Call for papers for a special issue on
WONDERS OF THE AFRICAN WORLD.
Taking
advantage of the timely turn around time in electronic publishing, West
Africa Review invites submissions for a WAR special devoted to brief,
scholarly responses to the PBS TV series, Wonders of the African World,
written and presented by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Send
submissions as e-mail attachment or on disk (Wordperfect/Microsoft Word).
Please go to Submission for detailed
guidelines.
Deadline
for submission: November 30, 1999.
Publication date: December 30, 1999.
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Africa
Resource Center is pleased to publish West Africa Review
[WAR], an ejournal devoted to the promotion of research and
scholarship of importance to the global African community and friends
of Africa.
Journal
Longetivity
Archival Compliance
IUICODE
Projections
In undertaking
this publication venture, Africa Resource Center took a long term
view of the technical needs of online publishing and of our role as an
academic information provider. We set about looking for the right kind
of solutions to what numerous mainstream researches have identitifed as
the major problems of online scholarly publishing in the humanities and
social sciences. The two critical issues from our perspective are the
issues of permanence and accessibility. Our own preliminary research and
experience reveal the contrary. USA-based African scholars, especially,
and other African scholars in different parts of the world are enthusiastic
about the idea of publishing in the Internet. The reason could be that they
are a heavily wired, net-savvy group. Most are part of an
extraordinarily vibrant country-based net groups, chatrooms, and discussion
lists. Experience has shown them that electronic permanence is attainable
because coordinators of these virtual communities have kept excellent
archival records.
What may
be of concern to many scholars is how universities and colleges will
view their electronically published articles. To help alleviate some
of this concern, we would like to share with you the arrangement Africa
Resource Center has made to ensure that articles, published
in its electronic journals, retain longevity. Optimum consideration
is given to issues of technical quality by Africa Resource Center.
We guarantee continuity of access and journal longetivity, through affliation
with the International Consortium for Alternative Academic Publishing
[ICAAP], a Canadian initiative dedicated to the development of international
alternative academic production. The goal of ICAAP is to promote a model
of high quality alternative scholarly communication outside of the commercial
mainstream. This relationship provides us with additional institutional
infrastructure that solves the problem of permanence plaguing online
scholarly publishing. West Africa Review is backed up and archived
on two separate servers, in two separate sites, and in two separate
countries: on our own Africa Resource Center's server and on
ICAAP's servers. This dual archival process guarantees the avaliability
of our journals should we experience any technical difficulty with our
own server. Back issues will always be available through ICAAP servers.
Furthermore,
to meet the stringent requirements of archival compliance, W.A.R
is marked up first in IXML. IXML stands for ICAAP eXtended Markup Language.
It is an open XML implementation designed as an extension to the HTML
markup language for use specifically with scholarly journals. This markup
facilitates data storage, information longetivity (because IXML is SGML),
and the creation of "magic" filters for the creation of multiple document
formats from a single source file. Once articles are marked up in IXML,
they are processed with various "filters" that allow the creation of
multiple documents. This can be both regular HTML, and Dynamic HTML
(with graphic pop-ups, etc.).
The IUICODE
is assigned to academic journals. This means that one can refer to articles
in West Africa Review in citations using the iuicode format at
the bottom of each article. [Please keep this in mind.] For example
an article with URL http://www.africaresouce.com/war/content/vol1.1999/issue1/okome.html
can be referred to as http://www.africaresource.com/iuicode?2.1.1.4.
Basically, this allows the journal and articles to be moved around,
and to change URLs multiple times without any problem. The article will
always be found by robot via the iuicode number.
Africa
Resource Center is proud to be a viable force in the international
arena of African studies. Through our web resource database, online
bibliographic list of scholars publication, book publications, sponsorship
of journals, and the promotion of artists and poets, we are working
to provide specific Africa-relevant materials for the global community.
In the near future, we will expand our list of offerings to include
customized educational modules for online courses on Africa.
For educational
purposes this site may be linked to others on the WWW. Commercial
use of any material contained on these web pages is strictly prohibited.
Everything published here is the property of Africa Resource Center.
Every effort has been made to ensure compliance with requirements
of copyright clearance and appropriate credits. Please bring any omission
to our attention.
For further information on West Africa Review contact Nkiru Nzegwu, Managing Editor at nnzegwu@africaresource.com.
