Scale and nature of unethical practices in scholarly publishing

Abstract

CREST was commissioned in March 2015 to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the state of journal and book publishing in South Africa. This commission was issued specifically to investigate how the revision in the funding framework of 2005 had impacted on journal, book and conference proceeding outputs in the country. The final report of this study was submitted to ASSAf in January 2017. • In April 2017, we received a grant from the DHET to continue this research with a specific focus on the quality of SA’s publications and the aim to develop a set of indicators to assess journal quality. •Both in the ASSAf and DHET study we have come to realize that issues around quality in scholarly publishing are inextricably linked to issues about ethics