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. 

 Ethical clearance: The international survey developed as a continuation of the Global Research Institute of Paris (GRIP) project which was submitted to the Ethics Review Committee of Stellenbosch University (Project 29324) and approved on 28 February 2024 (registration number: REC-050411-032).

Primary data collection was conducted by sending invitations to participate in an anonymous survey using LimeSurvey software from 20 March 2025 to 23 June 2025. Additional details: The survey was sent to the following African organizations:

NASAC, African Academies of Science, members, students

SAYAS & SAYAS Database

AfricArXiv

Information Africa Organization

Scholpubtalk

Irtalk

Khulisa Journals

EIFL

African Scientists Directory (ASD)

TCC Africa

Libsense

AAU

DOAJ Africa Ambassadors

ASSAf Newsletter

NSEF

SciELO SA

ASSAf Members

SAJS

African Reproducibility Network

The GRIP survey covered four countries in the Global South and involved intense methodological and theoretical discussions, and technical preparations. This project replicated the GRIP methodology in a new context: the publication strategies, attitudes and perceptions of open access in Africa.

We initially selected a population sample with similar profiles of individual researchers who are subject to similar research evaluation practices. However, due to low response rate to the first waves of the survey, we decided to broaden the scope and to target as many researchers based in Africa as possible. This change, we believe, does not compromise the analytical integrity of the survey and captures more accurately the African academic diversity.

The online questionnaire was divided into the following sections:

·         Section 1: General information: areas of research, level of scholarship, type of research unit, and institutional affiliations, relevant personal information such as gender, year of birth, and academic age. The questionnaire will also seek to identify the types of funding sources.

·         Section 2 covers publishing and journal evaluation topics, focusing mainly on the motivations for selecting journals for publication.

·         Section 3 comprises questions about open access: what researchers know about open access journals, if they have published in an open access journal (or, alternatively, why not), and reasons for choosing (or not choosing) open access journals to publish in.

·         Section 4 deals with issues related to the costs and payment of publication charges (APC) and funding sources.

·         Section 5 focuses on the perceptions and challenges regarding APC payments, including open questions for comments and suggestions for alternatives to APC payments.

The survey allows a description of quality features and valuable journals and draws profiles for different scientific fields. Our interest here is the comparison within the population of researchers in Africa.