Dear all – looking forward to meeting you over here and during the webinar tomorrow inshallah. I hope some of you will do as Tony suggests and post your questions over here ahead of time and Laura and I will try to respond as much as possible during the webinar and throughout the week

Looking forward to a great week!

Maha

Many institutional heads believe it’s not good research when not published by the BIG names like Elsevier etc and lots of researchers have a hard time persuading older researchers about new quality outlets. Open access also has a battle with the deluge of “cash and carry” online ‘open access journals’. How do we handle this situation in Africa?

I have been publishing my research works in the open access. The truth is that I don’t know the criteria to chose good publisher in my profession- Library and Information Science.

Oh yes, so-called author processing fees Maha, and more!Here in Nigeria, you receive loads of emails from online journals that tout ‘open access’ but in reality, they are no more than self-publishing outfits! It bothers one and young researchers fall into their traps because they also list a host of indexing bodies they are associated with. Thus researchers often ask for guidance to avoid such outfits, but guidelines are often difficult to prescribe.

Some of the resources here will help in identifying many of the dodgy ‘open access’ journals I speak about above: e.g. ‘predatory journals lure in Arab researchers’ and ‘how researchers can avoid being victims of fake journals’. I believe we should take advantage of the pieces of advice in these resources!

I have many of the same questions as Peter and Ezeala – criteria, etc. I am also keen to know if we should be seeing OA as an either or (closed VS open, publish or perish) or might one be strategic and choose a publication that is both OA and accredited. As a young researcher I am also keen to learn more about the publishing practices of more experienced researchers. Interviewing Maha really inspired me – her podcast can be accessed here.

Thanks Nicola for sharing the transcripts of your interview with Maha; I’ll get round to it after the online discussion. In much Africa, my advice to young researchers is a mix of the established publishing outfits with the OA. Our HE leaders are not likely to embrace immediately the opportunities and imperatives of OA, but we must begin to push for OA primacy, most especially as developing economies.