African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA), has debunked suggestions that open access academic publications are substandard.
 
Executive Director, Dr. Helena Asamoah-Hassan, says though they are free to access, such materials are subjected to stringent editorial process just like proprietary works.
 
“Sometimes, people say it’s not true the articles in open access are not good. It’s a movement which is enabling research to be freely available especially for developing countries,” she explains.
 
Speaking at an open access publishing workshop, she urged researchers in Africa to take opportunity to disseminate such works.
 
Dr. Asamoah-Hassan says her outfit is striving to link up researchers in member institutions to open access publishers to enhance study.

 
She revealed members will soon roll out an open access journal for librarians in Africa to publish their work.
 
Librarian at the College of Science of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Richard Bruce Lamptey describes as worrying, high fees the public pays to access works published with institutional funds.
 
Mr. Bruce-Lamptey says the situation hinders the visibility of many institutions at the expense of their rankings.
 
“Currently, KNUST, we’re paying over 100,000 dollars to get our work into these journals, Legon is paying more. Why should we have limitations when it comes to accessing a good research paper,” he questioned.
 
The two-day session brought together librarians from tertiary institutions across the country.
 
It was sponsored by Electronic Information for Libraries.