Pluto Journals and African Books Collective are pleased to announce the launch of the ‘African Journals Initiative’, working with a growing community of no-fee (‘diamond’) Open Access (OA) social science and humanities journals based in African universities.

This letter aims to set out publicly an explanation of the thinking behind the move of the Pluto Journals publications into Open Access.  I am sharing this because these are issues of relevance to all writers and publishers in social sciences.