Contextualizing Policy Developments in Open Knowledge in South Africa
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The document discusses open knowledge and policy developments in open access in South Africa. It notes that South Africa has a small share of scientific output relative to its size. It outlines South Africa's colonial history and trade partnerships, and how this has influenced its approach to scholarly publishing and intellectual property. More recently, open access is seen as a way to increase the visibility and impact of South African research, though challenges remain in infrastructure, skills, and recognition of development-focused research. Initiatives like SciELO South Africa and open educational resources are positive developments in making knowledge openly available.
![…a system in which ‘mainstream’
(i.e publishable in the index)
=
‘relevant to the English-speaking
global North’
Guédon, J. Open Access and the divide between “mainstream” and “peripheral”
science, 2008. In Como gerir e qualificar revistas científicas (forthcoming , in
Portuguese). (In Press) [Book Chapter].](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/ex-librisnatlibraries-1-1-150907051641-lva1-app6892/85/Contextualizing-Policy-Developments-in-Open-Knowledge-in-South-Africa-34-320.jpg)
![Readings
Seeking Impact and Visbility: Scholarly Communication in Southern
Africa http://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/2310
The full list of SCAP reports can be found on Open UCT: open.uct.ac.za
and search on scap.
SciELO South Africa: www.scielo.org.za
Guédon, J. Open Access and the divide between “mainstream”
and “peripheral” science, 2008. In Como gerir e qualificar
revistas científicas [Book Chapter].
Links
The True Size of Africa:
http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/true-
size-of-africa.jpg;
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartography](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/ex-librisnatlibraries-1-1-150907051641-lva1-app6892/85/Contextualizing-Policy-Developments-in-Open-Knowledge-in-South-Africa-74-320.jpg)
Contextualizing Policy Developments in Open Knowledge in South Africa
- 1. Dealing in Disruption Contextualizing Policy Developments for Open Knowledge in South Africa National Library – Ex Libris Annual Meeting 19 August 2015 Cape Town Contextualizing Policy Developments in Open Knowledge in South Africa Photo: Michael Horwitz- CC-BY-NC
- 2. How do we orient ourselves?
- 3. We live on a huge continent
- 5. but have a tiny share of scientific output
- 6. Science Research - 2001 http://www.worldmapper.org 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).
- 9. Where are we? Photo Turismo Bahia CC-BY-SA
- 10. Brazil with its SciELO platform is now the second biggest producer of OA journals in the world Alperin et al., 2008, Open access and scholarly publishing in Latin America: ten flavours and a few reflections revista.ibict.br/liinc/index.php/liinc/article/vie
- 11. With support from the Department of Science and Technology, the Academy of Science runs an open access journal platform, Scielo South Africa
- 12. Who were our traditional trading partners?
- 13. Photo – SA Tourism
- 14. A long trade history between gold- producing S and E African communities, Arabia and India
- 16. Ghandi’s printing press on Tolstoy Farm near Durban reached across continents..
- 17. AttributionNoncommercial Some rights reserved by daniel.d.slee Colonial history and neo-colonial heritage? Politically?
- 18. ..more rigid IP regimes and the neo- colonial prohibition against parallel importation, plus USPTO Special 301 reports targeting India have kept SA’s gaze firmly North…
- 19. The liberation struggle was driven substantially by student movements, was reliant on protest publishing, music and art…
- 20. By Paul Weinberg (direct donation to Wikimedia Commons from Author) [CC BY-SA 3.0
- 21. Post-apartheid, two strands of policy – liberation rhetoric, Afrocentric, public benefit…
- 22. Dan Brown CC2.0
- 23. And neo-liberal policy driven by the Mineral-Energy Complex, which the ANC accommodated, resulting in an economistic approach to publication and a market approach to research impact…
- 24. …as the Minister of Higher Education and Training confirms
- 26. The results were perverse…
- 27. We have tended to base our scholarly publishing policy on the potential for increased impact in ‘mainstream’ ‘international’ journals..
- 28. Attribution Some rights reserved by Will Clayton …a competitive system in which the rules are weighted agains the developing world…
- 30. … the real problem has to do with promotion and reward systems… AttributionNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved by ayomide!
- 31. ..particularly our reliance on the ISI Impact Factor…
- 32. … and the sums of money paid from government to universities for publication in ‘accredited’ publications..
- 33. AttributionNoncommercial Some rights reserved by emily_mas Real impact?
- 34. …a system in which ‘mainstream’ (i.e publishable in the index) = ‘relevant to the English-speaking global North’ Guédon, J. Open Access and the divide between “mainstream” and “peripheral” science, 2008. In Como gerir e qualificar revistas científicas (forthcoming , in Portuguese). (In Press) [Book Chapter].
- 35. … the other two-thirds of the world is ‘local’. No known copyright restrictions
- 36. http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/ CC attribution licence Is this a case of fatal tunnel vision?
- 37. …or is OA providing a solution?
- 38. The beginning of Open Access, in Budapest in 2002…
- 39. …OA policy has moved steadily into the mainstream…
- 40. Attribution Some rights reserved by James Cridland
- 41. …was taken up slowly in South Africa, but was seen as an answer..
- 42. ...with a vision of the power of regional open networked science… Attribution Some rights reserved by Anthony_Joel
- 43. … and a human rights approach more appropriate to our constitution… AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved by riac
- 44. Our universities, in particular, should be directing their research focus to address the development and social needs of our communities. The impact of their research should be measured by how much difference it makes to the needs of our communities, rather than by just how many international citations researchers receive in their publications. Blade Nzimande, SA Minster of Higher Education and Training, Women in Science Awards. 2010
- 45. http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/ CC attribution licence Is this STILL a case of tunnel vision?
- 46. …we offer technical platforms as the solution but the scaffolding is lacking
- 47. .. In a situation in which we need to pay attention to digital librarian skills, the availability of technical skills and infrastructure..
- 48. … in institutions hammered by successive policy changes… AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved by Peter Curbishley
- 49. …including two decades of World Bank and IMF denigration of the value of higher education as a driver of economic growth and social development
- 50. In the UK in particular, OA has become a spat between the green..
- 51. The green route…
- 52. and the gold…
- 53. AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved by ENOUGH Project … or the ‘gold route’ of open access journal publishing…
- 54. AttributionNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved by Tambako the Jaguar
- 55. In SA the SciELO approach of publicly funded and resourced platforms has paid dividends…
- 56. SciELO and SciELO South Africa have been incorporated into the Web of Science Alperin et al., 2008, Open access and scholarly publishing in Latin America: ten flavours and a few reflections revista.ibict.br/liinc/index.php/liinc/article/vie
- 57. … but there is a problem… AttributionNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved by ayomide!
- 59. Formal publishing is only the tip of the iceberg - Attribution Some rights reserved by natalielucier
- 60. …at the same time as we seek development impact for our research production…
- 62. Something we have in fact delivered on for a long time…
- 63. .. through high quality, rigorous, development-focused research units not properly recognised in the research reward systems…
- 65. …although in South Africa we have demonstrated the power of open social science book publishing through the Human Science Research Council…
- 66. …whose books were downloaded in their hundreds every month, were used as educational resources, and were downloaded in every country in the world, except Greenland
- 67. … this has now been undone by an adminstration that thinks tht scholarly publishing makes money in Africa… AttributionShare Alike Some rights reserved by 401(K) 2012
- 68. The development of Open Education Resources is now being supported by government in Open and Distance Learning
- 69. The answer from Open UCT was ‘Open Everything’…
- 71. … which might also provide answers to the chronic problems of cross-border trade in books and publications…
- 72. Eve Gray Senior Research Associate IP Law Unit University of Cape Town Blog: www.gray-area.co.za Twitter: graysouth
- 74. Readings Seeking Impact and Visbility: Scholarly Communication in Southern Africa http://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/2310 The full list of SCAP reports can be found on Open UCT: open.uct.ac.za and search on scap. SciELO South Africa: www.scielo.org.za Guédon, J. Open Access and the divide between “mainstream” and “peripheral” science, 2008. In Como gerir e qualificar revistas científicas [Book Chapter]. Links The True Size of Africa: http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/true- size-of-africa.jpg; http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartography
Editor's Notes
- #34: The geopolitics of the impact factor and the marginalisation of developing country research Increasingly, I see this as the real problem, the single factor that most needs dealing with, largely because it creates an impenetrable barrier between strategy and reward systems
- #44: Access to publicly funded research – read in the UN Declaration rights to scientific knoweldge,
- #52: This has been the default position and has been heavily promoted for the developing world in the form of: Institutional repositories (the most popular solution offered to African universities). Promoted as a way of making articles in ISI journals sharable and increasing their impact. Also as a way of providing exposure for articles in developing country journals in the rest of the world – Bioline international – gets 5 million full text downloads across the system – research exposed South-South and South-North – increases exposure for issues that do not get into the major Northern journals Subject repositories Regional or world archives This does increase reach and impact, Problems – capacity for institutional repositories – too many have very little in them, or have effectively collapsed as a result of insitutional capcity to maintain them.
- #68: The EC links this to regional research infrastructure development that in turn supports communication – a lesson for SADC? The problem in the South – research funds are limited, there is a very high level of dependency on donor funding, which is short term, Where does the money come from? Will a more open system that allows government to get a comprehensive view of what is being achieved lead to more investment?