Raoul Kamadjeu, Managing Editor, Pan African Medical Journal, Uganda

1. The Pan African Medical Journal
Inside an African Journal
Open Access Africa Conference
25-26 October 2011, Kumasi, Ghana
Raoul KAMADJEU, MD, MPH
Managing editor
editor@panafrican-med-journal.com
Nairobi - Kenya
www.panafrican-med-journal.com

2. At the end, you will know
1. Who we are
2. What we do
3. How we do it
4. Our challenges
5. Our future plans

3. Questions about the status of
biomedical publishing and
African journals

4. How many African journals are out
there? Is it too many, is it too
little, is there a need for a new
journal?

5. How easy is it to publish in an
African Journal?
Is it affordable and user-friendly?

6. How easy is it to access research
published in an African journal?

7. What are African researchers’
perceptions and expectations about
African biomedical journals?

8. What is the best business model for
an African medical journal?
Is it sustainable?

9. Some statistics on African journals

10. African journals in PubMed and ISI
5000 Journals in Medline, 38 from Africa (2009, Dirk Schoobaert)
Rest of the world Africa
Less than 1% of the journals are from Africa
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
6700 Journals in ISI, 20 from Africa, only 1 medical journal (2009, Thomas J. Goehl)
Rest of the world Africa
Less than 0.3% of the journals are from Africa
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Dirk Schoonbaert. PubMed growth patterns and visibility of journals of Sub-Saharan African origin. J Med Libr Assoc. 2009 October; 97(4): 241–243
Thomas J. Goehl, Annette Flanagin. Enhancing the Quality and Visibility of African Medical and Health Journals . doi:10.1289/ehp.12265

11. African Journal in African indexes
Contribution of African countries to AJOL and African Index Medicus (WHO)
AJOL* (October 2011) AIM (October 2011)
Others 24% Others 30%
Ghana 5% Ghana 2%
Ethiopia 5% 411 journals Kenya 3% 122 journals
6%
in AJOL in AIM
Kenya Ethiopia 3%
South Africa 18% South Africa 20%
Nigeria 43 % Nigeria 41%
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50
*Scope not limited to Biomedical journals % %

12. African journals in DOAJ
Contribution of Africa to DOAJ
Number of journal in DOAJ in 2011 (October 14): 7162
Africa Brazil
700
600
Number of Journals
500
400
300
200
100
0
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
219 African journals in DOAJ in 2011
• 88 from 5 countries: Egypt , South Africa, Nigeria, Tunisia and Kenya
• 50 from Egypt alone..!

13. DOAJ world map
7162 journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (October 14, 2011)
Number of journals
in DOAJ
1
10
1,000
There is plenty of space to add a dot on Africa..!

14. Where authors from SSA publish*
A study of 24,417 articles in PUBMED from the top 10 countries in SSA (1995-2004)*
Only 27% of 24,417 articles in PUBMED, by African authors, were published in African Journals
*Karen J. Hofman. Mapping the health research landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa: a study of trends in
biomedical publications. J Med Libr Assoc. 2009 January; 97(1): 41–44

15. The case of ICT in African journals

16. The potential of ICT for African journals
• ICT potential for African journals
− Quality affordable platforms (OAJ)
− Increase access to journal contents
− Reduce paper submission challenges
− A good alternative to printing and dissemination of hard
copies
• ICT implementation has some challenges:
− Expertise required to set up and operate the system
− Software acquisition and/or development
− Software maintenance
− Adaptation to a rapidly changing technology

17. The potential of ICT is not maximized by
African journals
• Not very appealing journal websites, Some initiatives to improve access to IT by
• Limited use of electronic publishing African journals
platform − Open Journal System (PKP):
• Limited use E-marketing (social http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs_download
media, mailing lists) − African Journal Online (AJOL):
• The expertise require to set up and http://www.ajol.info/
maintain these systems not easily − African Journal Partnership project:
accessible (availability and cost) http://www.ajpp-online.org/
• Capacity building opportunities are rare

18. African journals - Consequences
• The visibility of African journals can be greatly improved
• Most journals have limited geographical scope
• Not the primary target for submission by African authors
• Access to African journals remains a challenge (despite recent
improvements)

19. • Why will an author submit to an African
Journal?
• Why will he pay authors fees when big
publishers waive those fees for African
authors? BMC
PLOS
African journals
African journals
at a critical stage Others

20. What a modern African journal
should aim for?

21. The new journal should be:
• Open Access
• Peer-reviewed
• Maximize the opportunities of ICT
• Easily accessible from within Africa and globally (online)
• Bilingual (English and French)
• No authors fees or minimal charges to authors
• User friendly
• With high visibility and impact (indexed)
• Sustainable over time

22. PAMJ’s vision
To be the leading medical journal
in Africa and one of the best in the
world

23. PAMJ strategic intent and approach
Establishing a high standard/quality and
financially viable OA medical journal
Create, stimulate and
perpetuate a culture of
scientific publication amongst
African health professionals
Reduce the
Increase the availability of health
information and knowledge from burden of
Africa, for the global health community diseases
Increase the availability of
health information and
knowledge from Africa, for the
global health community
Increase awareness and capacity for
scientific publication among the medical
and public health community in Africa

24. Birth and early development of PAMJ
• Idea was born around discussions between friends
Feb –March • Journal’s name adopted and web domain registered
2007
• Adopting IT infrastructure, development of journal website
May-Sept • Set up of the Editorial board
2007
• Website completed - PAMJ is up and running
• Call for paper issued
May – July
2008 • First articles published online
• Memorandum of Understanding with The African Field Epidemiology Network
Sept 2008

25. PAMJ – Rapid growth
• Indexed in African Index Medicus (AIM)
Jan 2009
• Indexed in EBSCO
Feb-Jun • Indexed in Directory of Open Access Journal (DOA)
2009
July- Sept • Member of Open Access Scholarly Publisher Association (OASPA)
2009
• Indexed in Embase, Scopus, CABI, Pubmed Central/Pubmed
• Article-level metrics is introduced
2010 • 100 articles published
• First authors survey (May-June)
• > 200 manuscripts published
2011 • >1000 manuscripts received, Our first supplement scheduled (December 2011)

26. PAMJ – In short
An
Online, OA
enthusiastic
, per- Bilingual team
reviewed (French
, English)
The
Fastest
Focus on growing
Africa journal in
Africa

27. PAMJ Editorial Team
Raoul
Landry
Sheba Allan Anita
Lazarus

28. PAMJ editorial
office at work

29. Achievements

31. PAMJ IT platform
• Designed and constantly upgraded based on PAMJ editorial team
specifications and authors/reviewers feedback
• Includes an online manuscript submission system and peer-review
system
• Use open source software (PHP/MYSQL/APACHE)
• Advanced email notification system
• Allows a decentralized editorial office workflow
• Includes a PMC-XML processing module

32. PAMJ IT platform
Authors
Manuscript submission
and follow-up
Editors
Others
Reviewers
Peer Review
Editors
Staff/users
XML module
Advanced email
communication
Statistics
Editors
Production Editors
Manuscript management RSS feed

33. PAMJ article
metrics

36. PAMJ - Statistics

37. PAMJ ecosystem (Jul 2008 – Oct 2011)
Capacity building activities
• Cap Town Workshop (Dec 2010) Manuscripts
• Tanzania Workshop (Dec 2011) 1085 submitted
Authors
4476
PAMJ
Mailing list: 1750 1800 Reviewers
20 000 visitors in 2010 – 2011 132
from 132 countries countries

38. Manuscripts submitted to PAMJ since 2008
1185 manuscripts received (April 2008 – October 2011 )
140
120 2008 2009 2010 2011
100
Number of manuscripts
80
60
11 86 211 877
40
20
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2008 2009 2010 2011
2011: January to October 14

39. Type of manuscript (2008 - 2011)
45
40
35
30
25
41% case reports
20
15
32% research
10
5
0

40. Origin of manuscripts (2008 - 2011)
Manuscripts submitted from 54 countries
1
10
50
100
Manuscript language
Our winners: • English: 60%
Morocco, Nigeria, Cameroon, Tunisia, India, Uganda, Cote • French: 40%
d’Ivoire, Kenya

41. PAMJ Authors’ profile
Findings of 2011 Authors Survey
100% How many years of experience in
scientific publishing do you have
80%
Most authors are new How many years of work
to scientific publishing 60% experience do you have?
(< 5 years) – At their 40%
first publication 20%
0%
0-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25 >26
From colleagues
10.3%
Heard of PAMJ from From a search engine
colleagues and (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc..)
48.9% From library search (including
search engines Pubmed)
37.3% Through Social media
(Facebook, etc..) or news coverage
Other (please specify)
http://www.panafrican-med-journal.com/resources/surveys/2011/Pamj_author_survey_2011.pdf

42. Reasons for choosing PAMJ?
Findings of 2011 Authors Survey
Other (please specify)
It is free (no charges to authors)
It is indexed in PubMed
It is open access
It is easy and convenient to submit a
manuscript
The quality of the articles published
The editorial board looked serious
Journal was recommended by a colleague
Speed of publication
0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0%
No charges, indexation in PubMed and the quality of the articles published are the main
motivator
http://www.panafrican-med-journal.com/resources/surveys/2011/Pamj_author_survey_2011.pdf

43. Challenges

44. Submission and publication (2008 - 2011)
140
120
Submitted Published
100
Number of manuscripts
80
60
40
20
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
The processing capacities of the editorial team is surpassed

45. Two main challenges
• Facing the rapid increase in volume of
submissions
• Designing a viable business model to achieve
sustainability

46. Risk of very high volume of submission
- Editorial staff overburdened
- Increase in backlog of unprocessed manuscripts
- Increase in manuscript processing time
- Increase frustration of authors with lost of
confidence
- Reputation of the journal in jeopardy
- Increase in production cost

47. Increase in running cost
To cover:
– Increase in production cost (PMC-XML)
– System development and maintenance (publishing
platform, webhosting)
– IT infrastructure (hardware and software)
– Operations (communication with
authors, formatting, invite per-reviewers, etc..)

48. Financial sustainability plan
A viable business model to
achieve financial sustainability
A Comprehensive
communication Inform about what we are doing
strategy
Identify potential donors (in Africa and
Grant application
elsewhere and apply for grants/support)
Institutional Affiliation Encourage institutions to provide support
Fair author fees policy Charge authors a small fee – Last resort
Advertisement

49. Future plans
• Deploying the editorial team into new clusters (West and
North Africa)
• Expand partnerships with African institutions
• Capacity building for editorial team
• In-house processing of PMC-XML
• Phased-implementation of the financial sustainability plan
− PAMJ is actively looking for
donations, endowments, grants, institutional affiliations
− Author- fee should remain very limited and last resort

50. Acknowledgements
• Dr Landry Tsague (PAMJ managing editor) for
his inputs in preparing this presentation
• PAMJ Editorial office

51. Special acknowledgements