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What Is Afropus?
Afropus is an African research discovery and indexing platform designed to make African scholarship easier to find, explore, and connect. It brings together information about academic journals, researchers, institutions, ideas, topics, and disciplines connected to African scholarship within a structured research index.
Afropus focuses on research across Africa’s five regions: North, West, Central, East, and Southern Africa. Its goal is to address the difficulty of finding African research that may be distributed across different journals, institutions, countries, and research communities.
How Does Afropus Work?
Afropus is being developed around a structured approach to research discovery and evaluation. Its index is designed to organize scholarly information so that users can explore research through different entry points.
The platform’s approach includes:
- Identifying scholarly information: Bringing together information about journals, researchers, institutions, ideas, topics, and disciplines.
- Applying published criteria: Using defined criteria to evaluate information included within the index.
- Maintaining integrity gates: Applying checks intended to support the integrity of indexed information.
- Organizing research information: Structuring scholarly records to make them easier to discover and explore.
- Connecting research: Helping users move between related researchers, institutions, journals, topics, and areas of scholarship.
What Does Afropus Include?
Afropus is organized around four core areas of African scholarship:
Journals
Academic journals provide an important source of published research. Afropus is designed to help users discover journals connected to African scholarship and explore the research they contain.
Researchers
Researchers are another central part of the index. Afropus is designed to make researchers and their scholarly work easier to discover and connect.
Institutions
Universities, research centres, and other research institutions form an important part of the African research landscape. Afropus includes institutions as part of its approach to understanding and connecting scholarship.
Ideas
Research is not limited to individual publications. Afropus also considers ideas, topics, and disciplines as important entry points for discovering African scholarship.
Why Is Afropus Important?
African research is produced across a large and diverse academic landscape. Research can be spread across countries, institutions, journals, disciplines, and research communities, making it difficult to discover beyond the platforms where it was originally published.
Afropus is designed to address this discovery challenge by creating a more connected way to explore African scholarship.
It can support:
- Research discoverability: Making relevant African research easier to find.
- Researcher discovery: Helping users identify researchers working in particular fields or areas.
- Institutional discovery: Making research institutions easier to identify and explore.
- Journal discovery: Helping users find academic journals connected to African scholarship.
- Cross-disciplinary exploration: Allowing research to be explored through topics and disciplines.
- Research connections: Creating pathways between researchers, institutions, publications, and ideas.
Afropus and African Scholarship
Afropus focuses specifically on scholarship connected to Africa. This can include research produced by African researchers and institutions, research conducted in African contexts, and research focused on African countries, communities, environments, cultures, economies, and issues.
The platform’s geographic framework covers five regions:
- North Africa
- West Africa
- Central Africa
- East Africa
- Southern Africa
Together, these regions cover 55 jurisdictions within Afropus’s planned index scope.
How Does Afropus Evaluate Research?
Afropus is built around four evaluation pillars:
- Published criteria: Clear criteria that explain how information is assessed.
- Integrity gates: Checks designed to support the integrity of indexed information.
- Transparency: Making the basis for evaluation understandable.
- Appeals: Providing a process through which evaluation decisions can be challenged or reviewed.
These principles are intended to provide a structured foundation for the index rather than simply creating a directory of research information.
Afropus and Research Discovery
Afropus treats research discovery as more than searching for individual papers. A user may begin with a journal, researcher, institution, topic, or discipline and then explore related scholarly information.
For example, someone researching public health in West Africa could discover relevant journals, researchers, institutions, and related areas of research rather than relying on a single publication search.
This approach can make it easier to understand how different parts of the research landscape connect.
Afropus at Afropus
Afropus is itself the platform being developed to create this research discovery system. The platform describes its purpose as making African research more visible and easier to find.
Its planned index brings together research information across journals, researchers, institutions, ideas, topics, and disciplines, using a framework covering 55 jurisdictions across Africa’s five regions.
As the index develops, its evaluation framework is intended to provide a consistent basis for inclusion and research discovery.
Related Terms
- African Research
- African Scholarship
- African Academic Index
- African Research Indexing
- African Research Discovery
- African Research Ecosystem
- Research Discoverability
- Scholarly Discovery
- Research Index
- Research Discovery Platform
FAQs
What is Afropus?
Afropus is an African research discovery and indexing platform designed to make African scholarship easier to find, explore, and connect.
What can I find on Afropus?
Afropus is designed around four core areas: journals, researchers, institutions, and ideas. Its index also considers topics and disciplines connected to African scholarship.
Does Afropus cover all of Africa?
Afropus’s framework covers five regions of Africa: North, West, Central, East, and Southern Africa, spanning 55 jurisdictions.
How does Afropus evaluate information?
Afropus uses four stated evaluation pillars: published criteria, integrity gates, transparency, and appeals.
Is Afropus an academic journal?
No. Afropus is a research discovery and indexing platform. It is designed to help users discover journals, researchers, institutions, ideas, and other scholarly information.
Who can use Afropus?
Afropus is designed for anyone seeking to discover or explore African scholarship, including researchers, students, academics, institutions, publishers, and other people interested in African research.