The context: Foundational projects

During the course of 2010 The Scholarly Communication in Africa (SCA) project will be launched with the aim of advancing research policies in scholarly publishing programmes and practices in Africa. SCA will seek to explore how African organizations and institutions can work in new, digital ways to further African scholarly communication in terms of generation and sharing. Towards the end of 2009, the introductory phase of the SCA project took the form of a Planning and Scoping Workshop which included the input and collaboration of African and international experts, participants in African higher education, and potential strategic partners. The workshop sought to clarify the research questions and outline the potential scope of the project so as to develop a comprehensive project plan. The project plan aims to pull together the various research initiatives that are currently underway or have been completed, with emphasis placed on the research outcomes and findings of three important foundation projects that were completed in 2009.  These projects are important in that they have approached the issue of knowledge production and scholarly communication from diverse perspectives and have explored different dimensions within the institutional landscape of the university sector.  They have also articulated the shifts in policy and practice through a multiple-pronged approach, working at all levels of the system – institutional, national and regional – to change entrenched policy and practice.

Rationale:  The foundation projects

The three research undertakings were implemented with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Shuttleworth Foundation, over eighteen months from 2007 to 2009.  These foundation projects are OpeningScholarship, Opening Access to Knowledge in Southern African Universities (A2KSA), and Publishing and Alternative Licensing Africa (PALM).

The OpeningScholarship project was carried out in the Centre for Educational Technology (CET) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) with the aim to investigate the impact of ICT usage in scholarly communications in one of South Africa’s leading research universities, and to explore how established ICT systems could help deliver greater intellectual capacity, and how the institution could make the most effective use of its research knowledge; in other words, relying more on its own intellectual output rather than on imported content.

Findings

• The production of local scholarly publication is under-supported and there is no source of financial support for the development of digital open access publications.  This includes no payment of author fees for publication in international open access journals.
• There is little consistent or consolidated uptake of open access scholarly publishing at UCT and no centralised institutional policy framework for open access publishing.
• Open access research repositories and Open Education Resources are currently treated as separate operations, whereas the project indicated that these should be treated as a continuum.

The Opening Access to Knowledge in Southern African Universities (A2KSA) focussed on the restrictions on access to knowledge in Africa and Southern Africa which revolve around restrictive copyright practices and regulations, a lack of access to Internet-based technologies, out-dated paradigms for knowledge collection and dissemination, and the lack of creative and effective government-supported enabling environments.  The project provided solutions to overcome these restrictions in terms of research and dissemination, and included policy recommendations.

Findings

• There is a lack of awareness of what research has been produced, in that research in the region is poorly organised, not indexed and not available electronically.  This also includes grey literature, which is unpublished research and scientific output.
• The publishing criteria used to determine reward and promotion steers publishers into disseminating research results in international accredited journals; many of these not available to universities in the region.
• There is a perception that locally produced journals are of poor quality.
• Although university academic personnel (such as researchers and Deans) are aware of, and in theory support Open Access, those operating within the university publishing departments are less familiar with Open Access.
• Researchers are plagued by the uncertainty that exists for intellectual property rights within the electronic environment.

The Publishing and Alternative Licensing Africa (PALM) project sought to investigate how new flexible copyright licensing practices and models could facilitate access and distribution in developing countries, especially in the African context. The project investigated how these practices could work in conjunction with local publishing in developing countries to improve access to learning materials.

Findings

• The role and status of the knowledge producers of grey literature around development-focused research units and NGOs, should be re-evaluated and the possible impact this literature could have should it be adequately published and marketed.
• There is the potential for exploring licensing options for the inclusion of textbook and commentaries in online delivery in learning method systems (LMSs) to enable fully integrated course material which incorporates both published materials and university generated content.
• There is a need for extensive capacity building and mentorship within the publishing skills, such as commissioning services, editing, design, marketing, validating, branding and distributing learning materials.
• The project should assist with providing sustainability models for the delivery of scholarly and textbook materials in an African context, as well as helping to foster inter-African trade using flexible licensing and print-on-demand methodologies.