1
Scholarly Journal Publishing
in South Africa
Ina Smith
20 October 2014
Agenda
• Open Access at DUT
• Scholarly Publication Landscape
• Open Access Scholarly Publication Landscape
• Alignment with Government Goals & role of
ASSAf
• The road ahead
Open Access @ DUT
• Berlin Declaration on Open Access
(Prof Ahmed Bawa, 20 May 2013)
• “We stand for something noble” (Prof Bawa)
• “Mission to make knowledge useful” (Prof Sibusiso Moyo)
• “Projects we engage in should have an impact”
• “Encourages the production of new knowledge”
Open Access Routes
• Green: Institutional Repository (IR) Submit a 2nd copy of research output (articles), theses,
dissertations, data sets and more
• Gold: Open Access Journal Titles - Publish in OA journal titles
- Offer OA journal hosting service
Focus on ‘gold’ ….
Open Access Journals
• Peer-reviewed (traditional & ‘open’)
• Serve as forum for introduction and
presentation for scrutiny of new research &
critique existing research
• Available online to reader without financial,
legal, technical barriers
The Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences,
published in Italy, has been called a scam but it
appears on the CVs of several professors at Unisa as
the publisher of papers authored by them. 6
Diane Parker, an acting deputy director-
general in the Department of Higher
Education and Training, said the publication
was listed in Scopus, a database of academic
journals.
Scholarly Journal Publishing
Landscape
Database Titles
Genamics JournalSeek 102 139
Thomson Reuters Master Journal List 16 970
Scopus SCImago Journal & Country Rank 29 385
JURN Directory 3 000
Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory 336 000+
Open Access Scholarly Journal
Publishing Landscape
http://doaj.org/
10 032 titles
SA Open Access Scholarly
Journal Publishing Landscape
AOSiS 26
ASSAf 47
SU 20
AJOL 86
OASPA
Non-OASPA
HMPG 11
Sabinet 95
SA Open Access Scholarly
Journal Publishing Landscape
http://doaj.org/
71 titles
Institutional Scholarly Journal
Publishing Landscape
Example: Stellenbosch University (Sept. 2014)
Open Access 59
Subscription 47
Total 106
http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/index.php/SUNJournals/list
SA Open Access Scholarly
Journal Publishing Software
AOSiS OJS
SU OJS
AJOL OJS
HMPG OJS
ASSAf SciELO
Support for OJS &
ScholarOne
ASSAf Scholarly Publishing Programme
SPP
Open Access Publishing
Access to Core
Commercial Databases
Peer-review of SA
Journals
Scientific Writing
National Scholarly Editors’ Forum
National Scholarly
Book Publishers’
Forum
Towards a new quality assurance
system in SA
2003: Policy and Procedures for the Measurement
of Research Output of Public Higher Education Institutions
Encourage research productivity by rewarding
quality research output (R 117 000,00 per article)
Hosting SA scholarly journals on SciELO - increasing
visibility, accessibility & impact of research output –
global recognition
Evaluating SA scholarly journals – improve quality
Access to knowledge resources
(1)
• South Africa's higher education system is
confronted with three major priorities:
– (1) to produce a highly qualified human resource
base which is needed for national development,
– (2) to develop the next generation of academics to
sustain and transform the system; and
– (3) to produce high-quality research and innovation
outputs that can enhance the country’s global
competitiveness.
Access to knowledge resources
(2)
• All three priorities are absolutely dependent
on access to papers published by other
scholars, local and international, in leading
journals.
• Many of these journals are high-cost,
commercial titles published by large multi-
national corporations.
Access to knowledge resources
(3)
• The equitable model will be a more cost-
effective and sustainable route for facilitating access to the intellectual resources required
for achieving our higher education priorities.
• Without this, or the investment of billions of
additional Rands in higher education, we are
unlikely to succeed in developing an
equitable, diverse human resource base on which to build the knowledge economy.
Important developments
To ensure continued quality assurance, visibility
and accessibility of SA journals
• Certification of SciELO SA Collection
• Inclusion on Web of Knowledge platform
• Signing of MoU with DHET to do quality peer review of ALL SA journals
• Change DHET policy for automatic
accreditation of SA journals
• Improved accreditation policy towards
publishing of books & conference proceedings
Quality Scholarly Journals
ASSAf Criteria (1)
Reputation/standing of Editorial Board members
Quality of articles
Issues/articles per annum
Representative of best work in country
Focus on local/regional problems
Author distribution – national/international
Author distribution – inter-institutional
Scholarly features
Quality Scholarly Journals
ASSAf Criteria (2)
English abstracts
Errata
Citation practice
Presentation, layout, style, copy-editing
Stimulus for new researchers
Comparability with leading international journals
DOAJ Criteria (1)
http://doaj.org/application/new
Online ISSN (EISSN)
Publisher/Platform/Host/Aggregator
Policy re Submission Charges & Article Processing
Charges (APC’s)
Digital archiving policy
OAI-PMH compliant (article level metadata)
Persistent digital object identifiers (doi’s)
DOAJ Criteria (2)
Double blind peer-review process
Aims and scope
Instructions to authors
Plagiarism detection policy
Submission-publication period
Journal Open Access policy
Content licensing (Creative Commons)
Author rights
Deposit policy with deposit policy directory
More …
Web page and URL
Journal history
Journal metrics
Previously published issues
Ethics and malpractice statement
Information on accreditation and indexing
Researcher identities
Agreements
DUT Research Output -
Recommendations
•2nd copy of research output in DUT IR
•Links from research report to items in IR
•Publish in OA DHET accredited journals
•Negotiate copyright with publishers
•Audit of DUT journal publications
•Host an OA journal service
•Data management
The road ahead …
Open Access Policy
Article Processing Charges (APC’s)
Peer-review & quality – elevate for all SA
scholarly journals, change perceptions re OA
Impact factor vs Open Access
New trends (video journals, crowd-
sourced peer-review, early cite, publish
article immediately following peer-review)