The Institute of Accountancy Arusha in Tanzania has initiated a project to significantly improve the quality, operational resilience and long-term sustainability of the Journal of Informatics through a strategic mix of capacity building, technical enhancement, and financial stabilization.

The Journal of Informatics (TJI) is a Diamond open access journal that advances scholarly research in information technology and its interdisciplinary applications. Topics covered include Programming, Databases and data warehousing, Computer security, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Mathematics, Operating Systems, Networking, ICT Systems Management, ICT4Dev, Library Science and Records Management.

Like many emerging academic journals in developing regions, TJI faces a range of operational and technical challenges that affect its growth, sustainability and global visibility. The project aims to overcome these challenges through a combination of training of the technical management team in advanced configurations and maintenance of the journal’s Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, user experience enhancement and integration with global indexing services, and building capacity of the editorial team (editors, reviewers, section editors) in current best practices in scholarly publishing, peer review and editorial ethics.

Technical and editorial training will result in improved efficiency of journal production, contributing to sustainability of the journal. In addition, a journal financial sustainability plan for covering future technical, administrative and editorial costs will be developed.

The ‘Journal of Informatics Project’ is one of 30  projects that have received grant support through a three-year project to strengthen no-fee open access publishing in Africa implemented by EIFL, AJOL (African Journals Online) and WACREN (the West and Central African Research and Education Network), with funding from Wellcome.

Activities

• Training the technical management team on OJS and related digital publishing tools, resulting in improved system reliability, reduced downtime, and optimized user experience for authors, reviewers, and readers.
• Workshops and mentorships to build capacity of the editorial team in best practices in scholarly publishing, peer review, and editorial ethics. This will increase the efficiency, rigour, and transparency of the editorial process.
• Streamlining the editorial workflow, reducing turnaround times and elevating publication quality.
• Developing a sustainable financial model for the journal.
• Advanced configuration of the OJS platform to enhance interoperability, discoverability and global compliance.
• Enabling robust system maintenance by providing ongoing technical support, software updates, and server maintenance.

Timeline

September 2025 - September 2026

More about the Journal of Informatics.