Copyright & Licensing

Copyright

The African Journal of Health and Medical Sciences (AFJHMS) adheres to an open-access model, meaning that all published articles are freely available to the public without charge. Upon acceptance of an article, the authors retain the copyright of their work but grant AFJHMS the right to publish and distribute the article. The journal applies a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to all published content, allowing for the broadest dissemination and use of the research while ensuring proper credit to the authors.

Licensing

All articles published in AFJHMS are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The key features of this license include:

Attribution: Users must give appropriate credit to the original authors, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. Credit must be given in a reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the authors or AFJHMS endorse the user or their use.

Share Alike: If users remix, transform, or build upon the material, they must distribute their contributions under the same license as the original.

Non-Commercial Use: The license does not restrict commercial use, allowing the research to reach a wider audience, including in educational and professional settings.

Author Rights

Authors publishing with AFJHMS retain the following rights:

Right to Share: Authors can share their articles (e.g., in institutional repositories, on personal websites, or on social media) and retain the right to disseminate their work widely.

Right to Reuse: Authors can reuse their work in future publications, including books or dissertations, without seeking further permission, provided the original work published in AFJHMS is properly cited.

Third-Party Content

If the article contains any third-party material, the authors must obtain the necessary permissions to use and distribute this content under the CC BY 4.0 license. Authors are responsible for providing evidence of these permissions when submitting their manuscript.

Compliance with Open Access Requirements

AFJHMS’s licensing policy complies with the open-access requirements of various funding agencies and institutions, ensuring that authors can meet the mandates for open-access publication without additional restrictions or barriers.