Open Access News

... This framework and study, entitled Opening Access to Knowledge in Southern African Universities, aims to identify key constraints to access to knowledge in universities in the [Southern African Development Community] region. ...

Eight universities in seven countries were selected to participate in the qualitative study. A major constraint to accessing research undertaken in the region is the lack of awareness of what has been produced. Research produced in the region tends to be poorly organised, not indexed and not made available electronically. The predominance of unpublished research and scientific output, often dismissively referred to as ‘grey literature’ does not lend itself to electronic discovery processes and, as a consequence, is not accessible. Respondents indicated that the behaviour of researchers, who do not share their research output, contributes to this state of affairs. The lack of capacity to make research available online further exacerbates the situation. The publishing criteria used to determine promotion and reward further serve to steer the publishing patterns of researchers into disseminating research results in international accredited journals which are often not available to universities in the region. ...

A significant proportion of respondents are aware of open access approaches to disseminating knowledge. All the [Deputy Vice-Chancellors] for research and librarians interviewed are aware of open access, indicating that there is an increasing awareness of open access at the institutional level. Eighty percent of researchers and more than half the Deans interviewed are aware of open access. However, respondents from university presses were less familiar with this emerging trend. The majority of interviewees were in support of open access, of which a large proportion (77 percent) indicated that they explicitly support the introduction of open access.

Notwithstanding the support for the introduction of open access to promote access to knowledge, respondents did raise a number of concerns pertaining to the quality of open access material that is not peer-reviewed; copyright, plagiarism and recognition for research output. ... Given all these constraints it was difficult for some academics to conceive of how open access would be operationalised in their respective university environments.

Experiments with open access are already underway in [southern African] universities ... These initiatives face considerable challenges to successful introduction into the mainstream of university life and practice and provide interesting pointers to the issues that need to be addressed for the successful implementation of open access projects and an open knowledge paradigm. A favourable university policy environment, as well as effectively funded institutional and technical capacity, is needed in order to promote sustainable implementation of initiatives to enhance scholarly publishing and dissemination in the region.

The report proposes a new framework that is based on open knowledge approaches to knowledge production, publishing and dissemination in response to the identified constraints and challenges to a productive academic research and publishing sector. The adoption of a proposed Vision for Open Knowledge in Southern African Universities and the establishment of a research publishing and dissemination platform are an integral part of such a framework.

... We will:

• Create and share knowledge and establish the expertise of our universities through open knowledge practices and the work of institutional champions;
• Create Southern African scholarly communities working for open education, open access and open research, and making unused and under used knowledge resources available through open access channels;
• Support the establishment and growth of international peer reviewed, open journals based in Southern Africa;
• Support the establishment of systems for peer review of open educational resources;
• Incentivise pioneers and early adopters of open knowledge practices in education, research and community engagement, and reward others who adopt such approaches;
• Establish scholarly communications as strategic functions of universities bringing together teaching, research and community engagement;
• Begin building the institutional systems and processes which will underpin open knowledge, including examining the promotion and reward mechanisms for open knowledge practices, including publishing research in and establishing and editing peer reviewed open journals;
• Establish systems for self reporting by academics of their use of open knowledge;
• Establish systems that enable universities to recognise and record all scholarly communications;
• Establish systems which enable scholars and universities to track the developmental and human impact of scholarly communications. ...

Five change activators are proposed. Operating together these activators can have the effect of generating highly effective access to knowledge for academics, researchers, students, practitioners and the broader community for ideas. They can also have the effect over time of contributing to an increasing rate of scholarly publication across the majority of universities in the region. ...

• Create a number of new open access peer reviewed journals to enhance the visibility of Southern African research ...
• Scholarly publishing advisory services ...
• Online journal management systems ...
• Institutional Repositories and active databases ...
• Index of Southern African publications ...

... Whilst SARUA agrees with the challenges that the report highlights, and is committed to supporting the vision of open access to knowledge that is outlined in the report, the recommendations in the report will be subject to an accompanying consultative leadership process amongst its members that will hopefully charter a detailed and practical course of action for the Association.

SARUA also hopes that this study will stimulate not only debate and new ideas, but also practical action among all stakeholders in both the policy realm and in the higher education research environment. ...