Beyond the repository? The CERN Innovation in Scholarly Publishing Workshop (OAI7). June 22-24 2011

The road map needs to include technology solutions for linking wider data sets to scholarly publications; the formulation of the arguments needed get support for emerging models of scholarly publication; and expanded metrics for measuring the reach and real impact of research. Most of all, though, the question is how we can link and integrate the different research processes and their outputs in an open and collaborative system, to deliver the development impact our governments keep asking for

Open access in Africa – green and gold, the impact factor, ‘mainstream' and ‘local' research

I have been following the debate raging in the UK and beyond about whether the Finch Commission and the Research Councils UK - and then the EC with a slightly different emphasis – were right in opting for support for the ‘gold route' of open access publishing rather than prioritizing only the ‘green route' of open access repositories. There seems to have been a general consensus in the commentaries that I have read that this will disadvantage the developing world, which will be faced with the barrier of high article processing fees and become increasingly excluded. The green route, through continuing creation of institutional repositories, would be better for us, we are told

From the IPA 2012 Congress to the Finch Report – publishers and open access

The Finch Commission report was released in the UK on 18 June. Entitled ‘Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications', this report, by an independent working group headed by Dame Janet Finch, tackled ‘the important question of how to achieve better, faster access to research publications for anyone who wants to read or use them.

UNESCO takes Open Access into the mainstream – but what about South Africa?

South Africa has taken quite a strong stance on policy for open educational resources, drawing on UNESCO's OER intervention as a validation for this policy strand. But what about open access – access to research findings? There is very little about research communication in the Green Paper – as is all too often the case with analysis of research capacity development in South Africa, or indeed in the region. And why should South Africa bother

Green Paper for Post-School Education and Training in South Africa

This Green Paper, launched by the South African Minister of Higher Education and Training Dr Blade Nzimande in January 2012, identifies the key challenges facing South African higher education and sets out a path for overcoming these obstacles. Here SCAP Programme Director Eve Gray (with the input of Professor Julian Kinderlerer, Head of the Intellectual Property Law and Policy Unit at the University of Cape Town) highlights key issues contained in the paper as pertains to ICT, IPR, access to knowledge and open innovation

Access to Africa's knowledge: publishing development research and measuring value

This paper reviews, critically, the discourse of research publication policy and the directives of the regional and global organisations that advise African countries with respect to their relevance to African scholarly communication. What emerges is a readiness to use the concepts and language of the public good, making claims for the power of technology to resolve issues of African development. However, when it comes to implementing scholarly publication policies, this vision of technological power and development-focused scientific output is undermined by a reversion to a conservative research culture that relies on competitive systems for valuing and accrediting scholarship, predicated upon the systems and values managed by powerful global commercial publishing consortia. The result is that the policies put in place to advance African research effectively act as an impediment to ambitions for a revival of a form of scholarship that could drive continental growth. While open access publishing models offer solutions to the marginalisation of African research, the paper argues that what is also needed is a re-evaluation of the values that underpin the of scholarly publishing, to better align with the continent's articulated research goals

National environmental scan of South African scholarly publishing

Undertaken as part of the OpeningScholarship project at the University of Cape Town (UCT), this position paper reviews the national environment for the use of ICTs for research dissemination and publication in the South African higher education sector. Taking UCT as a case study, the paper reviews the use of ICTs for scholarly communications for research, teaching and learning, and community engagement in the university against the background of international developments and best practice

The policy gap – research communication in limbo in South Africa's new Green Paper

South Africa has a shiny new Green Paper on Post-School Education. However policy weary we might be, this is, refreshingly, a good document, with the right ambitions for the overdue overhaul of the higher and further education sector. It quite rightly identifies the country's huge deficit in further education and the failure to provide sufficient training for employment to meet the overwhelming need in this sector. This policy document does not appear to fall into the trap of trying to turn universities into human resource factories, but rather seeks to leverage the strengths of the most functional institutions to help upgrade the under-developed further education sector

OER in the mainstream – South Africa takes a leap into OER policy

2012 looks as if it might be the year that OER and open access reach the mainstream, globally and in South Africa. In the last few months in South Africa, the national department responsible for schools had announced the take-up of a major OER science and maths resource and the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) has included in a new Green Paper a recommendation for the widespread use of open educational resources

Case study: South African Review of Sociology

This case study describes the use of ICTs in the publication of a scholarly society journal, the South African Review of Sociology, in a context in which the Scientific Editor is a senior member of an academic department at the University of Cape Town. It provides insights into the challenges and opportunities that are faced in society publishing in a South African context.and explores the problems faced when editorship of a journal is held by a senior academic who receives little or no institutional support in the publishing endeavour. The case study reveals the difficulties faced by small society publishers struggling to ensure the survival of established journals that represent significant knowledge capital, but which are undermined by an environment characterised by a lack of national and institutional support for scholarly publishing; rapid technological development; shrinking library budgets and increasing international competition