Crossref links to African and Asian journals

CrossRef, the multi-publisher linking association, has reached agreements with three new partners to include hundreds of journals from Africa and Asia in its linking network. ‘For some time CrossRef has been exploring how it could partner with publishers and journal publishing initiatives in regions of the world where scholarship and publication output are less accessible,’ explained CrossRef’s executive director, Ed Pentz. ‘We believe offering CrossRef’s services on an affordable basis to qualified publishers in these regions links them with the global research literature and raises global visibility of and access to these journals.’

One of CrossRef’s partners in this venture is the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), an international NGO working to promote scientific publishing in developing countries that will initially register journals from Nepal and Vietnam. Another partner is the National Inquiry Services Centre (NISC), which will register its entire list of South African-based academic journals and bibliographic databases. The third new partner is the independent journal aggregator African Journals OnLine (AJOL), which currently represents over 260 multi-disciplinary journals from 21 African countries.

‘For journals that are largely invisible to most of the scientific community, the importance of linking cannot be overstressed,’ commented Pippa Smart, head of publishing initiatives at INASP. ‘We believe that an integrated discovery mechanism that includes journals from all parts of the world is vital to global research – benefiting no only the editors and publishers in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America with whom we work, but countless other citizens in those countries as well.’