Using Digital Object Identifiers to increase discoverability of African journal articles

Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa) and African Journals Online (AJOL) joined forces to co-host a series of webinars on the topic, “Using Digital Object identifiers to Increase Discoverability of African Journal Articles”. The webinar series were held over three dates, 1^st February, 1^st March and 5^th April 2022 and were targeted at African researchers, Publishers, Authors and Journal Editors who seek access to contextually-relevant quality research publications from Africa.

The webinars had 750 registered participants from over 20 countries: Nigeria, Kenya, Tunisia, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, South Africa, Somalia, Uganda, Bangladesh, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Tanzania, Germany, Ethiopia, Algeria, Mauritius, Mali, The Gambia, United States, Morocco, Cameroon, Botswana and Saudi Arabia. The webinars were broadcast live via Facebook and the presentations stored on TCC Africa’s PubPub catalogue for digital record keeping and assigned DOI’s.

The webinars featured a panel of experts from the scholarly communication and publishing space including, Susan Murray– Executive Director at African Journals OnLine (AJOL), Kate Snow- Content & Communications Manager at African Journals OnLine (AJOL), Kylie Van Zyl – Journal Assessment Office at African Journals OnLine (AJOL) and moderated by Joy Owango – Executive Director at Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa).

The objectives of the series was to allow the target audience to understand:

1. i)          What exactly are DOI’s and why are they important?
2. ii)         How can they be used by various academic stakeholders, journals and researchers?

iii)        How can AJOL partners get DOI’s for their content?

About Training Centre In Communication 

The Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa) is the first African-based training center to teach effective communication skills to scientists. TCC Africa is an award winning  Trust, established as a non-profit entity in 2006 and is registered in Kenya.  TCC Africa provides  capacity support in improving researchers  output and visibility through training in  scholarly and science communication

TCC Africa’s mission is to contribute to the increase in profile, locally, and internationally, of African science, and its impact on the life of Africans, by improving skills in technical communication in all forms, at academia and other relevant forums, in Africa.

Our objective is to train. support. empower. researchers  through capacity in improving their research output and visibility.

About African Journals OnLine (AJOL)

African Journals Online (AJOL) 

is the world’s largest and preeminent platform of African-published scholarly journals. AJOL is a Non-Profit Organisation that (since 1998) works to increase global & continental online access, awareness, quality & use of African-published, peer-reviewed research. Millions of monthly downloads by site users from nearly every country in the world are an indication of the need and widespread use of the AJOL initiative. More than half of the repeat users are from Africa.

Website: https://www.ajol.info