Equitable and sustainable open access for scholarly books in East Africa: report from an online session

Silke Davison

Mon 24 Feb 2025

Read this article at hypothèses.org

This is a guest post written by Malavika Legge, Program Manager at OASPA.

In October 2024, a collaborative online-session for publishers from East Africa was co-organised by the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and OAPEN, along with the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and French research institutes in Africa (LAM and IFRA) supported by the  National Centre for Scientific Research in France (CNRS).

The session covered approaches towards equitable and sustainable open access (OA) for scholarly books, and this online event, held on 24 October 2024, was delivered in two parts: Part 1 was a webinar-style series of presentations exploring impacts, experiences, revenue models and other topics pertaining to OA book publishing. Part 2 was a workshop-style discussion for all present.

The co-organisers of this 2-part event are pleased to share this detailed report as well as a freely available video recording of the four presentations, outlined below. 

Part 1: General Session – Moderator: Mary Felix, General Manager, OAPEN
Watch Mary’s introduction and opening remarks at the start of the recording.

  1. Findings and experiences about publishing Open access books in African Studies
  • Bastien Miraucourt (CNRS, France) 
  • Watch Bastien’s presentation from minute 7 onwards in the recording
  1. About some successful open access books funding models
  • Judith Fathallah (Coventry University, Lancaster University, Open Book Collective, United Kingdom) 
  • Watch Judith from 23 minutes 30 seconds onwards in the recording
  1. Integrating digital outputs and open access in the business development of an academic book publisher in Africa
  • Andrew Joseph (Wits University Press, South Africa)
  • Watch Andrew from 34 minutes 15 seconds onwards on the recording
  1. Early results of an African institutional publisher’s global transition to Open Access
  • Jill Claassen (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
  • Watch Jill’s presentation from minute 47 onwards on the recording

Part 2 – workshop discussion

This section of the event was not recorded, and it gave space for audience Q&A, discussion and interactions. All who were present, including East African book publishers in attendance, were welcomed to share experiences and participate. 
Part 2 of the event was moderated by our guest facilitator – Juma Joseph Musakali of Moi University, Kenya. Some headlines emerging from the discussion are distilled in the ‘connections and conversations’ section of our full report.