Re-launch of African Journals OnLine (AJOL)
Re-launch of African Journals OnLine (AJOL) http://www.ajol.info The International Network for Scientific Publications (INASP) launched AJOL in 1998 with only 14 journals. By January 2004 it had over 175 African journals covering most subject areas. It is now being re-launched on its own website that continues to provide free access to tables of contents and abstracts for all titles - but also provides a number of additional facilities. AJOL offers a document delivery service, and full (improved) searching and browsing facilities, as well as a new Email alert function. The service remains free to both users and participating journals (with charges only for document delivery requests from outside developing countries). Journals included in AJOL are scholarly in content with peer reviewed articles, and publish a mixture of pure and applied research as well as review papers. Journals included cover Agricultural sciences and resource management; Arts, culture, language and literature; Health; Science and technology; and Social sciences. An evaluation of the AJOL service undertaken at the end of 2002 showed that participating journals benefit from the international visibility, with more international submissions and citations, and that users value access to African research that they have been unable to locate from other sources. Use of the service has more than doubled in the past few years (almost 4000 people registered during 2003) and the demand for document delivery tripled (reaching over 650 articles during 2003). The evaluation highlighted a need to update the website, to make it easier to use with an emphasis on improved searching and retrieval of articles. In response to the evaluation, the new website now offers a greatly improved and more sophisticated search system and email alerting to identify new issues. Journals can also manage their own content online, giving them more control over their own work. We look forward to more users, an increase in demand for document delivery and increased worldwide visibility for African published research. Please visit the new site - http://www.ajol.info - and sign up for email alerts to any journals of interest. We also welcome new journals onto the service - please contact INASP for further information: ajol@inasp.info or visit our website: http://www.inasp.info
2004-04-01