Policy

ABSTRACT

The motivation for this research proposal arises from recognition of the marginalization of African research publication in the global community. As is well documented, research publication from Africa, in print and online, comprises a disproportionately small percentage of global scholarly output, and is declining. At the same time, there are urgent development needs that could be served by more effective dissemination of African research across the continent and worldwide. There is a tendency for Open Access debates, particularly when it comes to discussion of Africa, to focus exclusively on access to knowledge. What is often neglected is the critical need to develop policies and strategies that would grow the output and effective dissemination of Africa-based research.

The project therefore aims to examine research policy in South Africa and map its impact on the publication and dissemination of research. An investigation of the impact of research dissemination will in turn lead to an evaluation of the effectiveness of the delivery of development goals articulated in national and institutional research policy. 

Open Access publication will be explored as a potential way of overcoming the economic, geographical, and political barriers to research publication in and out of Africa. Given the general level of impoverishment of African universities and shortfalls in ICT infrastructure, the project will investigate the policy interventions and practical strategies that might enhance the sustainability of effective and high-quality research dissemination in Africa and the advocacy programmes that would be needed to get buy-in from policy-makers and the scholarly community for the expansion of Open Access scholarly publishing programmes. 

OBJECTIVE

In Africa, given the failure of conventional scholarly publishing models, it would appear from preliminary case studies that an Open Access publishing model could well overcome many of the geographical and ideological barriers that inhibit African research publication. The most powerful example is that of the successful publishing operations of the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa.   The publishing strategy and the operational model for the HSRC Press was developed by Eve Gray & Associates. The implementation of this Open Access publishing programme has developed some innovative perspectives on sustainability, which were favourably cited by Lawrence Lessig after a recent Creative Commons conference in South Africa.  This case study suggests that successful research dissemination requires commitment and investment from the parent organisation and professional skills in its publishing department. The question is how to expand this model in the light of the general under-resourcing of African higher education.
Could the answer be found in policy interventions? The research and information policy environment in South Africa and in Africa in general appears to be fragmented and often contradictory. In particular, there seems to be a gap between national initiatives for research growth and development and national and institutional policies for financial support for research publication. Given the acute financial and insfrastructural deficiencies facing most African higher education institutions, the problem of sustainability is particularly acute.
 
The research questions that this intervention would aim to answer are: 

• What is the impact of the existing research policy environment on the effective publication and dissemination of African research linked to national development priorities? 
• How applicable are international debates and policy interventions on Open Access scholarly publishing – and particularly questions of financing and sustainability -  to the African context? 
• To what extent could the use of Open Access publishing models help overcome the economic, geographical and political barriers to research publication in and out of Africa?
• Given general level of impoverishment of African universities and shortfalls in ICT infrastructure, what policy interventions and practical strategies could enhance the sustainability of effective and high-quality research dissemination in Africa?
• What advocacy programmes would be needed to get buy-in from policy-makers and the scholarly community for the expansion of Open Access scholarly publishing programmes?

A review of national and institutional research policy and research publication reward systems in South Africa will be contextualised in global and national policy initiatives for access to research knowledge. The study will chart the impact of research policy on South African research dissemination locally and internationally and will identify inhibiting factors that might limit local research publication. The objective will be to provide a policy map of the overlapping national and institutional policies that affect scholarly publishing and to identify the shape of an enabling policy environment for research publication that might enhance the reputation and effectiveness of South African higher education institutions and impact positively on national development priorities.
The findings of this review  will be compared with research policy and practice in two other African countries in order to provide a reality check, given the relatively advantaged position of South African universities compared with those on the rest of the continent.

The objective of the second strand of the project would be to identify publishing strategies, financial models and operational systems that could be used in conventional and Open Access publishing in Africa, matched against available infrastructure, in order to come up with recommendations for sustainable Open Access publishing models. Given the background of the applicant in commercial publishing, the project would apply a business analysis approach and use this for the development of  strategies for active marketing and research dissemination that might deliver effective research impact. The research would focus primarily on active publishing and dissemination, rather than research archives and repositories. 
International studies on sustainability and quality control mechanisms in Open Access publishing – the latter an important component of sustainability - would be reviewed for their applicability in the African context. The sustainability models researched would be based not only on the conventional commercial measure of sales tracking (an inadequate measure for scholarly publishing) but also cross-subsidy through the provision of related products and value-add services. It would also be important to identify the less easily traceable and more oblique  benefits that come from effective research impact generated from publications: the contribution made to building prestige and reputation and the resultant ability of the institution to attract government, donor and institutional support.
A further consideration would be the development of scalability models and a review of potential partnerships for expanded and more viable research dissemination in Africa. Given the disquiet often expressed about quality maintenance and Open Access dissemination, the study would also overview debates about peer review to identify approaches that could bolster recognition for African scholarship nationally and globally (including innovative collaborative approaches being brokered in the Open Access community).
 
The research would thus aim to produce:

• A policy map of research policy and ICT policy as it affects scholarly publication – at international, national and institutional level, with a particular focus on Open Access policy - and its impact on African-based research dissemination.
• Recommendations for policies that could provide an enabling environment for better research dissemination in and out of Africa. 
• A review of financial and operational models for conventional and Open Access research and scholarly publication output and the effective reach of these publications and the development of strategies for high quality and sustainable Open Access publishing in Africa.

The methodology applied in this project would combine traditional quantitative and qualitative research methods with business and financial analysis, in order to produce well-founded and practical outcomes. The research design will be based on a qualitative investigation, using literature review and analysis of selected case studies, backed by the use of structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.

Policy

International Open Access policy initiatives and national research policy will be evaluated through literature review, reinforced with selective interviews (face to face and through correspondence).  Africa-wide Open Access publishing projects and international Open Access projects with an African focus will be identified through literature review and  existing databases.  The project could build on and add to the initiative of Creative Commons South Africa in building a database of African Open Access projects. 

A literature survey of ICT policy and infrastructure backed up with interviews with key institutions, such as the Tertiary Education Network (TENET) in Cape Town, will be used to chart access levels in tertiary institutions in South Africa, with a brief overview of the current state of connectivity in tertiary institutions across the continent. There is a substantial body of information on the state of ICTs in Africa and the impact that this has on access to knowledge; the difficulty is to gauge how rapidly this might change and to identify complementary strategies that might bolster effective research dissemination, such as the use of Print on Demand and CD-ROM. Available literature on strategies for low-bandwidth access would be reviewed, for example INASP’s guidelines for online journal publishers in developing countries.

In the selected institutions, a case study approach will be taken to an analysis of the publishing models, revenue sources and sustainability strategies for existing publishing programmes. These will be mapped against national and institutional research agendas and policy impacts will be charted. Structured questionnaires will be used at the selected institutions to identify the publications programmes in research institutes and university research centres. This investigation will be backed up by a literature review of available research on African scholarly publishing and interaction with other interventions in this field, for example the Bellagio Group/Ford Foundation project on Nigerian scholarly publishing and INASP’s work on scholarly journals and African university presses.    
A cross-section of publications identified will be analysed and publication practice reviewed in semi-structured interviews. A professional publishing approach will be taken, looking at the different publishing operations in terms of:

• Quality management – content selection (including peer reviewing), list building and product design;
• Marketing strategy and research impact;
• Operational management of publishing processes;
• Financial measurements.

 Recommendations arising from the case study approach will include operational and financial proposals for effective Open Access publishing management that could be applied to a wide range of institutional contexts and countries.  

Scoping and focus of the research

The focus of the research will be on social science and humanities publishing, with a particular focus on publishing that reinforces national development priorities. Wherever possible, the findings will be matched against existing research on Open Access scientific publishing in Africa and elsewhere.
The motivation for a social science focus is that Open Access for scientific research has been well covered by international Open Access initiatives. Projects focusing on scientific knowledge dissemination (some including Africa) are proliferating. The suitability of the Open Access publishing model for the social sciences and humanities remains an open question in the USA and UK and the HSRC in South Africa therefore functions as probably the major case study for social science and humanities Open Access publishing.
The case study approach will involve the provision of a broad overview of the policy and practice governing research dissemination in the selected institutions, with a more detailed evaluation of the dissemination practices of a limited number of research instates or departments.
            The primary focus will be South Africa, where a comparatively well-resourced research infrastructure in comparison with many other African countries could provide workable examples that could then be reviewed for adaptation in less well-resourced environments.  
            The publications selected for analysis in the selected institutions will include not only the journals usually associated with conventional and Open Access publishing, but also research reports, monographs, and discussion documents.

The higher education institutions selected for study in South Africa will be:

• The Human Sciences Research Council, a major research body that already has a substantial Open Access publishing programme. 
• The University of Cape Town, a front-rank research institution.
• The project will also explore Open Access ventures being implemented at the University of the Western Cape, in South African parlance a ‘previously disadvantaged institution’ with a history of commitment to community empowerment.
• The four existing University Presses will be reviewed, and case studies will be selected for the review of the publishing activities of higher education NGOs. 

The project will evaluate these findings against another African regional social science research council, CODESRIA in Dakar.  The research councils, with their regional involvement, could well offer the potential for scalable collaborative publication development. In addition, the project will review the Institute for Social Research at the University of Makerere in Uganda. Given the relatively privileged situation of South Africa within the African context, the purpose will be to carry out a ‘reality check’ in which the South African findings and recommendations will be measured against less well-resourced institutions in other African countries.

Given the combination of policy research and practical publishing applications in this project, the results of the project should have practical applicability in South Africa, in other African countries and for Open Access research publishing in the social sciences and in general elsewhere in the world, particularly in developing countries. The applications will include policy recommendations that could bolster the active dissemination of research in the national environment and that could enhance free access to knowledge from publicly funded research.  The project should also result in practical guidelines for the effective management of Open Access research publishing. These will include funding guidelines using the ‘author pays’ model in its broadest sense, including specific guidelines for building publication finance into research programmes. It will produce information resources on Open Access publishing in Africa: what it is, how it works, what it can offer, what the costs are, and infrastructure needs. 

In short, the project would aim to meet urgent needs identified at a recent CODATA conference in South Africa: 

1. A common need for visibility of African outputs, by strategically managed publication, and improved access to resources by intelligent marshalling of negotiation power, whether political or financial. 
2. All players in the Research System, from researchers to administrators, government and funding agencies, display a lack of awareness of the realities of the dynamics relating to both Permanent Access and one of the emerging alternative modalities of publication, viz Open Access.  The main issues include recognition that the dissemination of research outputs, including reusable data, is a line function of the Institution, and that in a Developing Country, the Social Science interpretation of more technologically focused outputs is essential if assimilation and implementation are to be achieved.