The event, held at North-West University’s main campus, devoted its first session to recognizing the best and most impactful scholarship published by AOSIS, Southern Africa’s leading publisher of open-access, peer reviewed literature.

The session introduced new titles published by AOSIS Scholarly Books and honoured achievements in journal indexing and author citation.

The Journal of African Disability, African Vision and Eye Health, the South African Journal of Communication Disorders, and the South African Journal of Human Resource Management shared the award for journal indexing after their journals were added to the prestigious Scopus index during 2018. Five articles, one each from disciplines ranging from public health to theology, were recognized for the outstanding rate at which they were cited in other scholarly works.

Prof Refilwe Phaswana-Mafuya, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at North-West University, summed up the cause for celebration in her welcoming address. “AOSIS has come to showcase the scholarly works that they have been involved in,” she noted. “AOSIS has indeed developed a reputation for their devotion to producing high quality research works and the impressive array of scholars gathered here today is a testament to this. AOSIS and North-West University have forged a commitment to high-impact, high-quality research, based on shared values, that reaches beyond the walls of academia into the heart of issues that we are faced with as a society today.”

AOSIS began publishing books in 2010 with a single title, and its list has grown steadily, reaching 13 in 2018. All books are subject to painstaking peer review, which limits their number but strengthens their prospect of making an impact. Indeed, every scholarly book ever published by AOSIS has been indexed in the prestigious Web of Science Book Citation Index, an impressive measure of their impact.
AOSIS publishes 45 scholarly journals, up from three in 2008 and accounting for roughly 15% of South Africa’s scholarly-journal market. Currently, 60% of its journals are indexed in Scopus. In the last two years, AOSIS journals have earned more than 10,000 citations in articles published in other scholarly journals.

To view the entire session, please see below or visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67hz4z9Zp_E.
To download photos of the event please click on the link https://gallery.augustphotography.co.za/aosis/
To learn more about how AOSIS is bringing the best of African scholarship to the continent and to the world, please visit aosis.co.za.