…diamond publishing, promotion reforms

By Adesina Wahab

Prominent communications scholar and international journal publisher, Dr Gever Verlumun Celestine, has challenged Nigerian universities to break free from the exploitative commercial publishing architectures of the Global North by taking full ownership of their digital research infrastructure and reforming outdated academic promotion guidelines.

Dr Celestine delivered the keynote address on Thursday, 22 October 2026, during the Open Access Week symposium hosted by the Open Science Community of Practice at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), under the global theme, “The Cost of Knowledge.”

The hybrid event, held at the Babs Fafunwa Building and joined by international virtual participants, was hosted under the leadership of the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Simon Uchenna Ortuanya.

Speaking on the theme “Democratising Scholarly Publishing: Infrastructure Ownership, Diamond Open Access, and Global Research Visibility,” Dr Celestine sounded an urgent alarm over the crippling economic barriers confronting African scholars.

He pointed out that continuous currency volatility and steep foreign exchange devaluations have pushed commercial Article Processing Charges (APCs) in offshore corporate journals beyond ₦4,500,000 per manuscript—an amount that exceeds the total annual salary of many Nigerian university lecturers.

According to Dr Celestine, this hyper-inflated pay-to-publish structure effectively locks out productive African minds, draining scarce domestic research capital abroad and turning global scholarly visibility into an exclusive privilege of affluent Western institutions.

Dispelling the persistent myth that African-managed journals cannot match global benchmarks, Dr Celestine presented living empirical evidence from his stewardship as Founder and Editor-in-Chief of three internationally recognised indigenous titles: the Scopus and Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indexed Ianna Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, the DOAJ-indexed Mdooter Journal of Communication and Digital Technologies, and the Verlumun Journal of Artificial Intelligence, Gender and Cultural Studies.

He highlighted that these Nigerian-born journals have proven beyond dispute that local editorial leadership and strict double-blind peer review can attain top-tier international indexing and high citation velocity.

Dr Celestine noted, however, that while independent journals in Nigeria currently rely on the Gold Open Access model to fund basic operations like digital servers and metadata management, the strategic future of African scholarship lies in transitioning to Diamond Open Access—a model that guarantees free access for all readers while charging zero author-facing fees.

To achieve this paradigm shift, the scholar laid out a decisive national policy roadmap, calling on the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and the National Universities Commission (NUC) to redirect intervention resources away from subsidising foreign corporate publishers.

Instead, he argued, public funding should build national Open Journal Systems (OJS) digital repositories, underwrite Crossref digital object identifier (DOI) consortia memberships, and deploy solar-powered campus server hubs to guarantee uninterrupted uptime across Nigerian universities.

Dr Celestine also tackled the institutional contradictions within Nigerian university governance that discourage indigenous academic excellence.

He called on university Senates and Appointments and Promotions Committees (A&PC) to urgently dismantle appraisal biases that devalue high-standard home-grown journals while rewarding expensive foreign outlets.

Furthermore, he urged university management to eliminate rigid, compulsory time-in-rank promotion intervals that keep exceptionally productive, high-output researchers stagnated on the same grade level simply to satisfy arbitrary calendar waiting periods.

Academic career progression, he insisted, must be governed strictly by merit, rigorous peer review, and demonstrable societal impact.

In his concluding callout, Dr Celestine highlighted that genuine academic freedom requires full author ownership over research outputs.

He reminded the audience that true open access is not merely about reading text freely on a digital screen, but ensuring that authors retain unencumbered copyright through permissive Creative Commons licensing (such as CC BY), which permanently prevents commercial publishers from locking academic findings back behind corporate paywalls.

The high-level symposium was organised by the Open Science Community of Practice (OSCP, UNN), with sessions moderated by Prof. Ngozi E. Osadebe and Dr Ify Evangel Obim.

The presentation on research visibility and strategic open science practices, authored by Dr Sotonye Orji of the University of Port Harcourt, was delivered on her behalf by Prof. Scholar C. Ukwoma of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka Library.

Participants commended the conveners for initiating a timely discourse vital to the revitalisation of Nigerian higher education.