The Academy of Science of South Africa has urged the country’s scientific journals to create open-access internet editions in a bid to significantly increase their visibility worldwide, reports SciDev.Net. The academy called for action this week after it published a report showing that in the last 14 years, one third of South African journals have not had a single paper quoted in their international counterparts....
The Department of Education currently pays universities 84,000 rands (US$14,000) every time a government-accredited journal publishes a paper by one of their academics, regardless of the journal’s international standing. Gevers believes funds should be diverted from the subsidy to allow journals to establish and fund online and open-access editions.
The report was greeted positively by South Africa’s science establishment. Dan Ncayiyana, editor of the South African Medical Journal – one of the few to rank in international databases – said the report “captures the situation very well and I think it’s good for South African science publishing”. Adi Paterson of the Department of Science and Technology, welcomes the findings of the report as a foundation for improving "incentives to support high-quality research publications" and to "forge a low cost open-access approach to the publishing of publicly funded research".
PS: I posted some comments on the academy recommendations on Tuesday.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/11/2006 02:34:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
