Value Systems and Metrics

The promotion and reward policies of the universities have a major influence on what researchers publish, and where they seek to publish.  The combination of the higher weighting given to publishing in peer-reviewed international journals appearing in the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) indexes, the prestige associated with publishing in these journals and at times the payment of a subsidy to universities for staff publishing in these ‘accredited’ journals govern the publishing behaviour of researchers.

Research has found that the system of recognition and reward at institutional and individual levels is deeply entrenched.  This causes dissemination of knowledge to be restricted to a narrow band of publications that are often not accessible to African scholars.

The development of alternative and complementary metrics that can begin to influence the activities rewarded by institutions and the reward systems relevant to individual scholars in universities could potentially influence the knowledge production and publishing behaviour and practices of institutions and scholars.

An analysis of the existing reward and recognition system, as well as investigation into the feasibility and modalities of developing a complementary system of reward and recognition should be undertaken.  The following issues should be investigated:

• How the value is quantified in terms of prestige, recognition and reward in the current scholarly communication system;
• What impact the current system has on the production and publication of African research;
• The readiness of the African university community for the introduction of alternative performance metrics; and
• What modalities and issues should be considered in the development and implementation of such metrics.

Workshop videos related to this theme:

	Jean-Claude Guédon: Global Scholarly Publishing Dynamics		Luci Abrahams: Valuing Scholarship: Metrics and Impact Measurement
	Eve Gray: Valuing Scholarship: Scholarly Publishing and the Knowledge Divide		Gary Rosenberg: Measuring Social and Development Impact in an African Context