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Reading List Best Practice

Finding research from underrepresented voices

The publishers, databases and websites listed on this page all focus on research and resources by marginalised or underrepresented groups. Research has shown that mainstream academic publishers and databases have a Global North and English language bias, research by women is less likely to be cited, and that work that centres the lives, experiences and perspectives of marginalised people receives less funding and prestige. This collection is designed to encourage you to look beyond traditional sources, to find research from across the globe and that reflects the diversity of voices involved in the academic conversation. If you have suggestions of links to add, please email librarians@northampton.ac.uk

Publishers and booksellers

African Books Collective

African books, African writers and African scholarship. African Books Collective is a non profit distribution collective owned by publishers on the continent.

African Minds

African Minds is a not-for-profit, open access publisher based in Cape Town, South Africa. We publish predominantly in the social sciences and our authors are typically African academics and thinkers, as well as international academics who have a close affinity with the continent.

Africa World Press and The Red Sea Press

Our mission is to provide high quality literature on the history, culture, politics of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Alliance of Radical Booksellers

In order to qualify as an ARB member, the bookseller must: -be informed by socialist, anarchist, environmental, feminist or anti-racist concerns -stock or sell books which inspire, support or report on political and/or personal change in the global, national or local sphere.

Ayebia

Bespoke publishers specialising in quality African and Caribbean writing.

Black Classic Press

Black Classic Press is devoted to publishing obscure and significant works by and about people of African descent. We specialize in republishing works that are out of print and quite often out of memory.

Camp Books

Camp Books is more than a bookshop: we specialise in preserving the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people across history, through books, archives, ephemera, and new publications. Our mission is to highlight the story each object has to tell, and promote its use as a tool for education and empowerment.

Carcanet

One of the outstanding literary publishers of our time, Carcanet Press has a special emphasis on poetry from around the world. This is the best place to buy poetry on the web, and offers a massive resource of poems, reviews and pictures for free.

Dialogue books

Dialogue Books shines a spotlight on stories for, about and by readers from the LGBTQI+, disability, working class and BAME communities. The imprint has a clear focus of distinctive, cross-genre titles that spark a conversation across fiction, non-fiction, commercial and literary publishing.

Duke University Press

Duke University Press publishes approximately 120 books annually in the humanities and social sciences. Our specialties include African studies, African American studies, American studies, anthropology, art and art history, Asian studies, Asian American studies, Chicanx/Latinx studies...

Hansib Publications

Publisher of a wide range of books catering for Britain's African-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean communities

Hope Road Publishing

Hope Road Publishing promotes the best writing from and about Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, with themes of identity, cultural stereotyping, disability and injustices are of particular interest. Includes the Small Axes imprint republishing out of print post-colonial classics – those books which helped to shape cultural shifts at the time they were first in print, and which remain as relevant today.

Hurst Publishers

Hurst is an independently owned non-fiction publisher. Our strengths are in African Studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, South Asian Studies, War and Conflict Studies, History and Politics.

Icon Books

Icon Books is an independent publisher that specialises in intelligent, quality non-fiction for a general audience. Our Introducing Graphic Guide series thrives alongside a list of books in science, history, politics, sport, language, humour and much else besides.

Influx Press

London based book publisher of fiction and non fiction. Stories from the margins of culture and sites of resistance that remain under explored in mainstream literature.

Jacaranda Books

Diverse, inclusive literature from award-winning independent, black-owned publisher and bookseller Jacaranda Books. Shop for literary and commercial fiction, biography, memoir, poetry and YA. Home of #TwentyIn2020 for Black British writers.

MIPP International

Books from Russia, Central Asia, Baltic states, Mongolia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova

New Beacon Books

Specialists in African and Caribbean Literature.

Peepal Tress Press

Caribbean and Black British Fiction, Poetry and Non-fiction.

Persephone Books

Books by twentieth-century women writers.

Pluto Press

Pluto Press is an anti-capitalist, internationalist and politically independent publisher. Our books make timely interventions in contemporary struggles.

Verso

Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world.

RedBone Press

RedBone Press publishes work celebrating the cultures of black lesbians and gay men, and work that further promotes understanding between black gays and lesbians and the black mainstream.

Saqi Books

Saqi Books is a leading independent publisher of trade and academic books on the Middle East and North Africa.

Virago

International publisher of fiction and non-fiction books by women.

ZED Books

Publisher focusing on marginalised voices.

Databases

Africabib

Africabib consists of two bibliographic databases and a bibliography: the Bibliography of Africana Periodical Literature Database covering Africana periodical literature is an English language database indexing over 50,000 articles from over 415 English language and multi-lingual journals that specialise in African Studies or consistently cover the African continent; the African Women's Bibliographic Database contains over 30,000 items from various types of materials: books and government documents; articles appearing in edited books; periodical and journal articles; Masters theses and Ph.D. dissertations as well as a few B.A. theses and honours papers; conference papers; and videocassettes. The bibliography coverage is on women travellers and explorers to Africa and is called Women Travelers, Explorers and Missionaries to Africa: 1763-2006: A Comprehensive English Language Bibliography.

AfricArXiv

AfricArXiv is a community-led digital archive for African research, working towards building an African-owned open scholarly repository; a knowledge commons of African scholarly works to catalyze the African Renaissance. We partner with established scholarly repository services to provide a platform for African scientists of any discipline to present their research findings and connect with other researchers on the African continent and globally.

Africa portal

The Africa Portal is a research repository and an expert analysis hub on African affairs. It is dedicated to publishing and promoting research and analysis African from think tanks and thought leaders (academics, researchers, journalists and industry experts) on policy issues across a variety of fields. It also produces thematic series on critical issues dominating the African and global policy agenda. The open-access research repository holds over 9,000 reports, occasional papers and policy briefs which are available for free, full-text download.

The Black Women Radicals database

The Black Women Radicals Database (BWRD) historizes and visualizes Black women’s radical political activism in Africa and in the African Diaspora in efforts to build academic, political, and community engagement, dialogue, knowledge production, research, and education about Black women’s significant legacies as socio-political agents of radical change. By housing a database of historical and transnational Black women activists and leaders, the BWRD seeks to overcome the erasure of Black women’s political leadership, organizing, theorizing, and socio-political movement building in Africa and in the African Diaspora that has often been ignored in favor of Black and white cis-heteronormative male charismatic leadership, especially in the field of Black Politics. BWRD serves as a vehicle to center Black women’s historical political memory, scholarship, epistemologies, and leadership in socio-political movements that may not be taught in academia and in community and public spaces.

Eldis

Eldis provides free access to relevant, up-to-date and diverse research on international development issues. Our database includes over 50,000 summaries and provides free links to full-text research and policy documents from over 8,000 publishers. Each document is selected by members of our editorial team.

Ethiopian Journals Online (EJOL)

Ethiopian Journals Online (EJOL) is hosted by Addis Ababa University. The objective of EJOL is to provide a platform to publish local journals online using Open Journals System (OJS) so as to increase participating journals visibility, and to the research convey through open access (OA).

Garuda : garba rujukan digital

Garuda is a powerful resource platform for discovery of scholarly publications in Indonesia, managed by the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia.

Global Electronic Theses and Dissertation Search

Global ETD Search searches over 6 million electronic theses from around the planet. Created by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) the search tool offers a Google like search interface with advanced features.

Lens

Lens serves global patent and scholarly knowledge as a public good to inform science and technology enabled problem solving. Lens is an extension of work started by Cambia in 1999 to render the global patent system more transparent, called the Patent Lens. Lens is a greatly expanded and updated version of the Patent Lens with vastly more data and greater analytical capabilities.

LILACS

This database enables you to search for literature related to the health sciences published since 1982 in countries of South and Central America and the Caribbean. It contains articles from about 670 of the most well-known journals in the medical field and other documents, such as: theses, chapters of theses, books, chapters of books, congress and conference proceedings, technical and scientific reports and governmental publications. Some articles are available free in full text.

PakMediNet

PakMediNet was created in March 2001, with the aim to promote Pakistani-based medical research and Pakistani medical journals on the Internet. PakMediNet also provides free help regarding reference search and biostatistics.

SciELO Complete

SciELO is an international pre-print server of Spanish- and Portuguese-language work. Primarily science and social science research.

WHO Global Index Medicus (WHO GIM)

The Global Index Medicus (GIM) provides worldwide access to biomedical and public health literature produced by and within low-middle income countries. The main objective is to increase the visibility and usability of this important set of resources. The material is collated and aggregated by WHO Regional Office Libraries on a central search platform allowing retrieval of bibliographical and full text information.

Websites

Africa Book Link

By subscribing to the Africa Book Link, scholars, students, research centres, libraries and bookshops, can fully acquaint themselves with the latest publications in the field of African literature.

Black and Asian Studies Association

Collection of links compiled by BASA of sources by or about Black and Asian peoples’ experiences

Black Cultural Archives

Black Cultural Archives is the only national heritage centre dedicated to collecting, preserving and celebrating the histories of African and Caribbean people in Britain.

Cite Black Authors

We seek to enhance recognition and citation of black academic voices. Our approach requires a shift from traditional citation practices that are passive and white-centric to active citation practices that both quantify and equilibrate racial representation.

Diverse Educators

Website with a range of ‘toolkits’ and reading lists for several topics and subject areas.

Diverse reading lists from academic institutions

Padlet with links to diverse reading lists and resources about diversifying reading lists from a range of institutions and organisations.

Gender Balance Assessment Tool (GBAT)

Women are cited less often than men, and are also underrepresented in syllabi. Yet even well-meaning scholars may find that they have difficulty assessing how gender-balanced their bibliographies and syllabi really are. Counting is tedious and prone to human error, and scholars may not know the gender identities of all the authors they cite. This tool aims to help with that, by automating the process of evaluating the (probabilistic) gender of each name and then providing an estimate of what percentage of the authors on a syllabus are women.