Challenges, unmet funding needs and support required to make platforms more sustainable

Challenges

Here is the summary of the challenges mentioned in the survey responses: 

  • High cost and financial difficulties, inability to get constant support. No dedicated funding for the platform and dependence on institutional budgets.
  • Unstable funding affects publishing operations, e.g. funding through three-year grants that are renewed. However, there is insecurity regarding their renewal in the future.
  • Developing a strategic plan that will facilitate the consistent execution of the journal’s editorial tasks, and to assure adherence to globally recognized quality standards in editorial work and publishing.
  • The ability to maintain the Diamond OA model, as some African institutions insist on paying their peer reviewers a nominal fee and then want to recoup the money through APCs. 
  • The portal's financial sustainability could become a challenge if it is moved from the university to an external service that may charge hosting fees. 
  • Hosting costs for the platform are increasing annually, due to which platforms have to ensure that more journals are added or that the current journals are charged more for hosting.
  • Different financial administration strategies in the participating institutional journals.
  • Funding membership in COPE 
  • Funding the DOIs. 
  • Advertising opportunities were available in the past but this option is not available anymore.
  • Funding for meetings is needed.
  • In-house skills to manage the portal and to provide training and assistance to journal editorial teams to set-up their journal processes.
  • Limited functionality of the platform, not as user friendly and intuitive as one would like.
  • A low profile of the platform. More awareness should be created on the important role it plays in terms of e-workflow.

Solutions 

Adequate dedicated budget and funding should be available to the project either from the institution or funding organizations. This can also help transit the journals to Diamond OA.

  • Fundraising could be increased, focusing on book series for specific funders.”
  • Attracting donor support for African research sharing
  • Strategies for library crowd-funding
  • African governments should contribute to regional platforms.

 

Unmet funding needs

This is a summary of the funding needs mentioned in the survey:

  • Guaranteed long-term funding beyond the current three-year cycles to ensure sustainability.
  • Securing core funding from 2025 to 2030, and expansion of staff to meet various demands and technical publishing services.
  • Funds to reward editors, reviewers, and administrators with honoraria or financial compensation.
  • Funding for hiring and motivating extra staff to support journal operations.
  • Funds to cover online hosting, publication infrastructure, and related costs.
  • Improving infrastructure, overcoming technical limitations, and ensuring funds to cover maintenance costs.
  • Transitioning to digital workflows to improve efficiency.
  • Expanding the offer of technical publishing services, including XML. 
  • Limited availability of Open Journal Systems plugins. 
  • Integration with other services like ScriPris, SciProof, and OMP.
  • Providing layout templates.
  • Registering ISSNs.
  • Funding support for the development of an African languages API, and translation of the main website into other languages. 
  • Developing infrastructure to include a search facility across all African universities and other technical needs.
  • Allocating funds for training on publication and editorial tasks.
  • Recruiting skilled human resources to assist editorial teams and support the full use of OJS.
  • Expansion of staff members to meet the demand of various regional and international project collaborations and other service requests.
  • Growing the pool of human capacity to support retrospective digitization (of past journal issues).
  • Increasing visibility through communication and marketing efforts to publicize achievements.
  • Developing strategies to ensure the sustainability of journals on the platform.
  • Expanding staff and services to meet demand from regional and international project collaborations, and to support journal partner applications, assessments, training, and support.
  • Funding for paying incentives to personnel managing the portal.

  

What kind of support would make platforms more sustainable

The following support will be appreciated:

  • Centralizing and funding editorial processes to provide professional services to all journal editorial boards. 
  • Funding and collaboration in service provision and technical assistance.
  • Raising awareness on Diamond OA publishing and providing guidelines on how individual OA journals can become financially independent from APCs.
  • Financial and technical expertise.
  • Funding for infrastructure, DOIs, editorial support staff and dedicated IT personnel.
  • In Africa, it does seem that peer reviewers need to be paid a minimal fee. This fee should be allowed and funded centrally and streamlined. Indexing platforms should allow for this model, as it does not hinder the academic integrity of the journal. 
  • Templates for layout editing should be available to all journals, which will prevent the need to pay someone on an institutional level, at every institution. 
  • A similarity detection service should be available for all African journals, for free, as well as free DOIs.
  • Increased visibility and access of our journals; support to get indexed in international databases.
  • Help with metadata and content preservation.
  • Training for editorial teams and portal staff.
  • Toolkits to assist with advocacy.
  • Getting political support and commitment on the national level
  • Providing grants and technical partnership.
  • National platforms like PKP OJS available to all universities, rather than individual instances at all the universities. Cost, funding, skills, and human resources could then be more streamlined.