What’s in a “NAME”? A study of African and Arab journals in the DOAJ

Journal applications for DOAJ are reaching the milestone of +500 titles assessed by the ‘North Africa & Middle East’ (NAME) editor group at DOAJ. This editor group made a study of the African and Arab journals in the DOAJ. The study concludes that although many Arab journals are online, participation in the DOAJ is very little, and African journals tend to adhere to other databases. Rejection of applications from Arab countries is quite high and that is due to a reluctance towards Open Access, ignorance of the main features of Gold OA, and lack of appliance to principles of transparency and best practice for scholarly publications. Efforts need to be made to encourage publishing in Arabic and national languages, to assist publishers to meet requirements of peer-reviewing, publication ethics, copyright and licensing.