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An African citation index? The AFC-Codesria conference on digital publishing

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Around 65 delegates met in a mild and sunny Leiden in early September, as guests of the African Studies Centre of the University of Leiden, to
discuss the the North-South divide and scholarly communication in Africa in the digital era. This was a follow-up to an initial conference on the topic in Dakar two years ago. The differences between the two conferences were telling: while the 2004 event consisted largely of informative and explanatory papers, laying the ground for an understanding of the terrain, this time there was a much more confident interrogation of the assumptions that underlie international scholarly communications systems and the power relations at play in the scholarly community. The papers were of a very high standard and the conference teased out many key issues facing African scholarly publishing, bringing delegates up short against of the major challenges that face the continent, yet not descending into the abyss of Afro-pessimism that so often characterises meetings of this kind.

Appropriately, given the venue, collaboration and partnership were very much on the agenda. As Adebayo Olukoshi said in his opening speech, global knowledge dissemination is characterised by asymmetries from previous systems of knowledge production. The conference was designed to
address these asymmetries, he said, with the aim of developing strategies for using CODESRIA’s CODICE documentation centre to help
leapfrog institutional practice across the continent. In this context, CODICE is seen as a pioneer centre on the African continent
for the development of digital media and online resources in the social sciences. The main lines of discussions that emerged at the conference were cogently summarised in this opening speech – the inequalities inherent in the scholarly system and the marginalisation of African knowledge in that system; the problematic yet ultimately liberatory role of technology; the need for leapfrogging disadvantage; and the vital importance of collaboration and resource sharing.

Open Access publication seemed to have ready acceptance across the board as the most enabling dissemination model for African scholarship, offering greater citation impact, greater efficiency and, most important, more democratic access to knowledge. Given that a number of speakers identified distribution problems as the major barrier to research dissemination, the potential for Open Access digital distribution was doubly attractive, leading to an increase in impact factor of between 56% and 227%, according to Marlon Domingues of the ASC.

The conference agreed that Codesria should propose the creation of an African citation index as a way of addressing the inequalitites that characterise the marginalisation of African publication. The particular occasion for this event was the launch of Connecting Africa, an ASC initiative to harvest African Studies data by building links to repositories across the world. As an example of North-South collaboration, this initiative builds on existing resources to leverage access to a body of African Studies content, fostering partnerships between institutions in the North and in Africa. The resultant collaboration aims to redress the knowledge divide by balancing access to research content produced in Africa and that
generated in the global North.

Providing a perspective from the global South, Subbiah Arunachalam gave an eye-opening account of the ways in which Open Access knowledge dissemination to rural knowledge centres in India had contributed to poverty reduction and the delivery of development goals – as well as saving the lives of coastal fishermen through the provision of weather and tidal information. These networks translate knowledge from the research environment to local communities – ‘lab-to-land’ as Arun described it – using digital, print, and broadcast media to get the message across in projects in some 40,000 villages. Although researchers in developing countries face severe disadvantages, it was clear that technology could help
bridge the gap between rich and poor. Given the challenges that face us, such as SARS, avian flu, and tsunamis, he argued, the improvement of ICT access and the building of research networks must be seen not as a luxury but a necessity.

A number of speakers, however, asked the question ‘Open Access to what, for whom?’ In a closely argued paper, Paul Wouters of the Virtual Studio in the Royal Netherlands Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, challenged delegates to interrogate many of the assumptions behind Open Access, including its seemingly uncontroversial value as a public good. OA also has a history, he argued, based mainly in the library and information sciences and is based on assumptions about the scientific systems, knowledge produced in the systems, and practices in the system. Scientific knowledge is closely connected to local circumstances, he argued, not valid universally. Universality is the result of a lot of work, not only in dissemination but in an active act of translation. There are, moreover, under-recognised difficulties in sharing data, he argued including emotional differences between, for example, physicists working with less personal data and social scientists. The question therefore is how to
turn the humanities and social sciences to more collaborative methods.

This tension between ‘international’ and ‘local’ knowledge was interrogated by a number of speakers, along with the implicit hierarchies that underlie such a concept. Arguing that many development consultants do not understand the knowledge of their subjects very well, development consultant Mike Powell pleaded for an understanding of the multiplicity of knowledges in the environment and for applied research in navigating this diversity. He challenged the easy assumption that African knowledge is ‘indigenous knowledge’ and US and European scholarship ‘global knowledge’. African scholars were encouraged to resist the devaluation of African knowledge – for example, depending on circumstances, Mike argued, a doctor trained in Maputo could be more valuable than one with a more prestigious Harvard qualification.

Williams Nwagwu of the University of Ibadan tackled the local/international issue from another perspective, making the case for the creation of an African citation index, arguing that African research is for the most part, ‘unavailable and inaccessible’ as a result of the selection criteria imposed by the mainstream Northern citation indexes. These exclude most research done in Africa and, in particular, deny the importance of locally or nationally-focused research, which tends to be applied research, understandably enough, given African circumstances. Peter Lor, a former National Librarian in South Africa and a keynote speaker, concurred, arguing that the South African system places excessive emphasis on the USA ISI citation index and disadvantages local journal output as a result.

Marlon Domingues cited the “;Matthew effect” in citation – “for every one that hath, to them shall it be given”’. The South American example of the SCIELO database was cited by a number of speakers as a valuable coordinated cross-national policy initiative that has substantially increased the exposure of research from the participating countries – and if Cuba can do it, so can African countries.

The proposal for an African Citation Index was taken up enthusiastically by the delegates and a proposal was accepted for Williams to prepare a model for CODESRIA, for the idea to be taken up with the AAU and NEPAD. Terms of Reference should be ready by October-November 2006.
There was broad agreement on the ways out of the impasse faced by African research dissemination. Common themes were the need for the recognition of grey literature, – the inclusion of content (as is the case in SCIELO) that is not peer reviewed, as a means of evaluating social impact. Garry Rosenberg provided a clearly articulated account of the case study of the HSRC Press, arguing that Africa’s future cannot be found in the glbal North’s past, but that Africa needs new publishing models that honour the social purpose of publishing. It is an ethical responsibility to make research findings available, he argued. it was possible to buck global trends, he said – for example, 22% of the citations from the President’s
office were from HSRC publications.

Interventions suggested were : training in info-literacy and information management; education in copyright (from the perspective of educational institutions rather than that of publishers); the creation of much greater awareness of scholarly communication issues; the building of collaborative networks; the fostering of a new role for African libraries; and the creation of Africa’s own electronic publication and dissemination tools, policies and practices.

In the final keynote address, Olivier Sagna, from Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar, but recently appointed to a strategic position in CODICE at CODESRIA, pulled together a number of these themes. Africa had been outside most developments he said, but now research knowledge had to come from out of Africa. The continent was disadvantaged by global institutions like the WTO and WIPO; libraries had non-existent budgets, there was a digital divide and a scientific divide. Most of all, he said, there was a lack of public policies and no civil society movement for higher education. What was happening in Africa, he said, was the growth of FOSS, the localisation debate, the establishment of repositories and research archives, Creative Commons SA, with Nigeria to follow, NRENs. What needed to be done was awareness-raising; policy creation (Open Access, FOSS, etc.); training programmes in electronic dissemination; customised and innovative information products and services; information management leading to knowledge management and from STM dissemination to knowledge and communication strategies. The challenge, then, would be to move from national to regional programmes. Most important, African universities needed to create communication links and collaborative networks so that efforts are no longer fragmented. Perhaps, he said, in 2007 there should be a Timbuktu Declaration on African Open Access.

iCommons spins off tools for Open Access scholarship – the Rio Framework for Open Science

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The iCommons Summit in Rio (June 2006) continues to spin off results. It is great to see that the promises made by various groups at the Summit – in this case the Science Commons – are delivering on schedule. An invaluable set of resources for Open Access scholarship was launched this week, the Rio Framework for Open Science. The resources are set up on a wiki, moderated by John Willbanks (who will be visiting South Africa in February) and our own Heather Ford, who heads up Creative Commons South Africa and is also Executive Director of iCommons.

The Rio Declaration says this about its purpose:

The goal of this Framework is to provide a seedbed of resources for those interested in Open Science, from the background information to examples of institutional policy, from arguments and evidence to the tools needed to implement various elements of Open Science.

The website collates information and resources that could, as the website puts it, ‘unleash the scientific research cycle’. I must confess I brought proceedings to a grinding halt at the iCommons when I asked “Whadd’ya mean by ‘Science’?” The answer appears to be that the main drive for the Science Commons comes from people with an S&T background (it is housed at MIT), yet the tools it is developing could be of value to scholars in all disciplines.

The main headings under which resources are collected are:

  • Policy – listings and links to the various OA policy declarations and initiatives and articles and case studies on OA, how it works and its impact factors. There are signs that South Africa is beginning to grapple with the question of access to research from public funding and the recent ASSAf Report on scholarly publishing in South Africa is recommending Open Access repositories and journals. So OA policy is on our agenda right now.
  • Law – not only Creative Commons copyright contracts, but invaluable stuff from the Scholar’s Copyright Project, such as the ‘Author’s Addenda’ that can be added to publication contracts to ensure that academics can retain at least enough rights to be able to archive their articles on the Internet.
  • Technology – useful links to OS software tools for research management – for archiving, creating documents, annotating on the web…

There is a lot here – go and take a look and add to the Wiki with our own resources.

A new journal concept – Plos ONE launches

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Plos ONE, the radical new journal concept (see my16 July blog) has launched. Eric Kansa, , in his Digging Digitally archaeology blog, has this to say:

…PLoS One represents an experiment in a lot of ways. Papers are more clearly part of an ongoing process of communication and discussion and are less like static artifacts. Evaluation and review continue well after initial public dissemination. And in PLoS One, the community is invited to add value to papers through “Web 2.0″ collaborative tools…

Drawing value from user interaction and making users more than consumers of information but inviting them to be participants in creating valuable knowledge sounds like a great approach. It has been widely successful in several high-profile commercial sites, such as Flickr (tagged photos) and Del.ic.ious (tagged web content)….The uptake of these community-participatory (“Web 2.0”) approaches is relatively limited in academic and professional communication (though see Connotea). I doubt this has much to do with technophobia as it much as it has to do with the special social, incentive and professional needs of scholars. If PLoS One can help figure out how to motivate professional communities to use participatory tools that add value to scientific communication, I think they will have made a fundamentally important contribution.

(Thanks to Peter Suber’s Open Access Newsletter for this link)

Through the looking glass? Scholarly publishing seen from the South-eastern frontier

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I have given a couple of workshop papers on scholarly publishing in the last ten days or so. Sounds dry, doesn’t it? That might apply to one of those ‘How to crack the system and get published in an accredited scholarly journal’ papers that I think my audiences were expecting (and dreading). But if one casts a steely eye over the system that we all take so unquestioningly for granted, then things can get a lot livelier. What would the proverbial woman from Mars make of it? The basis of the academic accreditation system is that our scholars are assessed and promoted primarily according to their ability to get published in journals in other countries, whose systems are patently weighted to exclude them – and to exclude many of the burning issues that might be of national relevance.

Looking at the scholarly publishing system from the perspective of a scholar in the humanities and social sciences in a South African university, one thing is for sure – we really are on the margins of the world. This is not a system conceived of for the benefit of our developing world, but designed to suit the needs of powerful institutional and hard-nosed commercial interests in big first-world economies. If one looks dispassionately at what the universities put into this system and what they get out of it, it is patently dysfunctional. Scholars pay for conducting the research, writing the articles, for acting as peer reviewers, then pay page charges, as often as not, to get published. Then the universities buy back that information, often at vastly inflated prices, from near-monopoly conglomerates, operating a commercial system in which market forces don’t work.

The way we relate to the system has its absurdities. We bind ourselves into trying to publish primarily in journals selected by indexing systems that explicitly marginalise contributions from the peripheries of the world, where we live. Also, as a CSIR researcher pointed out in one of last week’s workshops, the numbers just don’t work: “There are a thousand-odd researchers in the CSIR”, he said, “and we are each required to publish two articles per year in accredited journals. Where are we going to find accredited journals to publish more than two thousand articles from the CSIR alone? And who is going to read them?”

The scholarly publishing system is not working even in the powerful knowledge economies that call the shots. As the leading radical IP lawyer, James Boyle, said at the iCommons Summit in Rio, “We have a scientific publishing system that is massively dysfunctional and really, really broken.” Or, as Lindsay Waters, the Humanities Editor at Harvard University Press put it in one of his papers; “The patient is dying! Call the ambulance.”

So where does that leave us, here in South Africa? And what can we do about it?

iCommons, Networked Communities and Pre-colonial African Societies

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At the iCommons Summit in Rio, Brazilian Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil gave a lyrical account of his world view, as well as an unusually for a Minister – singing us a few choruses. One of the things he said was, “I am still cultivating this strange and provocative taste of bringing together ideas that seemed to be bound to be eternally separate. just like parabolic and camara. I like to see the world echoing just like the head of a berimbau. I like to connect the differences.” (In the interests of global confusion – the English text of this speech can be found on the Australian Creative Commons site.)

So, in the interests of making the world echo, and of putting a different spin on the challenge posed at iCommons for developing countries, to leapfrog from the 19th to the 21st century, I would like to make a link between pre-colonial history in my part of the world and the iCommons discussion of the 21st century networked society. Perhaps the 21st century networked world has something to learn from 18th century Southern Africa.

Judy Breck, in her Golden Swamp virtual learning blog, describes the networked society in relation to the lateral, nodal structure envisaged for the iCommons. This has been greeted with perplexity by some.

In a 2002 article in the Journal of Social History,1 Clifton Crais (whose book2 on pre-colonial Eastern Cape history I co-published at Wits University Press in 1992) describes how social reality of the people living there was remade by the colonists of the 19th century. The idea that these societies were territorially-defined, top-down chieftainships was an invention of the colonial officials trying to make sense of the social and political order in the only language they knew – that of the nation state. What Crais describes could have a number of intriguing parallels with those battling to understand a networked iCommmons:

Political power tended to be localized, boundaries fluid and vague, and the authority of chiefs highly variable. The political landscape was both homogeneous and kaleidoscopic, with widely dispersed material and symbolic resources and constantly changing political domains. Even at moments of relative stasis domains of authority very frequently overlapped. Political identities were multiple, with the fluidity of identities generally increasing with geographical distance from any given center of power.

The absence of any unequal distribution of economic goods, trade, or population mitigated against the centralization of power. Second, military technology and strategy were widely democratic. Third, there were multiple nodes and overlapping domains of authority.

I also enjoy the parallels when it comes to the nature of leadership:

Europeans and especially early colonial officials very often found African polities to be exasperating and scarcely intelligible. One thing seemed reasonably comprehensible, that is most easily translatable into their own political epistemologies: that there were some men of elevated status who wore and laid claim to the skins of leopards and lions. These men often practiced polygyny, lived in larger communities, usually possessed more livestock than others, and were referred to and used the title “inkosi” but beyond that seemingly little differentiated chiefs from most everyone else…

Leopard and lion skins might be an appealing garb for the plenary panel at next year’s summit, although I am not so sure of the polygyny aspect. But seriously, where is the historian or anthropologist who could take this analogy further for us…

1Custom and the Politics of Sovereignty in South Africa, Journal of Social History,39 (3) 2002

2White Supremacy and Black Resistance in Pre-industrial South Africa: The Making of the Colonial Order in the Eastern Cape, 1770-1865. Cambridge University Press, 1992