Category Archives: Open Access

The State of the Nation – South African scholarly publishing and the global knowledge divide

Down here in the southern hemisphere, the sun is shining and the south-easter is funnelling down the mountain. The 2007 university summer term has begun and absurdly young students are thronging campus; the President has delivered a carefully-modulated State of the Nation address; and the Finance Minister has spelled out a budget that shows South Africa
significantly in the black. In short, the real working year is only just beginning. So it is perhaps time, in a series of postings, to do
a my own State of the Nation overview of where South Africa stands at the start of 2007 in relation to my area of interest – the
dissemination and publication of African scholarship.

First, a background sketch. I hold an International Policy Fellowship from the Open Society Institute (Budapest) investigating policy for the dissemination of African scholarship. The project aims to map the complex and often contradictory policy environment that frames research publication in South Africa and other African countries. These policies tend to work in two directions: one for the leveraging of research to deliver national development goals – to which the South African government appears to be ready to allocate substantial resources – the other for the recognition and reward of scholarly publication. In particular, the project researches the question of whether countries like South
Africa and its African neighbours can start to turn around the global knowledge divide and raise the reach and visibility of African research using electronic media and the Open Access publishing approaches currently taking hold across the world.

If one looks at the current state of research publication in African countries, what stands out most strongly is the persistent marginalisation of African knowledge – particularly of scholarship about Africa, produced in Africa. Globally, research dissemination takes place within a system that has been in place for around the last 100 years, which has come to be dominated by increasingly
commercialised (and increasingly expensive) journals and by scholarly books produced primarily in the USA and Europe in a globally
unbalanced ‘publish or perish’ scholarly market. For example, to cite but one statistic – in 2000, South Africa, which far exceeds
any other African country in the ISI journal rankings, had just 0,5% of the articles in the combined ISI databases and 0.15% of the most
cited papers (see the SA Academy of Science Report on a Strategic Approach to Research Publishing in South Africa 2006) . Could we really say that this is a fair and accurate evaluation of the global weight and value of the research carried out in this country?

This publication takes place within a generally unquestioned value system in which quality is measured by publication impact in an international arena in which scholars and publishers from Africa are unequal players in the global research economy. For example, the leading international index in which journal publication is valued, the ISI, aims to index the limited range of journal literature that
asserts a disproportionate influence, on the assumption that a relatively small group of journals – or body of knowledge – will account for the most important and influential research in any field. The UK-based International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), while it prides itself on listing a substantial percentage of journals from outside the UK, nevertheless values them (through an Editorial Board consisting overwhelmingly of UK academics and none at all from developing countries) according to their relevance to UK scholars and libraries. These criteria tend to marginalise research knowledge from the periphery, research that does not address the mainstream interests of scholarship in the US and Europe, and also work to disadvantage disciplines that have particular local relevance rather than more generalised global appeal.

Add to this the physical difficulties and the cost of distributing print materials from the developing world into dominant US and UK markets,
as well as the difficulty of getting these publications accepted by the major libraries, and it becomes clear that the very criteria that the developing world uses for its traditional-model scholarly output are those that contribute also to its marginalisation in the global arena. Even more damaging is the potential for the distortion of research agendas – if scholars are to receive promotion and financial reward for publications that conform to US and UK research agendas, then research topics that might contribute vitally to local development issues risk marginalisation. Moreover, there is a self-fulfilling prophecy, based on the assumption that overseas standards are better, in which local publications, perceived to be of poorer quality, do in fact often come to be of poorer quality, starved as they are of recognition, support and resources.

In tackling these problems, we are seriously handicapped by the fact that in the South African higher education system there is a tacit acceptance that scholarly publication is not the business of the universities – what Joseph J. Esposito in a recent article in LOGOS, calls ‘the
free-rider syndrome. A university… will actively encourage faculty to publish, but a press will be stinted because it is always possible
that a particular book will be published somewhere else.’ Also – and perhaps as a result of the free-rider syndrome, the policies and
practices governing scholarly publication have themselves not been subjected to much research or scrutiny. As a recent Australian government report observed: ‘Despite billions being spent by governments on R&D every year, relatively little policy attention
has yet been paid to the dissemination of that research through scientific and scholarly publishing.’

2007 might well be the year in which South Africa starts to pay more attention to these issues. On the international front, a number of initiatives are putting the issues on the front burner – the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) is in the process of creating an African Science and Innovation Facility; the World Bank has identified higher education as a key driver for African economic growth and poverty eradication; the funding agencies are taking an increasing interest in the potential for unlocking access to African knowledge through the use of ICTs and Open Access; and the steadily growing number of international initiatives for access to publicly funded research (the most recent being the EU meetings held last week). Locally, the Academy of Science of South Africa’s project on scholarly publishing is beginning to take shape, under the aegis of
the Department of Science and Technology (more on that in another posting), an increasing number of Open Access projects are beginning to emerge and the middle economy alliance of Brazil, India, China (and South Africa, tagging on behind) is beginning to impact. But a lot still needs to be done to get these debates a higher profile in the universities and in government.

American publishers hire a “pit bull”

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The most startling news this week, picked up from Peter Suber’s Open Access News and then in Slashdot draws attention to an article by Jim Giles in Nature: PR’s pit bull takes on Open Access. In this article, which is available online (thanks are due to Nature), it emerges that the Association of American publishers and some of their members, including Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society have apparently hired a PR agent to defend them against what they see as a threat to their livelihood from open access publishing. The devil, though, is in the detail – the detail of whom they have hired.

As Jim Giles writes:

The author of Nail ‘Em! Confronting High-Profile Attacks on Celebrities and Businesses is not the kind of figure normally associated with the relatively sedate world of scientific publishing. Besides writing the odd novel, Eric
Dezenhall has made a name for himself helping companies and celebrities protect their reputations, working for example with Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron chief now serving a 24-year jail term for fraud.

Although Dezenhall declines to comment on Skilling and his other clients, his firm, Dezenhall Resources, was
also reported by Business Week to have used money from oil giant Exxon Mobil to criticize the environmental group Greenpeace. “He’s the pit bull of public relations,” says Kevin McCauley, an editor at the magazine O’Dwyer’s PR Report.

Now, Nature has learned, a group of big scientific publishers has hired the pit bull to take on the free-information movement, which campaigns for scientific results to be made freely available. Some traditional journals, which depend
on subscription charges, say that open-access journals and public databases of scientific papers such as the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) PubMed Central, threaten their livelihoods.

From e-mails passed to Nature, it seems Dezenhall spoke to employees from Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society at a meeting arranged last July by the Association of American Publishers (AAP)….

The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as “Public access equals government censorship”. He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review….

Dezenhall also recommended joining forces with groups that may be ideologically opposed to government-mandated projects such as PubMed Central, including organizations that have angered scientists. One suggestion was the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Washington DC, which has used oil-industry money to promote sceptical views on climate change. Dezenhall estimated his fee for the campaign at $300,000%u2013500,000.

In an enthusiastic e-mail sent to colleagues after the meeting, Susan Spilka, Wiley’s director of corporate communications, said Dezenhall explained that publishers had acted too defensively on the free-information issue and worried too much about making precise statements. Dezenhall noted that if the other side is on the defensive, it doesn’t matter if they can discredit your statements, she added: “Media massaging is not the same as intellectual debate.

Officials at the AAP would not comment to Nature on the details of their work with Dezenhall, or the money involved, but acknowledged that they had met him and subsequently contracted his firm to work on the issue.

It is worth reading the Nature article in full. I remain open-mouthed. At least, I suppose, it means that open access is serious enough for the publishers to see it as a threat and that is a good thing. However, for scholarly publishers to be caught out in
such an expedient exercise of truth-bending is another matter – all the more so in the intellectual environment in which they operate. I am particularly surprised at Wiley, which in my dealings with it in the past has emerged as a company with a concern for quality and the ability to think out of the box – to an extent unusual among their peers. So to see them descend to tactics such as this is disappointing. I would have thought that a company like Wiley should have the nerve and the intelligence to
ride the wave, to learn where scholarly publishing is heading and position themselves ahead of the game. I do believe there is a role for good publishers in the Open Access movement and I also believe that Open Access is the way scholarly publishing is going.

Surely, also, these publishers should be paying more attention to their client base. That is where they need good and intelligent PR. The peer reviewers they are using as fodder for their (false) arguments are volunteers from the universities, as are their authors. Their customers, the university libraries, are unhappy with the very high inflation rate of their products, the students in the USA are complaining about the price of textbooks. Should they not be focusing their PR efforts in that direction?

I suppose the bottom-line question, addressed to the academic community that provides these people with their living is the classic one: ‘Would you buy a used car from someone like this?’ Are these to be the guardians of the quality of your scholarship?

Marketing the HSRC Press – a profile of Karen Bruns

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Last week’s issue of SA Booknews Online ran a profile of Karen Bruns, Marketing Manager of the HSRC Press. The HSRC Press is unusual: it is a successful African Open Access publisher – of books and research reports rather than journals – and it runs a savvy business model, publishing and selling high quality print versions of the publications that it places online free of charge. This profile highlights another, important but often overlooked, aspect of its operations: that it is run by a highly professional publishing team and that its publications are aggressively marketed so as to maximise the impact of the research that is being disseminated.

From the SA Booknews article:

As the Marketing Manager of HSRC Press, Karen Bruns has a fairly good idea of what is needed to achieve success in this line of business. Prior to joining the HSRC in 2002, she held a number of marketing management positions in the publishing and retail industries, developing marketing communications and public relations skills in focused business environments. These include oppositional publishers Ravan Press and David Philip Publishers from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, as well as for Juta & Co, a larger and more commercial company.

What makes HSRC a successful company?

“As far as we know, the HSRC Press is South Africa’s only open access publisher. We think we might be the only open access publisher in Africa but as we haven’t been able to verify that, we really can’t make that claim. We publish both in print and in electronic form. It’s one of the things that make us unique and it’s probably the most exciting part of what it is that we’re doing. It feels very pioneering and at the same time, we’re increasing both the pool of and access to high quality social science research-based publications.”

“Considering where we’re located, I am often asked whether we only publish the research output of the Human Science Research Council (HSRC). While we do manage all of the intellectual property of the HSRC, the answer is no, as we publish many externally authored works – provided they’re furthering the social sciences, which is the mandate of the
organisation in terms of a statutory act.”

How has HSRC Press expanded business structures/opportunities?

Conscious that the HSRC in years gone by produced publications of varying quality, they instituted a formal peer-review process in 2004.

“The editorial board guarantees the highest academic quality and members assist greatly in the review process. We currently publish approximately 45-50 publications per year, that is reports containing primary research, monographs and edited volumes, and the manuscripts keep flooding in.”

“But it wouldn’t do to be pushing out all of these publications without an active local and international marketing programme, in addition to collaborating with foreign publishers on specific titles.”

Development of African intellectual life

The marketing is Karen’s domain, although she says that all of publishing is about marketing, and she cannot lay claim to doing it all.

“Working with authors of high intellect automatically implies that most of my “constituencies” are natural cynics. It’s part of the territory and in my day-to-day dealings with authors, the media, and booksellers; I am constantly reminded that these are not people that can be rah-rahed into excitement about the marketing opportunities in scholarly publishing. For some it is assumed that credibility sells; for others it comes as a complete surprise that academic books should
be marketed at all. Armed with catnip, I constantly work at herding cats and enthusing people about the incredibly exciting opportunities that lie within academic publishing and in the future of this sector that is key to the development of African intellectual life.”

Key to success

“But notwithstanding that we achieve approximately R6.5 million (advertising value equivalent) in free PR on our books alone each year, and that we have international prize-winning titles in our list, and that we have increased representation in the national bookstores, and that we’re establishing some flagship South African products – what most people ask us most often is whether the open access model assists in selling more books!”

“The question is most often accompanied by a cynical eyebrow and a wary expression. I am just as wary to answer, because my answer would have to be that we have seen significant year on year sales increases since our inception in 2002.”

According to Karen, their success can be linked to the improvement of their products, the increase of their sales network, and their growing efficiencies. She is wary of pinning their success to the adoption of the open access model, as she wouldn’t want publishers, librarians, authors, academics, policymakers, or civil society to think for one minute that the adoption thereof was a marketing ploy!

“The reason that we have adopted this model – apart from adoring innovation as we do to a person at the HSRC Press – is that we wanted to assist in opening access to quality social science in Africa – both to Africa and from Africa.”

Comment: Karen strikes a chord for me in this interview when she comments wryly on the fact that that the most common question people ask is whether Open Access online provision sells more books. As she says, that is not the point at all. I cannot imagine that book sales come anywhere near covering the costs of the publishing department. The HSRC provides generous financial support for the HSRC Press, presumably because the organisation finds that this is a good investment. Having
its research effectively and widely disseminated achieves the purpose of the research council, ensuring that its research findings have significant development impact. Moreover, I would imagine that its successfully marketed publications profile the HSRC very effectively in the eyes of the government that funds it and contributes to its ability to attract private research contracts to expand its research activities and supplement its public funding.

The Bangalore National Open Access Policy – a way forward for developing countries

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At the end of the Workshop on Electronic Publishing and Open Access in Bangalore two weeks ago, it was agreed that what was needed was not just another declaration, but a document that could be used to drive policy implementation in developing countries. The final version has now been released and is revealed as a remarkably clear and pragmatic document, the National Open Access Policy for Developing Countries.

Where this differs from its predecessors is not only in its focus on the developing world, but the fact that it includes a brief but very clear policy undertaking for signature by national governments, accompanied by a statement of the advantages of Open Access publication to governments and to academics as well as practical
implementation guidelines for effective and easy deposit of articles. The strategy that underpins its approach is that mandating deposit in institutional repositories of journal articles arising out of publicly funded research and making these available for harvesting provides a quick and affordable way of building a national record of
research output.

From the first paragraph, this document reflects something I said in my previous blog – that the mood has changed and that there is now an assertive voice articulating the value of the knowledge that is currently largely marginalised in the global research hierarchy:

The Bangalore workshop was convened to bring together policy makers and research scientists from major developing countries to agree a path forward towards adopting full Open Access to publicly-funded research publications. The importance of access to the world’s research information for the development of a strong economy and a vibrant research capability is widely acknowledged, yet financial barriers limit access by developing countries to the research information they need. Equally, the unique research carried out in countries representing 80% of the world’s population is largely ‘invisible’ to
international science because of economic or other constraints. The resolution of many of the world’s problems, such as emerging infectious diseases, environmental disasters, HIV/AIDS or climate change, cannot be achieved without incorporation of the research from developing countries into the global knowledge pool.

Open Access to the world’s publicly funded research literature provides equal opportunities for the communication of all research information, eliminating financial barriers. Furthermore, articles made available electronically on an open access basis have been shown to be cited on average 50% more often than non-open access articles from the same journal, thus ensuring the greatest possible benefit both to the authors, to the investment of funding agencies and to scientific progress. The benefits to authors, readers and their organisations is now increasingly recognised worldwide and by November 2006, 761 repositories had already been registered in the Registry of Open Access Repositories, and the Open Archives Initiative’s OAIster search enginecould search over 9,000,000 records in interoperable Open Access repositories.

The proven advantages of Open Access publishing for developing countries were spelled out in a number of papers at the Bangalore workshop: substantially increased citations leading to higher levels of research impact, the widening of the author base, greater research efficiency through the reduction of duplication and faster dissemination, to name only a few. However, while the SciELO initiative in Latin America demonstrates the considerable benefits of intervention at a national level and of regional collaboration over research publication, systematic policy interventions are still lacking in most developing countries, leading to a fragmentation of
efforts that can, in reality, be ill-afforded. The policy undertaking included in the National Open Access Policy will therefore be a boon to those lobbying for national commitments to access to publicly funded research from governments in developing countries. As Subbiah Arunachalam put it in an email late last week, there is
now work to be done:

The most important thing now is to get policy makers in India, China and many African countries adopt and implement the OA Policy Statement signed by all the participants of the Bangalore workshop. Your suggestions and help are welcome.

The full text of the National OA Policy for developing Countries can be found at http://scigate.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/OAworkshop2006/pdfs/NationalOAPolicyDCs.pdf

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Open access – a view from the South

Category Archives: Open Access

The State of the Nation – South African scholarly publishing and the global knowledge divide

American publishers hire a “pit bull”

Marketing the HSRC Press – a profile of Karen Bruns

The Bangalore National Open Access Policy – a way forward for developing countries