WHO COUNTS? Ghanian academic publishing and global science

227pp., paperback, Cape Town, 2022

"Critical and up-to-date studies of African journal publishing are rare. A great strength of this study is that it investigates publishing strategies in Ghana from both the researchers' and the journals' viewpoints across humanities and (social) science fields, thus bringing together author and publisher, who are too often seen as working at cross-purposes. Refreshingly undogmatic, the authors reject 'easy answers' - such as tech-topics, 'open science', expensive or unequal open access, the proliferating writing workshops favoured by funders and, most of all, the regime of (commercially-dominated) journal metrics. Instead, they take the continent's own researchers and journals seriously, elucidating the complex landscape of old and new, commercial and institutional, regional and international publishing." Stephanie Kitchen, International African Institute, London

"In showing how global research and publishing economies continue to influence individual research and academic careers in Africa at the expense of investing in truly African publishing cultures that echo African interests in the global knowledge production and consumption ecosystems, the authors caution the readership that academic perishing arises from a culture of non-publishing as much as it does from too much publishing that is not anchored in a sovereign agenda." Ibrahim Oanda, CODESRIA, Dakar