Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A Nigerian sociology researcher posts a Yoruba-language preprint on AfricArXiv with an English-language summary.
- Is an instance
A funder accepts AfricArXiv deposits as compliant green OA.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Excluding AfricArXiv preprints from citation tracking on the grounds of language.
- Not an instance
Requiring authors to deposit only in Northern-based servers, ignoring AfricArXiv.
Editorial commentary
AfricArXiv is a community-led, discipline-agnostic preprint repository for African-affiliated and African-focused research, founded in 2018 as a volunteer initiative. It is not a single self-hosted platform: it operates as a distribution layer across existing open infrastructure rather than running its own repository servers.
Current operational status and hosting
As of this writing, AfricArXiv’s primary submission and hosting infrastructure runs on the Center for Open Science’s Open Science Framework (OSF) — the same free preprint-hosting model OSF provides to more than twenty other community preprint services (EarthArXiv, AgriXiv, and similar). AfricArXiv additionally maintains a community collection on Zenodo (established 2020) and a partnership with ScienceOpen for discovery and metrics, giving the initiative redundancy across independent, non-commercial infrastructure providers rather than a single point of failure. This multi-host pattern is typical of volunteer-run, community-governed preprint services generally — worth checking directly at africarxiv.org before treating any specific hosting detail as fixed, since community preprint servers periodically change or add hosting partners as funding and volunteer capacity shift.
Scope and governance
AfricArXiv accepts preprints across disciplines rather than specialising in one field, and explicitly supports multilingual submission — depositing research summaries or full preprints in African languages (including Yoruba, Hausa, Swahili and others) alongside English and French, a deliberate design choice aimed at African-language scholarly communication rather than English-only publishing norms. Governance is volunteer- and community-led, positioning AfricArXiv within the “African ownership of African research infrastructure” strand of the knowledge-equity conversation, distinct from platforms hosted or governed primarily outside the continent.
How it differs from AmeliCA and the African Open Science Platform
AfricArXiv is a preprint server: a venue for depositing research outputs ahead of, or independent of, journal peer review. It is a different kind of infrastructure from AmeliCA (a Latin American cooperative diamond-OA journal-publishing infrastructure) and from the African Open Science Platform (a continental policy-and-infrastructure coordination initiative operating at a higher, pan-African-institutional level rather than as a deposit venue for individual researchers). The three are frequently cited together in knowledge-equity discussions but perform distinct functions and should not be treated as interchangeable or as competing for the same role.
Worked example / counter-example
A Nigerian sociology researcher posts a Yoruba-language preprint on AfricArXiv with an English abstract, and a funder with a green open-access mandate accepts that deposit as compliant. By contrast, requiring authors to deposit exclusively in a Northern-based, English-only preprint server, without considering AfricArXiv as an eligible option, runs against several funders’ and institutions’ own knowledge-equity commitments.
References
- africarxiv.org / africarxiv.pubpub.org.
- Obeng-Odoom, F. et al. and related AfricArXiv community documentation on OSF and Zenodo hosting partnerships.
Also known as
Africa arXiv · AfricArXiv Preprints
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="AfricArXiv"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/africarxiv" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/africarxiv",
"name": "AfricArXiv",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/africarxiv",
"description": "A community-led preprint repository for African researchers, established in 2018, providing a publishing venue for African scholarship in multiple African languages alongside English and French.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/knowledge-equity#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/africarxiv",
"alternateName": [
"Africa arXiv",
"AfricArXiv Preprints"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:22:56",
"dateModified": "2026-09-05T14:26:08",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
