For 50 years, ROAPE has brought our readers pathbreaking analysis on radical African political economy in our quarterly review, and for more than ten years on our website. ROAPE’s founding editor, Peter Lawrence, explains that from January 2024, all of our readers will be able to access every part of ROAPE as well as its archive without a paywall. This will make ROAPE accessible to a much wider readership, especially in Africa. We need subscriptions and donations to make this revolutionary intiative work. Sign up now!
As we have recently announced on our website , at the end of this month we are leaving our publisher, the global corporate giant Taylor and Francis, and returning to our original status as an independent self-published journal. In a further exciting development, the journal will be openly accessible online without a paywall.
For 25 years from our first issue in 1974 the Editorial Working Group was responsible for the publication of the journal and in the very early years was also involved in the physical production process. The journal financed itself from relatively low subscription rates but with a large number of subscribers, especially from individuals as well as institutions and also in the early years, bookshop sales. Costs were kept low by the voluntary input of some of the editors in editorial and financial management. Gradually this became too much for the editorial group to manage and we set ourselves up as a cooperative, ROAPE Publications Ltd, with not very well-paid workers dealing with editing, production and sales.
Always short of money and close to folding, the journal was offered a home with Carfax, which subsequently via Routledge became part of the increasingly large Taylor and Francis stable of journals. This put us on a very stable financial footing with a good relationship with our publishing colleagues and proper payment to our production manager, and later website editor as well as honorary payments to our editors with roles in the production of the journal.
We were also able to run our Connections workshops across the continent with additional support from donors. This came at the cost of being part of a global corporate and a large increase in subscription prices. As a radical left journal, and still a cooperative, we were never happy with this arrangement even if our publishers never interfered in our editorial decisions.
In particular, we did not like that the past seven years of issues were behind a paywall, and effectively inaccessible to a large number of readers. Even some of our institutional subscribers did not have access to the whole 50 years old archive. Our discomfort increased with the advent of the duplicitiously termed ‘open access’ model driven by the Research Councils and other bodies whose grants include an element to compensate the publisher for the loss of income from being required to make articles based on funded research openly accessible. This ‘pay to publish’ model means that to make an article that has been accepted for publication openly accessible, authors have to pay the publisher whether from a research grant or from their own pocket. We did not want to be part of this new academic exclusivity.
So, from January 2024, you will now be able to access electronically all parts of ROAPE as well as its archive without a paywall. We are partnering in these exciting developments with ScienceOpen and through our website you will be able to access and to contribute to the journal. This will make it accessible to a much wider readership, especially in Africa.
We know that journals that have taken this step have increased their readership many times over. We are sure that we will do the same.
Like other periodicals that have taken this step, we will still need an income. We are hoping that readers of our website and of the journal will support us. You can do this by subscribing to access the journal online at our much-reduced rates for personal subscriptions. At a higher but still affordable rate you can have both an online and print version.
You can also support the journal with a regular or a one-off donation with your subscription, or by simply making a donation. We will also be offering subscribers and donors significant discounts on books or attendance at conferences that we organise, including two exiting new titles coming out next year, and anniversary events in 2024.
We shall continue to produce a high-quality peer-reviewed journal supporting the work of scholars and activists both across the African continent and around the world. In funding ROAPE through subscriptions and donations you will enable us to sustain production and open access to the rigorous, high quality and radical analysis of African political economy that has been the hallmark of this journal over the last 50 years.
Peter Lawrence is an editor of ROAPE, a leading member of ROAPE’s Editorial Working Group, and a founding editor of the journal.
