African Electronic Journals (SA ePublications)

This review critically examines the African Electronic Journals (SA ePublications) database which was developed by Sabinet <http://www.sabinet.co.za> with the intention to provide easy access to full-text articles published in South Africa as well as southern Africa. Sabinet has been in operation since 1983, running as a non-profit organisation for the first 17 years. Sabinet is an aggregator of premier southern African electronic publications serving a diverse client base which includes libraries, research organisations, law firms and individual subscriptions. Apart from African Electronic Journals (SA ePublications), Sabinet also provides access to South African Union Catalog (SACat), the South African National Bibliography (SANB), Index to South African Periodicals (ISAP), the Union Catalogue for Theses and Dissertations (UCTD) and African Digital Repository, amongst others. Information on the other databases available through Sabinet can be found on the Sabinet Web site. African Electronic Journals (SA ePublications)’s major strength lies in the fact that it is the only database that provides convenient, organised access to a collection of full-text journal articles from a specific geographic area that is not covered as extensively by other international databases.

African Electronic Journals (SA ePublications) consists of a full collection of more than 300 journal titles and more than 120,000 full-text articles. Tables of content of all the journals are also available. To streamline access and to allow for individual needs, the database content is grouped into seven subject collections: Business and Finance, Law, Medical and Health, Religion, Science, Technology and Agriculture, and Social Science and Humanities.

African Electronic Journals (SA ePublications) certainly meets with its claim to be the most comprehensive database in the world on full-text electronic journals published in South Africa as well as southern Africa. Apart from being an essential source of information for any researcher from southern Africa, it is also an essential resource for any research related to southern Africa.