African Minds kicks off open access book hosting service on ScienceOpen
Introducing our partner: African Minds
ScienceOpen has partnered with the not-for-profit, open access publisher, African Minds, to host its scholarly books in a unique Collection on ScienceOpen. While ScienceOpen has been hosting open access journal content for years, it is the first time ScienceOpen has hosted open access book content. With the implementation for African Minds, we kick off a new service for open access publishers. The technical team of ScienceOpen has built a user-friendly interface that produces streamlined, machine readable metadata to quickly integrate rich book records onto ScienceOpen, provide Crossref DOIs, long-term archiving and more. Our partners at African Minds have tested and implemented the new interface to create a collection of books and book chapters that will extend the reach and accessibility of science from Africa.
Explore the books published by African Minds
African Minds focuses on fostering access, openness and debate in the pursuit of growing and deepening the African knowledge base. African Minds publishes predominantly in the social sciences, and its authors are typically African academics or those with a close affinity with the continent. We have highlighted the following examples for you to get a glimpse of the types of scholarly books African Minds publishes:
Go to the African Minds ScienceOpen Collection to explore all of the books published by African Minds.
Supporting African Researchers
The addition of this content to the ScienceOpen platform will diversify and provide greater context to the over 65 million records indexed on ScienceOpen. ScienceOpen is proud to be able to work with African Minds, a publisher offering innovative approaches to those who need more support than traditional publishers generally offer. With the extensive technical and promotional services provided by ScienceOpen, African Minds will be able to provide even more support to these researchers by providing Crossref DOIs, ORCID integration, an additional manuscript submission channel and the embedding of its publications in the open, interactive discovery environment of ScienceOpen.
This collaboration between ScienceOpen and African Minds will not only improve the visibility and dissemination of our books but provide both African Minds and its authors with unique networking and engagement opportunities.
François van Schalkwyk, a trustee of African Minds
Inpsiring global collaboration and inclusivity
ScienceOpen looks forward to promoting African Minds’ mission and raising awareness around African research. Through this partnership, ScienceOpen and African Minds hope to promote global collaboration and inclusivity in science.
We see a huge potential for innovation in open access on the African content and we are proud to be working together with African Minds, AfricArXiv, the Pan African Medical Journal and the South African Journal of Science with more new partnerships on the way. If you are interested in exploring ways to join us, just get in touch.
Stephanie Dawson, CEO of ScienceOpen
To find out how you can get engaged as a researcher, explore our list of things you can do on ScienceOpen or contact the team at African Minds to learn more about ScienceOpen’s services for publishers, see our offerings here or contact Stephanie Dawson or Stuart Cooper directly.
This looks like a very interesting intervention, offering what could be a productive and potentially powerful expansion of the reach of African open access journals and scholarly books at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has made access of this kind even more vital.