About

This page explains how to use the features that the ASR offers at present. To suggest new features please contact us. For an overview of the aims of the ASR please refer to the article 'Building an African Studies using Web 2.0 Principles'. For information about the conditions of using the ASR please refer to our terms of use and privacy policy.

How to:

  1. Register and create a profile


  2. Upload a document


  3. Add a Creative Commons license


  4. Tag or comment on an article


  5. Send and receive messages



1. Register and create a profile: All articles uploaded to the database and authorised for public viewing by their creators will be available for browsing by users without registration. To upload an article yourself, or to add a comment or tag an article will require registration. During registration you will be asked to supply a username and email. There is also an option to supply information such as their current and previous institutions and affiliations, country of residence, and areas of interest and expertise. This information helps other users to identify common interests. All the information you supply will be saved to a personal profile page, where documents that you have uploaded will also appear, with a list of your tags. Also on the personal profile page will appear a list of tags that the owner of the profile page has applied to other documents. Clicking on any of these tags takes to a list of the articles that the user has applied this tag to, links via usernames to other users who have used the tag and to other articles that the tag has been applied to.



2. Upload a Document: Follow the 'add an article' link to add your article. Paste the title and abstract into the relevant boxes. These elements are required to upload the article. You can also choose to paste the body of the text into the box provided or to use this space to add a link to the full text online. Use the icons to add links, equations, pictures, graphs or to style the text. To upload an article as a PDF, Word or RTF document, use the 'browse' button to locate the article on your computer. Then press the 'preview article' button at the bottom of the page. A list of your articles will appear on your profile page.



3. Add a Creative Commons License: Unless you specify otherwise, all work posted to the ASR is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. This means that With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work for non-commercial purposes provided they give you credit. If you would like to use a different license for your work, please go to Creative Commons Choose a License and follow the instructions.



3. Tag or comment: To add tags or comments to your own work or another article when logged in, scroll to the bottom of article. Add your tags separated by commas then press 'tag this'. Your tags will appear on your profile page and on the page for the article. To add a comment, write your comment in the box and press 'add comment'. Please note that you can only tag OR comment in one go.



4. Send and receive messages: If you receive a message on the ASR, you can will receive an email to notify you. To read the message, login and follow the link to 'my messages'. Clicking on a username shown in the list of users or at the top of an article they have posted will take you to the user's profile page. If you are logged in you can send them a message by clicking 'send a message' on their profile page.