Research Centre Develops Database For African Journals

An international non-profit organization, the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), through its Catalyze Impact Initiative, has developed a database for African journals to improve their global indexing and digital availability.

This effort addresses the limitations where African journals constitute only one to two percent of global scientific publications.

The Program Manager of the Catalyze Impact Initiative, Dr. Kirimi Sindi, made this known in Abuja during a meeting with journal editors. The meeting took place alongside a workshop on Good Financial Grant Practices (GFGP), which aimed to improve Nigerian universities’ research capacities and readiness.

APHRC is dedicated to conducting quality, policy-relevant research on population, health, and education issues in sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Kirimi Sindi emphasized the need for collaboration to enhance the visibility and advance research in Africa.

“Innovation cannot thrive without accessible research. That’s why we’re partnering with African journal editors to improve publication quality and enhance global visibility. Through APHRC’s Catalyze Impact Initiative, the newly developed African Journals Visibility Platform will help host and elevate these journals, making them more discoverable and better indexed.”

”We want to ensure that the research which is produced in Africa can inform policy can inform decision making, and it can inform programming, but also it can form actual implementation on the ground. And it can never be done that unless we have publications. And that’s why you’re here,” Dr Sindi said.

APHRC’s Director of International Programs, Dr Luchuo Engelbert urged journal editors to engage in impactful research to attract funding.

“We need to improve the quality of the journals we put out as African researchers and academia and ensure that they reflect the contextual realities and are relevant within the global context. But the big question is how do we ensure the quality of the research outputs?” Dr Engelbert stated.

Dr. Engelbert highlighted the success of South Africa in publishing and expressed confidence that Nigeria could achieve similar or greater accomplishments in producing influential journals.

”If you look at some South Africa universities, they require their PhD students to have published one to two papers in South African-based journals. So South Africa has already taken a step in that direction,” he said.

The 3-day workshop on Good Financial Grant Practices was organized by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) in collaboration with the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVCNU).