Centre for educational technology Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest ICT and Research Dissemination in African Universities Policy Issues:

Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest

centre for educational technology

ICT and Research Dissemination in African Universities

Policy Issues: Intellectual Property, Open Access and sustainability



A scholarly publisher's credo

There is a fundamental need to develop polices and strategies that could grow the output and effective dissemination of Africa-based research in and from Africa, for African development, in the most appropriate media and formats.

This is happening in a rapidly changing environment..



The knowledge divide - the body count



Dissemination – a neglected area

• Given Africa's development challenge, effective research dissemination is of critical importance

• In the global knowledge economy, effective knowledge diffusion is a critical component of a country's economic growth and development

• Yet access, availability and dissemination of research is a neglected area



A strategic approach

• Governments want to see return on investment for research funding

• Government research policy demands research contribution to development

• Research publication is a powerful way of demonstrating research effectiveness

• Effective publishing for national needs could profile African research globally



African scholarly publishing

• Very real physical and tariff barriers to dissemination of print products within Africa

• Journals struggle to survive, supported by voluntary labour

• Barriers to subscription to ‘local’ journals, aggravated by the ‘journals crisis’

• University presses expected to 'break even' , an unrealistic expectation



The marginalization of African research

• Africa produces around 3% of books published, but consumes around 12%.

• Africa produced 0.2% of online content in 2002 – if South Africa is excluded, 0.02%.

• The major Northern scholarly journals account for 80% of articles in the ISI indexes. 163 developing countries produce just 2.5%.

• SA has just 0.5% of the articles in Thompson Scientific indexed journals.



Research publication policy

A South African case study



African research policy at centre stage

• World Bank has changed direction• Nepad is calling for input into a Science and

Innovation programme • Money will be available • African research policy is suddenly a growth

area



The challenge of policy formulation

Policy-makers need to discern, based on their expert knowledge, the future trajectories of the subject and the interventions that might improve its development ...

(NEPAD 2005)



Policy-making in the digital age

• 'The common mimetic route is to define the nature of capacity-building in terms of what is now seen as important. This may well be a recipe to become obsolete before one's time. The world (of science and more generally) may well evolve in such a way that present-day exemplars will be left behind.'

• Arie Rip 'Lock-ins and the Heterogeneity of Knowledge Production' In Kraak Changing Modes 2000



The context - the networked information society

The change wrought by the networked information economy is deep. A series of changes in the technologies, economic organisation and social practices of production in this environment has created new opportunities for how we make and exchange information, knowledge and culture. These changes have increased the role of non-market and non-proprietary production, both by individuals alone and by cooperative efforts in a wide range of loosely or tightly woven collaborations.

Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks (2006)



Research and Innovation policy – the DST

• Uses the language of 'science and 'innovation'

• Acknowledges the African reality and stresses the importance of the Social Sciences as the mediators of development-friendly research

• Talks of the importance of the information revolution

• Promotes the idea of collaboration across disciplines, institutions, countries



But...

Uses counts of patents and accredited journal articles as measures

Contradictory approaches to IP policy Dissemination and publication hardly appear The 'information revolution appears to apply

only to the technological vehicle, not the contents

Instrumentalist approach to communication of research findings



Research publication policy – the DoE

Talks of the need to promote research to meet development goals

Identifies the importance of the social sciences as mediators of research knowledge

Talks about the 'changing modes of disseminating research and output'



But...

'Publish or perish' and publishing by numbers

The system is a mechanical one of numerical counts – number of journal articles, number of patents

Journal articles are seen as the major output 'Originality' and personal achievement

supersede collaboration International citation indexes are the

measure of quality



African research publication policy

• Research publication policy relies on publish and perish approach with a preference for international indexed journals

• Research success measured by number of articles, (especially in international journals) numbers of patents

• Journals assumed to be the output• University presses must 'break even'



Negative impacts

• Focus on international indexes distorts research priorities

• Research knowledge is exported and often unaffordable back home

• The chase for international journal publication and patent registration delays the release of research findings m works to create a 'club' that excludes outsiders through its selection processes and value criteria



The cost to the universities

• Universities ignore the real costs of their contribution

• In Australia the cost of getting an article published (authoring, peer reviewing, editorial activities) is AUD19,000.00

• A monograph costs AUD115,000.00• The costs of administering the evaluation

and assessment process are even higherGovernment of Australia, Department of Education, Science and Training. Research

Communication Costs in Australia: Emerging opportunities and benefits.



The rating system

• The 'core journal' philosophy that underlies the international citation indexes its very nature marginalises those on the periphery

• Social science and humanities journals do not feature in the indexes

• The system works against collaborative effort • Developing country journals struggle to get

citations• The system works to create a 'club' that

excludes outsiders through its selection processes and value criteria



IP and developing countries – does strong IP support creativity?

The above-marginal-cost prices paid in ... poorer countries are purely regressive redistribution. The information, knowledge, and information-embedded goods paid for would have been developed in expectation of rich world rents alone. The prospects of rents from poorer countries do not affect their development. They do not affect either the rate or the direction of research and development. They simply place some of the rents that pay for technology development in the rich countries on consumers in poor and middle-income countries. The morality of this redistribution from the world's poor to the world's rich has never been confronted or defended in the European or American public spheres. It simply goes unnoticed.

Yochai Benkler (2006) The Wealth of Networks, Yale U Press



Universities and patents

• Even in the USA, universities earn negligible revenues from patents

• For all universities 0.56% of total revenues come from patents

• This compares with 18.5% from government grants and contracts

• Only Columbia with and Caltech have significant revenues – most are under 2% of net revenues

Benkler The Wealth of Networks 2006, p. 340.



Heading for extinction?

• Even in the rich countries of the global North, scholarly publishing is facing a real crisis.

• Are we, in Africa, committing our resources to trying to keep dysfunctional systems from extinction?

• Are we concentrating our energies on a futile attempt to establish our position in the international scholarly ratings at the expense of our own knowledge?



Doing it differently – the HSRC

• Open Access Internet publication;Print products at subsidised prices

• Financial support for a professional publishing department, high profile promotions and marketing

• Publish research reports, discussion papers, monographs, conference proceedings, data sets...

• The result:– Over 200 publications online– First stop for policy makers, politicians,

researchers– International reach – Prestige and profile for the institution and

research authors



Can digital publishing provide answers?



Scholarly publishing in the networked age - the context

• As a result of the potential offered by the Internet, scholarly publishing is undergoing a revolution probably as great as any since Caxton.

• There are new opportunities for disseminating scientific information and for democratising access to research knowledge.

• There are changes in the way science is being carried out – and hence the need for new capabilities.

• It is not only dissemination that is changing, but the way that scientific research is conducted



What new technologies can offer

• Instantaneous global reach – transcending geographical barriers

• Lower cost publishing and zero-cost distribution – the potential for more democratic access

• Links between research publications and supporting data

• Greater immediacy – faster dissemination of research results

• Multi-channel publishing allows for flexible output in a variety of media



The body un-count – An Indian example of ICT for development



Research publication – not just between scholars

• Four levels of communication: – Scientist to scientist– Scientist to farmer – Farmer to scientist– Farmer to farmer

• Digital content storage and transmission for output in the most appropriate media



International policy - a move towards access

• Emphasis moving from production to access, particularly to publicly funded research

• OECD – access to knowledge from public funding

• National policies: – Australia– USA – UK – EU

• Donor agencies - Wellcome, NIH, RCUK • Declarations – Budapest, Berlin, Bethesda• Developing country declarations – Salvador,

Bangalore commitment



Open Access

• Publications made available online, freely to anyone and free on charge

• The business model is to take the cost up front and eliminate administrative costs of subscriptions

• Some journals take payments from the author institutions as a sustainability measure

• But, particularly in developing country OA journals, subscriptions, advertising and government support are more important



The advantages of OA

• Substantial increase in impact factors, particularly for developing country journals

• Openness decreases the risk of duplication, removal of competition makes science less wasteful

• Science made faster, speeds up the solution of urgent development needs

• Wider reach of research, better returns for research investment

• Better monitoring, assessment and management of research



The ethos of OA

• Builds on collaboration and a tradition of collegiality

• Depends upon sharing rather than proprietorship, access rather than protection

• Efficiencies and economies of collaborative development

• Networked rather than hierarchical structures • The publication can be seen as work in

progress rather than the final and definitive word



Open Access journals

• Increased impact factors – very substantial increase compared with print subscriptions

• Earlier impact – can be pre-publication• Attracts more submissions and more

international submissions • Print subscriptions increase • Sustainability – print subscriptions, subsidies,

advertising ,(not author fees)



Open Access repositories

• Visibility for research output for academics and institutions, accessibility for users

• Need for standards and meta-tagging for archives to be visible on the web

• Archives can be harvested for consolidation into subject, institutional or regional collections

• More than 90% of major journals allow for pre- or post-archiving.



New models

• Conventional publishing – select then publish• The new online model – publish then select • This is the least costly way to build a

publishing list• Web 2.0 publishing approach – PLOS ONE –

rapid review, publish, then provide an environment for interaction, collaborative review



Academy of Science Report and recommendations

• Review of SA scholarly publishing• Recommends Open Access• The Academy of Science as the management

and quality control body for scholarly publishing

• The allocation of a percentage of publication grants for the funding of publication

• Review of locally accredited journals – citation index



Case study – SciELO

• Collaboration of Latin American and Caribbean countries

• In most countries driven through the Academy of Science (independence)

• Publish OA journals with integrated measure of use and impact

• Select journals to supplement ISI • Move journals from the local and regional to

international • Meta publisher for quality improvement



SciELO

• Academies of Science• Science Councils • Universities and research institutes• Government Ministries• Scientific societies• International organisations



Growth of publications, from 1994 (base 100) to 2003Source: RiCYT, 2006, http://ricyt.centroredes.mine.nu/ricyt/elc2004/1.pdf





Salvador Declaration – policy recommendations

We urge governments to make Open Access a high priority in science policies including:

• requiring that publicly funded research is made available through Open Access;

• considering the cost of publication as part of the cost of research

• Strengthening the local OA journals, repositories and other relevant initiatives;

• promoting integration of developing countries scientific information in the worldwide body of knowledge.



Institutional policies

• Create collaboration across the institution for supporting and managing research communications:– Negotiation of digital licences– Creation of repositories and archives – Research publication

• Information and support for staff negotiating publication contracts

• Link publication and research deposits to staff profiles and departmental websites



Contact

http://www.evegray.co.za.http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/gray_area

http://www.policy.huhttp://www.cet.uct.ac.za

[email protected]

Centre for educational technology Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest ICT and Research Dissemination in African Universities Policy Issues:

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