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Governance, Ethics & Legal Policies

Open Access & Licensing Policy

AFRIK Academic Press operates under an uncompromising open-access mandate: ensuring peer-reviewed scientific literature and multilingual African translations are permanently, universally, and freely accessible without paywalls or commercial extraction.

Last Updated: October 21, 2026

1. Universal Diamond Open Access Mandate

AFRIK Academic Press (“AFRIK”, “the Press”) firmly rejects the commercial paywalling of scientific discovery. Knowledge generated by African scholars and international researchers belongs to humanity.

All journals, specialized proceedings, monographs, and bilingual editions published by AFRIK are published under a Diamond Open Access model:

  • Zero Paywalls for Readers: Immediate, perpetual, free online access to full-text articles in HTML, PDF, Markdown, and XML formats from the moment of publication. No subscription, pay-per-view, or institutional gatekeeping is ever imposed.
  • Equitable Author Access: Publication costs are underwritten through the non-profit AFRIK Research Foundation—established by the Foresight Institute of Research and Translation (FIRAT) (Nigeria & Rwanda) as its singular unique contribution to research in Africa at the uncommon point of indigenizing knowledge, alongside its first founding partners, the College for Advancement of Academics (CAA) and Galaxy Nova Technologies & Innovations (GNTI)—alongside charter universities and philanthropic grants, removing exploitative Article Processing Charges (APCs) that bar researchers from the Global South.

2. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

All research articles, perspectives, reviews, and editorial commentaries are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0):

Under the CC BY 4.0 License, you are free to:

  • Share: Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
  • Adapt: Remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms:

  • Attribution: You must give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and AFRIK Academic Press, provide a direct link to the license, indicate if changes were made, and include the permanent DOI or AFRIK Persistent Identifier (PID). You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  • No Additional Restrictions: You may not apply legal terms or technological measures (such as DRM) that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

3. Author Copyright Retention & Institutional License Grant

Unlike legacy commercial publishers that demand complete copyright assignment from scholars, AFRIK ensures that authors retain copyright in their original intellectual work:

  • Copyright Retention: Authors retain the full copyright of their articles without restriction.
  • Exclusive First Publication Right: Authors grant AFRIK Academic Press the right of first publication of the peer-reviewed Version of Record (VoR).
  • Perpetual Worldwide License: In consideration for organizing double-blind peer review, professional typesetting, permanent PID minting, and Crossref DOI registration, the author grants AFRIK an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable license to publish, reproduce, host, distribute, typeset, index, abstract, translate, and preserve the work across all platforms and media.

4. Zero-Embargo Self-Archiving (Green Open Access)

AFRIK actively encourages self-archiving and preprint sharing at all phases of the research lifecycle with zero embargo periods:

  • Pre-print (Author's Original Manuscript - AOM): Authors may post their pre-peer-review manuscript on institutional repositories, personal websites, or non-commercial preprint servers (such as arXiv, AfricArXiv, bioRxiv, or medRxiv) at any time.
  • Post-print (Accepted Author Manuscript - AAM): Authors may deposit their accepted, peer-reviewed manuscript immediately upon acceptance in any institutional repository or subject archive without delay.
  • Version of Record (VoR): Authors and institutions may immediately deposit and redistribute the final published publisher PDF, HTML, or XML version anywhere, provided the canonical AFRIK DOI is cited.

5. Multilingual Translation Commons Licensing

A cornerstone of AFRIK's mission is making frontier scientific knowledge accessible across continental African languages (including Arabic, Kiswahili, French, Hausa, Yorùbá, Amharic, Igbo, isiZulu, and an expanding roster of continental languages):

  • Derivative Translation Rights: Because all original research is published under CC BY 4.0, any scholar or language community is legally empowered to translate published works into indigenous languages.
  • Mathematical & Formula Fidelity: Authorized scientific translations hosted on AFRIK must guarantee 100% mathematical fidelity. Formulas, LaTeX notations, chemical equations, datasets, and citation structures must remain identical to the peer-reviewed source.
  • Translator Credit & Attribution: Authorized translations credit both the original authors and the contributing translators or linguistic arbiters, published under CC BY 4.0 and tied to the canonical article record.

6. Text and Data Mining (TDM) & Computational Extraction

In full alignment with modern open-science standards, AFRIK permits unrestricted computational Text and Data Mining (TDM) across all published literature:

  • Unrestricted Mining: Researchers, universities, and commercial entities may automatically download, parse, semantic-index, and mine full-text XML and PDFs for research and computational linguistic modeling without seeking prior permission.
  • Machine-Readable Formats: AFRIK provides standardized machine-readable endpoints delivering clean academic Markdown, LaTeX formulas, and JATS XML metadata.

7. Permanent Preservation & DOI Persistence

AFRIK guarantees the long-term digital preservation and permanent accessibility of all published research:

  • Persistent Identifiers (PIDs): Every article is assigned a canonical AFRIK Persistent Identifier and an official Crossref Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
  • Archival Redundancy: Published content is mirrored across distributed preservation systems including LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, the Internet Archive, and institutional university repositories across Nigeria, Rwanda, and partner states.

8. Institutional Licensing Contacts

For institutional consortium partnerships, translation charters, or licensing verifications, contact our Open Access Secretariat at [email protected].