and Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) of France.
For more information please refer to https://aosp.org.za/open-science-south-2024/#doas
The primary objective of this conference is to survey publishing practices amongst African scientists and the publishing ecosystem on the African continent, and to develop a roadmap for the acceleration of research publications emanating from Africa and the rest of the global south. See the full OSS programme here.
At the epicentre of this event is shared and inclusive science which is a key success factor in achieving the aspirations of the 2063 “Africa We Want” agenda. Similarly, UNESCO’s recommendation on open science is a powerful reminder of the role that open scientific practices and productions can play in achieving sustainable development goals. In this context, increasing the visibility of scientific productions to promote their impact and reuse is one of the major objectives of open science.
In Africa and the rest of the global south, there is a dire need to increase visibility, accessibility and discoverability of high-quality research. Much of this research goes unpublished or are published in low profile journals. There is a myriad of reasons for the low visibility and discoverability of African research. Evidence of this is a recent study which shows that less than half of African scientific journals are indexed in international open databases. These findings were widely shared at the second edition of the Open Science in the South symposium held in Cotonou in October 2022, which led to the drafting of recommendations, Open Science: The Essential Standard for African research.