Sustainable research
dissemination
Policy and Practice
The problem the marginalisation of African
knowledge
For our continent to take its rightful place in the history
of humanity ... we need to undertake, with a degree of
urgency, a process of reclamation and assertion. We
must contest the colonial denial of our history and we
must initiate our own conversations and dialogues
about our past. We need our own historians and our
own scholars to interpret the history of our continent.
President Thabo Mbeki – launching the Timbuktu
Library Project
Can research publication in Africa
be sustainable?
World Bank now arguing that higher
education could be an essential
driver of economic growth in Africa
NEPAD is calling for proposals for
the creation of an African Science
and Innovation Facility
Higher Education Policy
built around the idea of Innovation
and
driven by the concept of the
knowledge economy in a networked
society
SA research needs to be responsive
The universities need to assert the importance of
their independence, and the value of the
knowledge commons as a seedbed of innovation
ranging from product development to the design of
effective public policies…they need to show how
their work is responsive to the pressing needs of
development
Martin Hall, Freeing the Knowledge Resources of Public Universities. KM Africa conference,
DBSA, March 2005
The importance of research
dissemination
Public and merit goods are those which the public
values but which the markets find it difficult to
allocate because individuals cannot, or should not,
be excluded from their consumption.
Scientific research falls into this category and
society as a whole is worse off if access to
scientific results is restricted.
Costs and Business Models for Scientific Publishing
Welcome Trust. Created by SQW
– A report commissioned by the
When it comes to research
publication policy, we hit a brick wall
Promotional and reward policies at national and
university level are based on publication in
journals in international indices.
If one examines the criteria that determine the
selection of journals into the ISI and the IBSS, it is
clear that they are heavily weighted against
developing countries and the disciplines that
depend on local knowledge
Given our marginalisation, we need
to learn to expand our minds and
not get trapped in preconceptions of
how our environment is shaped
Rather ask questions about what we
need to achieve – for the country,
the university, the discipline, our
own careers
Conventional scholarly
publishing in the developed world
Where is it at?
'We have a scientific publishing system
that is massively dysfunctional and
really, really broken.'
James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law, Duke
University, at the iCommons Summit, Rio, June 2006
The patient is dying!
Call the ambulance!
Lindsay Waters, Humanities editor, Harvard University Press
What are the problems?
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Commercialisation of journal production –
control in the hands of large near-monopoly
conglomerates
Double-digit price increases in a captive market
Profit strategies of publishers at odds with
public interest of scholars
Publish or perish policies driving up book
production
Library budgets down
Publish and perish
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Publish or perish policies have debased the
value of the scholarly book and led to a
proliferation of poor-quality journals across the
world.
In the face of falling budgets and buy-in into
commercial models, university presses driven to
'break even' or make profits.
Result – the convergence of scholarly
publishing with upper-end trade publishing
Peculiar assumptions
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Publishing should be outsourced
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Scholarly publishing is a profit-based business
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Research dissemination is not the business of
universities and research institutions and they
do not need to fund it
These assumptions become even more
peculiar when applied in a developing
country context
Academic publishers face dangers from all sides these days - the
public, taxpayers, profs, students, librarians, colleagues. There has
emerged the idea among administrators and some academic
publishers themselves, who seem to feel compelled to comply with
unreasonable expectations, that university presses should be
turned into ‘profit centres’ and contribute to the general budget of
the university. Where did this idea come from? It’s bad. We have
financial records of publishing in the West since Gutenberg, and it
is clear that books are a losing proposition. Widgets have been,
and always will be, a surer bet. And the idea of milking the
university presses – the poorest of all publishers – for cash is the
equivalent of making the church mice contribute to the upkeep of
the church.
Lindsay Waters, Enemies of Promise: publishing, perishing, and the eclipse of scholarship.
Chicago, 2004. Prickly Paradigm Press
Conventional scholarly
publishing from our end of the
telescope
Research agendas
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The emphasis on mainstream journals in
international indices skews research priorities –
critical research areas of importance to the
developing world can be marginalised
Local researchers target international priorities
for reasons of prestige and promotion
Restricted access to international research
findings can block development needs
Local- interest research gets second-rate status
The marginality of African knowledge is evident even in the
Africanist intellectual system, which is firmly rooted in a
western epistemological order and an academic culture driven
by a ruthless ethos of ‘publish and perish’ and consisting of
multinational publishing houses, university presses, peer review
networks, citation and bibliographical conventions, and has
little room to accommodate the alien views, voices, and visions
emanating from Africa itself. In this scholarly treadmill, Africa
appears nothing more than a research object to verify faddish
theories that emerge with predictable regularity in the channelsurfing intellectualism of Northern academics. And so we get
the strange spectacle of books and articles being churned out
containing no reference to the scholarship produced in the
countries and regions concerned, …It is work that often
contains the latest bibliographic references to Africanist
research and rather dated facts, while the work of African
scholars may contain dated bibliographical references and the
latest facts.
Paul Zeleza, Bergen, 1997
Looking forward
Policy-makers need to be able to discern, based
on their expert knowledge, the future trajectories
of the subject and the interventions which might
improve its development.
NEPAD 2006
Do new Internet-based
dissemination models provide an
answer?
The Budapest Initiative
An old tradition and a new technology have converged to
make possible an unprecedented public good. The old
tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to
publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals
without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The
new technology is the internet. The public good they make
possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peerreviewed journal literature and completely free and
unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers,
students, and other curious minds. Removing access
barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich
education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and
the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can
be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common
intellectual
Internet publishing
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Reduces the marginal cost of publishing (i.e.
the cost of making more copies)
Distribution costs near-zero
Greater reach - geographical barriers no longer
relevant
Peer to peer networks allow for collaborative
and interactive research development
Without the expense of print distribution, new
financial and business models are possible
Different products
Internet publishing creates opportunities to rethink
the range of products that can be produced. Faster
publication is also possible:
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Journal articles – do they have to be held back for
a journal issue?
Research data can be provided along with
research findings
Research repositories – can promote institutional
profiles
Research reports and popularisations –
handbooks, magazines, blogs...
Different approaches
• Research habits may become less isolated
• Authoring may acquire more diffuse
agency
• Teaching habits may become less
individualistic
• Publishing may be more of a collective
enterprise
Saul Fisher, The Open Source Movement and Higher Education: Consequences for the Humanities
New business models - Open
Access
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The focus is on access, with the content
distributed online, free of charge
Copyright remains with the author
Costs still have to be borne somewhere, either by
the author (or research funder), through
government support, donor funding or advertising
Can be used freely for research, teaching, etc.
Retains peer review, editing and other quality
measures
International initiatives
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South Africa is a signatory to the OECD
declaration on access to research data from
public funding (2004)
There are now a number of international
declarations – Budapest, Berlin, Bethesda,
Salvador...
Governments and agencies have addressed the
issues and endorsed OA in varying degrees: the
UK government, the EU, WSIS, the NIH in the
USA, Wellcome Trust...
Policy positions
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EU has just issued a report – asks for a
guarantee of public access shortly after
publication; a levelling of the playing field, rocompetitive pricing strategies...
Wellcome Trust requires OA to the research
that it funds, with deposit required within 6
months
The NIH in the USA requests OA archiving
The RCUK asks that funded researchers
deposit a copy in an archive
And the Bill Gates Foundation will
only fund Open Access Aids vaccine
research
If Open Access increases the reach
and impact of dissemination and
massively increases citation, then
how do we go about getting support
to make it sustainable in Africa?
The University of California
A case study
The Library Scholarly
Communications Programme
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Influencing the development of new forms of scholarly
communication is a key strategic goal
Implementing a programme for sustainable
communications and widest possible access
Discussions involve faculty, librarians, administrators
and the university press
Scholarly Communication faculty seminars were held
Faculty come to understand their role as primary
stakeholders
Managing copyright
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Toolkit for faculty
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Talking points for discussion
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Information handouts and brochures
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Policy White Paper
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Taking back control of copyright
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Guidelines for management of copyright
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Guidelines for institutional repositories
A decision to change the status quo
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Driven from the top - the Office of the President
serves as a think-tank
The trigger – could not maintain the serials
budget in the library
There is an Academic Council Committee on
Scholarly Communication
System-wide Library and Scholarly information
Advisory Committee
Office of Scholarly Communication
Staff
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Director of Publishing and Strategic Initiatives –
establishes alternative publishing venues and
surfaces innovative technology use
Director of Policy, Planning and Outreach –
helps ensure that the community is informed of
the crisis and serves as Communications
Officer
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Publishing Support Services Manager
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Scholarship Web Design and Services Manager
E-Scholarship Publishing Initiatives
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Run by the Office of Scholarly Communication and
housed at the California Digital Library
Includes e-Scholarship editions (2 000digital texts and
editions of monographs, including 1400 university
press titles) available to faculty and students and
some titles to the public
E-scholarship repository supports the full range of
scholarly output, from pre-publication materials to
journals and peer-reviewed series, by offering
departments control of their publications
A range of players – effective
interaction
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The libraries analyse costs,work with faculty to
align costs,and with the university press on
experiments in scholarly publishing, and
assembling information
Administration is rethinking policies;
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library committee sharing data on the economics of
scholarly publishing
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Council analysing scholarly publishing issues
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Senate called for cutting ties with Elsevier
International Policy Fellowship
OSI Budapest
http://www.policy.hu
http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/gray_area
s
Eve Gray & Associates
http://www.evegray.co.za