Open access and APC costs: A comparative study on scholarly publishing practices in Africa

The “Open access and APC costs: A comparative study on scholarly publishing practices in Africa” (or OAAC) project sought (1) to extend and adapt a survey designed by the Global Research Institute of Paris (GRIP) on publication strategies, practices and perceptions among researchers in the Global South, and (2) to compare the findings of its survey with those of the GRIP survey and a study conducted by EIFL. By doing so, OAAC stands as a multi-level consensus study on APCs and diamond open access on the African continent. The results of the OAAC survey show that access to certified knowledge from Africa is being democratized but that decision-making by research in Africa related to publishing is increasingly being driven by financial and not only knowledge imperatives, and that awareness of non-APC open access (diamond open access) publishing options remains low; that there is little appetite for publishing preprints; and that outside of South Africa, there is no institutional support for publishing open access. These findings are consistent with those of the GRIP and EIFL studies.