[IP-OA_Forum] OA Wochen 2026: Wessen Stimmen können wir uns leisten zu verlieren?

[Brett Thomas <brett@plutojournals.com>]

The Cost of Knowledge: Whose Voices Can We Afford to Lose?

For the African Journal of Bioethics, Open Access is not a publishing preference; it is an ethical commitment to ensuring that people can both contribute to and benefit from knowledge.

This year’s theme, “The Cost of Knowledge”, asks what is lost when taking part in scholarship depends on the ability to pay. When researchers cannot read the literature, practitioners cannot draw on relevant evidence, or authors cannot afford publication fees, the cost reaches beyond individuals. We lose perspectives, questions and insights that could strengthen our collective response to ethical challenges.

For African bioethics, that loss is acute. Scholarship grounded in the continent’s communities, intellectual traditions and lived experience must be able to shape how ethical problems are understood, in Africa and globally.

As a diamond Open Access journal, we charge neither readers nor authors, so that researchers and practitioners from different institutional and resource settings can contribute.

Yet removing fees is only part of the work. Language, connectivity, access to mentoring and the unequal recognition of different knowledge traditions also shape whose scholarship is published, read and valued. We call this ethical quieting: the sidelining of locally grounded ethical thinking, even within systems that appear inclusive. Counteracting it takes more than open doors. Through the AJB Scholarly Publishing and Peer Review Academy, we are building the skills and mentoring that enable African scholars to publish, review and edit with confidence.

For our journal and its community, the promise of Diamond Open Access is simple: the opportunity to inform ethical debate should not depend on purchasing power. The cost of knowledge must also be measured in the voices we fail to hear, and the understanding we lose when they are absent.- Mercury Shitindo, Editor-in-Chief, African Journal of Bioethics

About the Journal

The African Journal of Bioethics is a quarterly, peer-reviewed Diamond Open Access journal dedicated to advancing scholarship, dialogue, and capacity-building in bioethics across the African continent. Published in March, June, September and December, the journal seeks to foster pan-African harmonisation of ethical standards in healthcare, research, and emerging technologies by addressing the unique social, cultural, and structural contexts that shape ethical decision-making in Africa.

Here’s a selection of articles from the recent issue of African Journal of Bioethics : 

• Knowledge and Attitude of Correctional Officers and Inmates About Research Ethics in Nigeria
• Nature and management of perceived researcher vulnerability at Makerere College of Health Sciences, Uganda.

The journal embraces a broad disciplinary scope, drawing from medicine, public health, philosophy, law, anthropology, gender studies, sociology, environmental science, and information technology. It positions itself at the intersection of these disciplines to explore how ethical principles can be meaningfully applied to African healthcare systems, population health challenges, and scientific innovation. Read the journal for free Diamond #OpenAccess on ScienceOpen. 

The initial six 2025 AJI journals and five new 2026 AJI titles are Diamond Open Access and all articles are free to read. You will be able to see the issues as they are published on ScienceOpen and JSTOR

Applications for the 2027 cohort are now closed. We have an exciting selection of journals from across Africa under consideration and we look forward to sharing them with you.

Don’t forget to follow us on Bluesky and LinkedIn!

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Kind Regards

Brett Thomas, MBA

https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1294-2766

Library Relations Manager

T (Spain): +34 679 694331

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