Open Access seen from French-speaking sub-saharan Africa

Seen from French-speaking sub-saharan Africa, the struggle for open access takes on a meaning different from that which prevails in the countries of the global North. This article aims at uncovering issues such as the mechanisms of exclusion set up by the world-system of scientific publication, dominated by the Anglo-Saxon mercantile model. How a concept of open access, when it is limited to the legal and technical questions of the accessibility of science, can become a source of epistemic alienation and neo-colonialism in the global South. On the other hand, It is also demosntarated that open access can become a tool of cognitive justice in service to the construction of an inclusive universalism associated to fair open science.

[This articlel in French makes part of a special issue dedicated to Open Access and Open Science]