ARTICLES

African Journal Partnership Project Thrives

Participants in the ninth annual meeting of the African Journal Partnership Project at the Medical College of Ghana in Accra, Ghana, April 2013.
Participants in the ninth annual meeting of the African Journal Partnership Project at the Medical College of Ghana in Accra, Ghana, April 2013.

Journal Partnership Project (AJPP) met in Accra, Ghana, in April 2013. The themes of this ninth annual meeting were to strengthen capacity building and sustainability of the journals, improve the use and management of new technologies, and raise the visibility of African science and medical journals. The group welcomed two new journal members: Annales Africaines de Médecine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Sierra Leone Journal of Biomedical Research. The editors of those two journals joined their colleagues from six other African journals (African Health Sciences, Ethiopian Journal of Health Sciences, Ghana Medical Journal, Malawi Medical Journal, Mali Medical with Environmental Health Perspectives, and Medical Journal of Zambia), northern partner journals (Annals of Internal Medicine, BMJ, Environmental Health Science, JAMA, Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine), and supporters from the National Library of Medicine, the Fogarty International Center, Kaufman Wills Fusting & Company, the Network of African Medical Librarians, Ovid Technologies/Wolters Kluwer Health, SPi Global, Thomson Reuters/Scholar One Manuscripts, and the Council of Science Editors. Much progress has been made: each of the journals is now publishing online, and most are included in PubMed, African Journals Online, and other publicly accessible databases. The journals are improving their services and access for authors and readers and expanding their presence and influence locally and internationally. Additional information and updates on the African journals are available on the AJPP Web site, ajpp-online.org/index.php.

In September 2013, funding for the partnership project was renewed by the US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health. The group plans to meet again in conjunction with the CSE annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, in May 2014. Tom Goehl has retired as one of the project’s codirectors. Steve Morrissey (New England Journal of Medicine) has joined Annette Flanagin (JAMA) and David Ofori-Adjei (Ghana Medical Journal) as a codirector.


ANNETTE FLANAGIN is executive managing editor of JAMA and codirector of the African Journal Partnership Project.