Open Access (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing. However, publishing still has costs that need to be covered – such as proofreading, copy editing, digital presentation and preservation, promotion and dissemination of the work.

AFRJBS using a Gold Open Access model. All articles published in AFRJBS journal are available to readers completely free of charge. Access is made possible by a fee for publication that is paid at the time of article acceptance, usually by an author’s research grant or institution or funder. Articles become available online immediately upon publication. Author(s) retain copyright of their work, but readers are free to reuse the material (providing proper citations are given), as all AFRJBS articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY).

Open Access ensures that articles are free at the point of consumption. Rather than charge for access, Open Access publishers apply an initial fee at the time an article is accepted for publication. This fee, known as an Article Processing Charge (APC), covers the costs of the production process. Often this charge will be covered by the authors’ affiliated institution(s), or by the funding body responsible for commissioning the research.

By using a liberal copyright license, Open Access removes barriers and allows researchers to make use of articles in new ways. This includes practices like meta-analysis and text mining, which help reveal trends in science that would not be obvious at the level of individual articles.