Slide 1

Journals Online: Increasing the Visibility of National Research

Sioux Cumming, Publishing Support, INASP

Slide 2

Journals Online (JOLs)

Multiple journal community websites to:

• increase visibility of research from regional journals in developing countries

• increase capacity of the editors to– improve the quality of their journals– manage their journals online

• showcase national journals to researchers

Slide 3

AJOL established 1998

OJS used www.ajol.info 2005

AJOL hosted & managed in SA 2005

NepJOL www.nepjol.info Aug 2006

VJOL www.vjol.info Dec 2006

BanglaJOL www.banglajol.info May 2007

PhilJOL www.philjol.info Apr 2008

SLJOL www.sljol.info Aug 2008

Slide 4

AsiaJOL Est. 2008

VJOL local hosting Mar 2009

PhilJOL local hosting Apr 2010

Workshops throughout

Slide 5

AJOL

385 journals from 29 countries60,000 visits per monthUnder South African management

www.ajol.info

Slide 6

BanglaJOL

• Launched in 2007

• Currently 50 journals across a

wide spread of subjects

• 83% full text

• 20% using peer-review system

• Online support community for the editors

• Key challenges: Power and human resources

Slide 7

NepJOL

• Launched in 2007 • Currently 49 journals across wide

spread of subjects• 72% full text• 37% journals are loading content• TUCL loading most other content• Online support community for editorsKey challenges:Power, Political instability, Staff changes

Slide 8

VJOL

• Launched in 2007

• 23 journals

• Bilingual

• Hosting transferred locally in 2009

Key challenges:

• Language

• Finding new content

Slide 9

PhilJOL

• Launched in 2008 • Currently 35 journals across wide

spread of subjects• 77% full text• Online support community for editors• Hosting being transferred locally 2010

Key challenges:University rivalries, Finding new content

Slide 10

SLJOL

• Launched in 2008

• 25 journals

• 95% of articles full-text

• 30% of journals using peer-review system

Key challenges:

• Political instability

• Staff changes

Slide 11

AsiaJOL

Slide 12

JOLs general challenges

• Lack of resources/time

• Getting new content

• Keeping the sites low bandwidth

• In Africa attitudes to open access but not in Asia (95% of articles on SLJOL full text)

• Finding in-country hosting within a four year time period

Slide 13

Training and support for the JOLs

Capacity building workshops for editors including:

• Initial workshop on loading articles and online publishing strategy

• Subsequent training workshops on using the full online submission system, general training on the roles of the editor, author and reviewer and training on managing an editorial office

• Online publishing training workshops for countries using AJOL

Slide 14

Networking and communication

• JOLs newsletters

• D-group discussion lists

• Support for editorial networks – i.e FAME and JEAN

Slide 15

JOL Newsletters

Slide 16

Evaluating

2009

% increase in number of journals

% increase in number of articles

% increase in number of FT

articles

BanglaJOL 92% 103% 134%

NepJOL 39% 52% 54%

PhilJOL 31% 88% 96%

SLJOL 183% 367% 433%

Total 61% 100% 125%

Slide 17

Results

• Increase in submissions, e.g. Journal of Scientific Research, Bangladesh, call for papers July 2008; 3 issues with average of 30 papers; 87 under review.

• 22% increase in acceptance in indexes

• “I must thank you for your support of our journal through PhilJOL. As soon as we got into PhilJOL, the number of submissions has increased significantly. The increase is so significant, that I am considering suggesting to our publisher that we increase the number of issues per year from 2 to 3. The quality of the submissions has also improved! I know that this improvement is partly due to our visibility in PhilJOL.”

Slide 18

Future directions

• Development of Latin America JOL

• Further development of Asia JOL

• Search for in-country partners to take over hosting

Slide 19

Conclusion

• Researchers in Developing Countries face challenges of isolation, lack of support, lack of experience

• Collaborative projects such as the JOLs and AuthorAID can attempt to address these challenges

• The creation of networking organisations give researchers the tools and the power to create their own solutions