African Research Visibility Initiative

What African Research Visibility Initiative does

African Research Visibility Initiative (AfricaRVI) is a federally incorporated nonprofit organization in Canada that operates the African Scholarship Citation Index (ASCI), a curated scholarly database and citation index aimed at addressing the historical underrepresentation of African research in global knowledge systems. The platform combines advanced search technology with expert human curation across six specialized indices — African Scholarly Journals Citation Index (ASJCI), African Scholarly Data Citation Index (ASDCI), African Scholarly Theses Citation Index (ASTCI), African Scholarly Books Citation Index (ASBCI), African Scholarly Conference Citation Index (ASCCI), and African Scholarly Chemical Citation Index (ASChemCI) — covering research from and about Africa across multiple disciplines. Advanced search capabilities include Boolean operators, proximity syntax, wildcards, and 30+ field-specific search parameters, with downloadable bibliometrics and citation analytics for research assessment at individual, institutional, national, and regional levels.

AfricaRVI serves individual researchers, research managers and administrators, universities and research institutions, scholarly publishers and libraries, and funders and policymakers, with a horizontal segmentation approach. Distribution is entirely through a self-serve web platform at africarvi.org accessible globally via browser, supported by Google and Facebook OAuth authentication, SEO-optimized content, a blog/news channel, and community-led training and capacity-building programs. Revenue is generated exclusively through donations and voluntary contributions via the website (credit/debit card and PayPal); no subscription pricing or fee structure is publicly disclosed and no enterprise contracts or named customer logos are reported.

The organization is led by President Toluwase Asubiaro, with an Executive Team (including David Mills), an Advisory Board, consultants, and a Research Team focused on bibliometrics methodologies. AfricaRVI has established technology integration partnerships with Crossref and OpenCitations to embed African research metadata into global scholarly infrastructure, and is developing two additional platforms — the African Scholarly Publishing Platform (ASPP) and the African Scholarly Submission and Review System (ASS&RS) — to extend support into publishing and peer-review workflows for African journals.

Name

African Research Visibility Initiative

Legal name

African Research Visibility Initiative

Website

https://africarvi.org

Company type

Private

Operating status

Operating

Short description

African Research Visibility Initiative (AfricaRVI) is a Canadian nonprofit operating the African Scholarship Citation Index (ASCI), a curated database that combines expert human curation with advanced search technology to enhance global visibility of African scholarly publications for researchers, institutions, publishers, and policymakers.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Scholarly Citation Database

NAICS

Libraries and Archives (51921), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519), Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities (541720)

SIC

Miscellaneous Publishing (2741), Services-Educational Services (8200)

akta.pro industry

PRIMARYEDAGAFAJ

Open Access Scholarly Journals & Monographs

Education/Educational Publishing & Learning Content/Academic & Scholarly Publishing (Journals, Monographs)

SECONDARYMPAJABAK

Scholarly Societies & Conference Proceedings Publishing

Media, Entertainment & Sports/Publishing (Books, News, Magazines)/Educational & Academic Publishing (Textbooks, Scholarly, STM)

Keywords

• Scholarly citation database
• Academic research indexing
• Citation analytics platform
• African scholarship visibility
• Bibliometrics data services

Headquarters

HQ country

Canada

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Donations and Contributions: AfricaRVI accepts direct donations through their website with credit/debit card and PayPal payment options. The organization is a federally incorporated nonprofit in Canada, relying on voluntary contributions from researchers, institutions, and supporters.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

The African Research Visibility Initiative (AfricaRVI) operates the African Scholarship Citation Index (ASCI), a free, searchable academic database and citation index providing downloadable bibliometrics data and research metrics focused on African scholarship. The platform combines digital infrastructure with expert human curation to index journals, theses, books, data, conference proceedings, and chemical literature from African authors and institutions. Additional platforms include the upcoming African Scholarly Publishing Platform (ASPP) and the African Scholarly Submission and Review System (ASS&RS).

Product overview

AfricaRVI operates as a digital infrastructure platform designed to strengthen African research visibility and scholarly communication. The core offering is the African Scholarship Citation Index (ASCI), a searchable academic database that comprises six specialized citation indices: African Scholarly Journals Citation Index (ASJCI), African Scholarly Data Citation Index (ASDCI), African Scholarly Theses Citation Index (ASTCI), African Scholarly Books Citation Index (ASBCI), African Scholarly Conference Citation Index (ASCCI), and African Scholarly Chemical Citation Index (ASChemCI). ASCI combines advanced technology with expert human curation to build a high-quality metadata database providing citation analytics and research assessment data. The platform also includes the upcoming African Scholarly Publishing Platform (ASPP) for publishing support and the African Scholarly Submission and Review System (ASS&RS) for manuscript management. Together, these platforms provide seamless discovery, publishing, and submission pathways that elevate the visibility, accessibility, and global impact of African scholarship.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• ASCI (African Scholarship Citation Index): Searchable academic database providing downloadable research-assessment data and improved online access to carefully curated research published in and about Africa. Includes ASJCI, ASDCI, ASTCI, ASBCI, ASCCI, and ASChemCI components.
• ASPP (African Scholarly Publishing Platform)
• ASS&RS (African Scholarly Submission and Review System)

Products and services

• African Scholarship Citation Index (ASCI)
• African Scholarly Publishing Platform (ASPP)
• African Scholarly Submission and Review System (ASS&RS)

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration4 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• CrossrefcoreTechnology or IntegrationAfricaRVI integrates African research metadata into Crossref's global scholarly infrastructure, promoting access to African research and research-assessment data within international citation networks.
• OpenCitationscoreTechnology or IntegrationAfricaRVI collaborates with OpenCitations to integrate African research metadata into open citation databases, supporting the broader goal of making African scholarship discoverable in global scholarly infrastructures.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• OpenCitations: OpenCitations is an open scholarly infrastructure organization that builds citation indexes using open bibliographic and citation data. It is both a partner and peer, working on overlapping citation indexing and open scholarly metadata problems.
• African Journals Online (AJOL): AJOL is a non-profit scholarly database that hosts peer-reviewed African-published journals. It is the most direct functional peer to AfricaRVI's ASCI, addressing the same mission of increasing visibility of African scholarship.
• DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals): DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high-quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. It overlaps directly with AfricaRVI's journal selection and metadata curation activities.

Emerging players

• OpenAlex: OpenAlex is an open, fully downloadable index of scholarly papers, authors, and citations. As an emerging open alternative, it provides overlapping functionality for citation analytics at potentially lower friction.
• Semantic Scholar: Semantic Scholar is an AI-driven academic search and discovery platform. It is an emerging player that intersects with ASCI's discovery and citation analytics use cases.

Broad incumbents

• Dimensions (Digital Science): Dimensions is a research metrics and discovery platform linking publications, grants, patents, and policy documents. It is a broader incumbent competitor in the research assessment analytics space.
• Scopus (Elsevier): Scopus is a large, subscription-based abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. It is a broad incumbent in the citation index space and competes with ASCI for African research assessment use cases.
• Web of Science (Clarivate): Web of Science is a subscription-based citation indexing service covering multidisciplinary scholarly literature. It is an incumbent alternative used by universities and funders for research assessment.
• Google Scholar: Google Scholar is a freely available broad academic search engine that indexes scholarly literature. It is the dominant free discovery tool researchers use and competes with ASCI for citation discovery.

Others

• Crossref: Crossref is a DOI registration agency and scholarly metadata infrastructure provider. As a Core integration partner of AfricaRVI, it functions as adjacent infrastructure rather than a competitor.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Facebookfacebook.com/AfricaRVI
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/african-research-visibility-initiative-africarvi

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about African Research Visibility Initiative