...Effective dissemination of higher education research and the availability of that research knowledge to the country that funds it - particularly in Africa - can be quite literally of life and death importance. Just think of the need for rapid responses to the AIDS pandemic, continually informed by the latest research findings. Yet when the question of publication and effective dissemination arises in the policy documents, it tends to be in terms of a generally unchallenged set of presumptions about what constitutes effective research dissemination - articles in accredited scholarly journals and registered patents....
The major policy framework for higher education research in South Africa is the research and innovation policy developed by the Department of Science and Technology (DST)....
To summarise somewhat brutally; the common theme across these policies is that South African research must address national development needs and contribute to employment and economic growth....
[T]he subsequent discussion of IP issues is far from clear, veering between recognition of the importance of public access and 'appreciation of the value of intellectual property as an instrument of wealth creation in South Africa' (68). These contradictions are not resolved in the strategy document....
[P]olicies framing rewards for research publication remain firmly in a collegial tradition in which the purpose of scholarly communication is turned inwards into the academy. The system is related to personal advancement in academe and the prestige of scholars and institutions in the international rankings rather than grappling with what it might mean to couple this with gearing research dissemination towards broader social goals....
Given the ever-rising cost of commercial journals, over-stretched library budgets and a weak exchange rate, this can mean, particularly for the less well-resourced universities, that a good deal of South African research is not readily accessible to South African scholars, let alone the community at large....
There are signs of hope that this impasse can be overcome. In the recent survey of scholarly publishing conducted by the Academy of Science of South Africa and commissioned by the DST, there is a clear commitment to boosting the quality and impact of local publication and to Open Access. South Africa is a signatory to the OECD Declaration on Access to Knowledge from Publicly Funded Research and this is tagged in the DST policy documentation as an area to be addressed. I will write more on this in a subsequent posting.
This post is Part 2. Eve posted Part 1 on February 22, 2007, and I blogged it here on February 24.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/15/2007 02:54:00 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.
