Open Books Collective Report FY2025

African Minds remains a fully open access scholarly book publisher. It has published over 120 scholarly books since its formal establishment as a not-for-profit trust in 2012. African Minds has adopted a book-processing-charge (BPC) model, one that is most suited for its local operating context. Academics in South Africa receive financial rewards from the government via their host universities for their scholarly publications. The funds are most often paid into academics’ research accounts which then enables them the use their research funds to pay APCs and BPCs. At the same time, African Minds is acutely aware that academics at universities outside of Africa do not have ready access to such funding. African Minds has therefore in some cases published selected books without any payment.

 African Minds’ participation in the Open Book Collective (OBC) provides a new source of revenue for the press that will, in the shorter term, reduce BPCs charged as African Minds is able to appoint staff with greater certainty thus increasing operational overheads but reducing the cost of production. The most recent annual financial statements show that this transition is already taking hold. Income from OBC has increased from 20% of total income to 29% from 2024 to 2025; and OBC in 2025 accounted for 91% of income from book “sales”, an increase from 65% in the previous year. In the 2025 financial year, employee costs totalled ZAR402,408.80 as African Minds was able to employ an editor on a full-time basis, and a metadata and distribution assistant on a part-time basis. African Minds is currently in the process of entering into a contract with a marketing company to assist in raising the visibility of its publications. Again, this contract is made possible by the assurances of regular income being generated via the press’s participation in the OBC.

 In the longer term, African Minds remains committed to transitioning to a no-fee publishing model. This transition depends in large part on the continued success of the OBC model.