African Journals Online

 

                AJOL www.ajol.info  proclaims itself to be the world’s largest online collection of African-authored scholarly articles drawn from 400 peer-reviewed journals published in 30 countries.   According to its mission statement: “Mainly due to difficulties accessing them, African-published research papers have been under-utilized, under-valued and under-cited in the international and African research arenas….AJOL is working to change this.”

It is another use of the internet and Open Access Journals such as the Directory of Open Access Journals www.doaj.org  and Latin America’s Scientific Electronic Library Online www.scielo.org to make non-North American /Europe research available to a worldwide audience.

            AJOL is a non-profit company based in South Africa.  It raises funds by charging for downloads for a few magazines so it’s not all Open Access.  Currently it receives 150,000 visits per month from 190 countries.   

            I did a couple of searches on my regular interests.   They used the Google system which allows for Boolean searching and setting time limits.

            The word nanotechnology got 8 pages of listings of relevant articles mostly concerning the use of nano particles to deliver medicine.

            Seven pages of relevant articles showed up for MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems)

            I decided to add the phrase cold fusion found eight pages of listings with I put in cold fusion, but none if I use the “ “mark command.