Afropus

Afropus serves researchers, academic libraries, journal publishers, universities, research institutions, and others interested in African scholarship. Researchers can discover academic works and journals, libraries can support collection development and research discovery, and publishers can seek inclusion in the index through a transparent evaluation process. The platform is built around four core principles: discovery, published standards, independent evaluation, and interoperability. Its indexing decisions are guided by publicly available criteria and integrity requirements, with the Afropus Content Evaluation Council (ACEC) providing independent oversight. Inclusion is based on evaluation rather than payment, sponsorship, or commercial arrangements. Afropus also supports stronger connections across the scholarly ecosystem through community identifiers such as ORCID for researchers, DOI and Crossref for research outputs, and ROR for research organisations. These connections help scholarly records remain interoperable with other research systems rather than isolated within a single platform. The index prioritises African publishing ecosystems across five regions and fifty-five jurisdictions, with geographic balance as a goal. Its broader vision is to strengthen the visibility of African scholarship, improve research discoverability, and help African scholars, institutions, and academic publishers participate more fully in global knowledge exchange. Afropus is an initiative of Alkademy Learning Ltd, developed to support a more visible, transparent, and connected African scholarly record.