Kevin Nyango
African researchers complain about favoritism when it comes to publishing of research papers. Most of them would never wish to go through the experience again, and this has led to little in scientific field by Africans. Ironically, we expect that Africans could be allowed to publish their work because over 80% of healthcare, environmental and malnutrition problems are reported from Africa.
The experience of Dr. Marianne Mureithi, a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi with the international scientific journal was a bad one. She recalls that between 2005 and 2008, she had struggled to have her paper published post-doctoral researcher in West Africa. The paper was ever rejected even after working on the modifications, but in 2009 when she decided to the same paper to the same journal through Harvard University, the paper was published. However, that was not the end of her frustrations, the microbiologist says that the experience was disheartening and to make it worse, after publication, the owner cannot access the file before paying. The thorn in the flesh is that she had to pay first for it to be published and this required a reliable source of funds.
A Kenya-based pan-African organization has chipped in to raise the level of scientific research in Africa. In a joint effort to relieve African scientists from the publishing charges, African Academy’s AAS Open Research platform was recently launched.
The new platform set up will allow researchers to see the viewers and the cost of publication footed on the funding partners. Dr. Tom Kariuki, the director of Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) said that the traditional system of publishing was costly to both scientists and the public. Kenya has supported various research applications, and a majority of these are from researchers in the country.
In May 2017, a conference was held in Ghana where many African countries were gathered. There was a heated discussion if open access research would be applicable, but others viewed that it would be a waste of resources funded by the taxpayers. Kenya is ranked third after Nigeria and South Africa for having published many research papers.
