ASSAf Journal Editors Forum holds its inugural meeting

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The Academy of Science of South Africa’s (ASSAf”s) first Journal Editor’s Forum held its inaugural meeting in late July. This was an important event marking what many hope might be the beginning of a new era of expansion and greater impact for scholarly publishing from South Africa. This event marks the first step in implementing the recommendations of ASSA’fs five-year research study of the state of scholarly publication in South Africa. The wide range of recommendations focuses primarily on the strengthening of both the quality and the volume of scholarly publishing, particularly of journals, using an Open Access model. The Journal Editors’ Forum is a consultative body, participating as a community of practice to help build consensus around the road ahead for scholarly publishing.

The meeting was remarkably well attended, with upwards of 100 journal editors and other interested bodies participating. Discussion was wide-ranging and lively and there appeared to be general degree of support for the proposals, including the Open
Access proposals, with the biggest stumbling blocks appearing to be a perceived need to retain print publications, with the sustainability issues that that raised; and the question of society publishers.

Opening address

In his opening address, Dr Bethuel Sehlapelo, Human and Knowledge Resources at the Department of Science and Technology, said that knowledge systems and knowledge production were central to the DST’s new 10-year plan
for a National System of Innovation. The growth targets that have been set in this plan are ambitious: the current number of PhDs annually is 567 a year and this is expected to rise to 3,000 by 2017. The percentage of accredited journal articles published out of South Africa is currently 0.5% of world output and this is targeted to rise to 2.5%. From this perspective, it was evident that the ASSAf proposals for the development of scientific publishing are central to the DST’s main enterprise in growing South Africa’s output and ranking in the global scholarly system, he said.

Dr Wieland Gevers outlined the mission of the Academy of Science of South Africa . The Academy, in line with
its international colleagues, he said, is a consultative body aimed to offer the best expertise, independently of government, on
science-based policy issues. The first project it has undertaken has been its research and policy proposals on scholarly publishing and knowledge production. The Report on Scholarly Publishing in South Africa arising out of this research took note of the potential of new technologies and of Open Access publishing. The recommendations made in the Report focus on the need to support and grow an indigenous South African scholarly publishing industry with international stature, using an Open Access
publishing model. This presupposes the provision of quality assurance as a necessary underpinning, particularly if this initiative is to attract government support. The proposal is for the voluntary adoption of a code of African journal editors and the peer review of sets of journals in order to make recommendations about issues such as accreditation, funding, and copyright.

This quality assurance role would need to be managed with a light touch, he said, a way suitable for a developing country. In this
process, great importance would be placed on developing the next generation of South African scholars. There would need to be support for writers to learn to write well and appropriately in the various disciplines. There would be collaboration with the Higher Education Quality Council in order to feed into the way in which quality standards were to be developed.

As far as a publishing model was concerned, Dr Gevers said that there was an opportunity for the country, using the modality of Open Access gold route publishing, to grow the output and reach of its research publishing, with sustainability coming from government subsidy supplemented by author and institutional charges, as well as other streams of finance. He said that in South Africa, if we are to deliver a high profile publication programme, we cannot avoid Open Access as the major option of the future. When one looks at the traditional, print and subscription model of journal publishing, with its small print runs and slow turnaround times, it is clear that there is no option, he argued, as OA would greatly enhance the impact, reach and speed of the dissemination of South African scholarship.

New technology tools, such as an open source journal management platform, could be made available as a shared resource managed by ASSAf on behalf of participating journal editors.

Government departments were working with the Academy, exploring the extent to which this revolution can be achieved. What was being aimed for was a virtual national information system. In doing this, the Academy would become part of the programme that the Department of Science and Technology was building to increase the human capital of
the country.

There was lively discussion among the journal editors attending around a number of issues.

Thomson Scientific Indexes

From the outset, some editors queried the validity of the focus of government policy on the Thomson Scientific indexes, pointing out that that these were of limited relevance to a developing country’s interests. This linked into further questions about the place of South African scholarly publishing in the context of an Africa-wide approach and the appropriate quality standards that should be applied in such a context. It was agreed that an effort would need to be made to explore the potential of a South African index or an Africa-wide index for quality scholarly publishing and there would have to be discussions with the Departments of Education and Science and Technology to coordinate the ways in which these issues could be tackled.

Green Route repositories

Questions were also asked about the policy for Green Route research repositories, in line with recommendations being made in the rest of the world. Wieland Gevers pointed out that the recommendations of the ASSAf report included support for a national
system of harvesting of institutional repositories. This would be particularly important in providing access to pre-and post-prints of articles published in expensive toll-access international journals.

Department of Education Policy

The Department of Education’s policy for scholarly publishing was heavily criticised, both for generating an over-emphasis on
publication in overseas journals even when very high-quality and globally recognised local alternatives were available; and for
under-valuing publication in books, chapters in books and conference proceedings, something that was particularly damaging to the humanities and social sciences. It was agreed that these issues needed to be raised with the DoE and Wieland Gevers reported that the department would be funding ASSAf during the course of 2008 to investigate the question of quality standards for the recognition of non-journal publications.

Sustainability issues

Questions were asked about the question of sustainability for Open Access journals, given the precarious state of most South African journals. Gevers pointed out that the ASSAf proposals included recommendations for the top-slicing of a small percentage of the DoE subsidies at institutional level. This would provide a per-article subsidy that would make a substantial contribution to viability. However, this was not a finished debate and these were proposals for discussions with the community of journal editors and with government. Dr Sehlapelo said that government was concerned about sustainability and would like to forge a partnership between the academy, industry and government to find a model that does not give the role of sustaining publication to one party only – government.

Contradictory policies in the DST

Monica Seeber, representing the Association for Academic and Non-Fiction Writers, pointed to clash in DST policy, given that the provisions for the Draft Bill on Intellectual Property Rights in Publicly Funded Research appeared to contradict the Open Access policies for publication that were being debated here. Many delegates expressed reservations during the course of the day about the very wide-ranging scope of the provisions of the Draft IPR Bill and its potential to derail scholarly publishing. In the afternoon workshop sessions it was agreed that the Draft Bill would be very damaging to scholarly publishing and that ASSAf should take this up with the DST.

Quality standards and capacity limitations

Queries were raised as to how the proposed expansion of scholarly publishing could be achieved, given the capacity shortfall in many academic disciplines and particularly problems experienced by young academics, often working in a second or third language, in acquiring the communication skills needed for participation in scholarly discourse. Wieland Gevers responded that there are plans built into the recommendations for ASSAf to help build capacity in scholarly writing and editing skills, working with existing courses and mentorship programmes in the universities. ASSAf would provide supplementary support and hoped to be a platform for skilled people who could help contribute, by way of mentorship and skills transfer, to increase capacity and raise quality standards.

The involvement of the Department of Arts and Culture

One delegate asked abut the possible involvement of the Department of Arts and Culture in the ASSAf initiative, arguing that,
particularly when it came to scholarship in the preforming arts, that there was a role for them to play. the answer was that ASSAf saw its role as building interaction wilt all departments involved in scholarly publishing.

Session 2: Publishing Models Paul Peters, Hindawi

In the second session of the day, which focused on publishing models for Open Access publishing, presentations were made by Paul Peters of Hindawi Publishing Corporation in Egypt and Pierre de Villiers of the South African Family Practice journal.

Paul Peters gave an impassioned account of the success story of Hindawi, an African-based publisher which has developed a
financially sustainable and successful Open Access journal publishing business, now the third-largest commercial Open Access publisher in the world. It was a powerful presentation which held the undivided attention of his audience of journal editors for nearly an hour, as he spelled out the different ingredients of Hindawi’s recipe for success. His main message was that African scholarly publishers cannot afford not to go Open Access: all the evidence shows that this is the one way of expanding access to African journals, increasing visibility, attracting a wide range of high quality authors from across the world, and growing the impact of the journals.

Hindawi now publishes 80 journals (in 2004 they had 15) , and is growing this by 1-2 new titles a month. In February 2007 the last of Hindawi’s journals went entirely Open Access. They now get 500 submissions a month. growing at 50% a year.

Hindawi uses an electronic review system to ensure that the process is handled efficiently and rapidly. Paul Peters recommended
that journal editors use an open source system such as Open Journal Systems rather than opting for the inflexibility of commercial systems or the expense of in-house systems.

Traditional subscription systems limit accessibility, Peters said, and are an artefact of the paper world. For smaller journals , he
said, Open Access is not an option, but is essential, as it is simply not possible for smaller developing country journals to get their publications out into the world in the print subscription model. The choice is an Open Access model or a failing subscription model.

Publication charges only work well in fell-funded research areas, he said, and this is very discipline-specific. Advertising is a
possibility, but there are ethical issues in some disciplines. External support by way of direct subsidy is another sustainability
model, but the best option is a mixture of sources of finance.

For Hindawi, the cost of providing discoverability is spread by using a centralised platform. This makes life easier for authors and editors and allows for more oversight of the journal.

Pierre de Villiers, SA Family Practice Journal

The South African Family Practice journal, Pierre de Villers said, uses advertising as its main source of revenue and was very successful as a print journal in terms of its print run and the availability of resources. However, it was still a local journal and the editors wanted to achieve an international status for it. They therefore tried, with limited success, to get into the international indexes. They listed on African Journals Online. Then, when Google Scholar came along, the editors recognised the potential of a system that indexes the full text of scholarly literature.

The journal opted to use the Open Journal System to make the journal more viable. The result was an exponential growth in
submissions and visits to the journal site. They now get manuscripts from across Africa. International reviewers can register online and indicate their interest in joining peer review panels and manuscripts from related disciplines. Review time has been reduced by 50%. The journal has seen an increase of 33% in its published research. It is currently only partially OA – the full text of review articles is available online but only abstracts of the research papers. The journal generates revenue from online advertising.

The Family Practice Journal has established a support service for users of Open Journal Systems in South Africa.

Summing up – Wieland Gevers

Summing up after an afternoon workshop sessio, Wieland Gevers said that the ASSAf initiative for scholarly publishing has the support of important people in government, Gevers said, and there is now a groundswell of interest in scholarly publishing. The research that was undertake by ASSAf is now beginning to provide the basis for something very important. Money has been made available by government to sustain the Editors’ Forum for an initial period. In the first
instance, journals that are recognised in the government classification system can apply to join the Forum and then after
that, other journals can apply. The Academy will keep in touch with members of the Forum by email and will bring to the attention of journal editors the progress that is being made and issues that are current – for example, if in the future, draft legislation such as the recent Draft Bill were published for comment, ASSAf could inform the Editors’ Forum, and could then speak to the Portfolio Committee on behalf of the Forum.

ASSAf could also use its mandate from the Forum to continue negotiations with the Department of Education about the accreditation of local journals and recognition for other publications. it is likely that the government will make things possible now that it might not have done if it did not think that the Academy was available to look after quality mechanisms. it could also, as proposed, set up a centralised journal management platform if journal editors so required.

In closing the meeting, it was agreed that a motion for support for the ASSAf proposals be circulated to all journals listed on the
ASSAf database for input and feedback in order to gauge the levels of support from journal editors for the proposals.

Draft Bill for IPR in Publicly Funded Research (still open for comment) – a publishing perspective

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Those academics and researchers who have been away on vacation might not know that a Draft Bill on IPR in Publicly Funded Research was released for comment
a few weeks ago. The deadline for comment was very short – some ten days in the middle of the holidays. The contents of the Bill are dire – I have not spoken to anyone who is happy with what it says. For those newly returned to the treadmill, I posted blogs on the Bill on the 5th and 13th of July. The blog of 12 July describes some of the provisions of the Bill. Basically, it sets up a system in which any research that has patent potential must be submitted to the university IPR Office and all intellectual property rights (including all copyrights connected with the invention) are ceded to the university. If the university does not want to take a patent on the
research, then the rights go to the government. Worse, the Bill requires any research that might conceivably at some stage, be patentable, to be treated the same way. More, it requires all publications (which, the lawyers tell me, could include blogs and websites as well as formal publications) to be screened by the university IPR office before they can be published, just i case they might reveal something patentable. And then, if an employee of the university fails to report a piece of research that is patentable, she is subject to disciplinary procedures (and employees include students) But there is even more than this – go and read it.

At the very last moment, on the closing day for comment on this Bill, the deadline for comment was extended until 20 August. Not much consolation for colleagues who has worked through the night and lost two weekends working on replies, but a good thing nevertheless. The Bill has very serious implications for any South African researchers so, now that the university term has started, I hope that a greater number of you will become aware of it and let your universities – and the DST – know how this might affect your research.

As a publisher, I am concerned that this Bill, if enacted, could impact very negatively on scholarly publication. I find it hard to imagine how any university could cope with screening every publication before it can be submitted to a publisher or conference organiser. And, knowing how we all work to tight deadlines, I think that the need to write in several weeks of extra time before being able to submit any journal or conference paper could be a nightmare. Then, if the lawyers are right and the definition of ‘publication’ includes blogs and discussion forums, then even informal research communications would have to be screened. The potential costs are substantial – every publication would have to be read by an expert who would be able to discern if there is a potential patent hidden in the publication concerned. And screening would include not only the publications that are ultimately accepted, but also the very large number that are rejected. The university would have to become, at great expense, a very Big Brother, and all spontaneity in communication between researchers would be stifled. In a world in which collaborative research has become a necessity, this would be a serious backward drag on the very publication output that we are trying to expand.

Here is a comment from Dr Alma Swan, of Key Perspectives, a highly regarded consultancy in scholarly communications with a long list of very prominent clients, from the UK government and the European Union to the Public Library of Science and the Nature Publishing Group. She holds posts at Warwick Business School, and in the School of Electronics & Computer Science and the School of Management at the University of Southampton. Her comments are acerbic – she says that she was
having an irritable day, but I think she was entitled to this, given the content of this Bill:

Far from helping SA science and technology this Bill has the potential to slow it to walking pace while every article is checked for patent potential. How truly bizarre. Still, good news for South Africa’s competitors.

If I were an (international) funder I would steer clear of funding any SA research under this set of conditions. It will be a slowdown for OA, though presumably just a slowdown: it will hold up deposit and publication while each article is cleared. .The primary losers will be SA’s scientists, whose work gets held up when it is ready for publication – could mean the difference between being the first to publish on something or losing the race to someone else. At the very least, delaying publication means delayed impact, which is important to individuals (perhaps seeking jobs, tenure, etc) and certainly for the country. It seems a very odd development.

Given Alma’s status in the international world of scholarly communication, I would take this comment seriously.

IP in Publicly Funded Research Bill – does the cure match the disease?

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The first question that arises in relation to this piece of legislation is why it has been drafted – what perceived need does it fill? And why the need to draft so widely – and even inventions that might conceivably become patents some day?

As far as I can establish, there are two separate areas that the government feels needs addressing. One is the perception that the universities are not performing well enough in delivering value for the money that is being invested in public research in the country. The other is that South African knowledge resources and intellectual property – as is common across the developing world – risk being pillaged by patent-seekers from the global North, particularly from the USA. In the later view, unless we protect ourselves with a strong IP regime, we will risk losing the exploitation of our intellectual capital to more powerful
Northern pirates and raiders.

As South Africa’s National Research and Development Strategy (2002) said: ‘These are valid concerns. More South African research needs to be more effectively disseminated and exploited for the national benefit. And the risk of predatory raids by US bounty hunters is real enough – the Rooibos case is the most high-profile recent case in this regard and there are genuine concerns about how best to protect traditional knowledge from appropriation. The problem is in the solution being proposed, which, I would suggest, is in fact contrary to some of the DST’s most enlightened – and most central – policy-making and
might well be the wrong cure for the disease.

I was concerned to see in an ITWeb article that Matlu Mabokano, manager of hydrogen and energy at the Department of Science and Technology (DST), is quoted as saying that the Bill is heading for Parliament this week even as comment is being sought. He is quoted as being dismissive of the fact that there have not been many comments submitted yet, accusing South Africans of being chronic last-minuter responders. This seems an opinion based on a blithe assumption that the issues in the Bill are not problematic and are simple and straightforward to respond to. This is not the case -the issues at stake are very complex and it has taken the Australian government, for example 800 pages to summarise the outcome of its consultation on the same issues in the Productivity Commission Report published two months ago. Moreover, as the DST itself wrote in the National Strategy for Science and Technology: ‘International thinking on legislation is as fluid and fast-moving as the new technologies themselves’. Yet Mabokano’s apparent assumption of simplicity and obviousness is not an uncommon view among those who propound proprietary models of IP protection. The Copy/South Dossier, which reviews the global IP regime from the perspective of developing countries, argues that the ‘dominant discourse around intellectual property – whether legal or sociological – starts from some largely unexamined assumptions’.

The assumption that a strong IP regime on its own fosters development and economic growth is one that is being increasingly challenged worldwide. Policy-making needs to be forward-thinking. As NEPAD argues in its discussion document on science and technology indicators, policy-makers need to be able ‘to discern, based on their expert knowledge, the future trajectories of the subject and the interventions which might improve its development’. The future does not look as if it will be one of proprietary IP systems only.

The DST’s policy on Science and Technology puts the role of technology and the changes being wrought by ICT at the heart of its proposals for development. As the White Paper on Science and Technology says:

The world is in the throes of a revolution that will change forever the way we live, work, play, organise our societies and ultimately define ourselves … The ability to maximise the use of information is now considered to be the single most important factor in defining the competitiveness of countries as well as their ability to empower their citizens through enhanced access to information.

This perspective seems to be missing from the Draft Bill. Worse, in fact the White Paper’s policy perspective, which stresses access and the maximisation of the use of information, risks being marginalised in a vision in this Bill which seeks to subordinate a very wide range of information management to the proprietorial and necessarily secretive
world of patents. South Africa’s Science and Technology Policy is also firmly founded on the need for research to make a public
development contribution: ‘A South African vision of the information society should seek to ensure that the advantages offered by the information revolution reach down to every level of society and achieve as best a balance between individuals and social groups, communities and societies as is practically possible.’ Science and Technology, it argues, must address the real needs of South Africa as for social and economic development. Patents on their own do not achieve this. In fact it is widely recognised that commercialising the research system by focusing on patents alone will advantage inventions that appeal to the wealthy, rather than those that serve the needs of the poor. A patent-driven system of research evaluation, on its own, would tend
to marginalise poorer communities and their needs.

At the very least, a forward-looking Bill would need to address and incorporate the need for non-proprietary methods of production, as this is now mainstream in world thinking and policy-making.

Governments across the world, including the UK, the USA, the EU, and Australia, have convened commissions to discuss and explore this issue. Ironically, South Africa is part of this movement and is a signatory of the OECD Declaration on Access to Research Data from Public Funding , something that would be rendered problematic by this Bill.

Something that the non-proprietary, commons approach is doing in the international arena is re-positioning the developing countries. A symptom is that the Development Agenda being driven by Brazil and Argentina has very recently been accepted on the WIPO Agenda. As Yochai Benkler charted in a complex and tightly-argued paper at the iCommons Summit in Dubrovnik last month, this but one symptom of the fact that we are at one of those turning points where a dominant system – the ‘strong’
IP regime – is being challenged across the globe by a radical re-thinking of how best to achieve the very goals that this Bill
seeks to promote. And, as he argued, this is now a social movement, in the beginning stages, which is moving developing nations from the periphery to the centre of international affairs, a world in which human development and justice are the core drivers, not the specifics of IP law and copyright.

One strong thread in the critiques of the global IP system is that patents in particular are damaging to developing and transitional economies. As Benkler puts it: ‘The above-marginal-cost prices paid in …. poorer countries [as a result of patents] are purely regressive redistribution. 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.’ And yes, there is value in effective patents and yes, developing countries have managed to patent successfully themselves. And so my argument is not, in addressing this Bill, that it needs to be thrown out in favour of non-proprietary and open methods of dissemination. It is that, in formulating the Bill as widely as they have, the drafters have sidelined a number of important questions that are being debated around the world as we speak. As the Australian government put it in the Productivity Commission Report:

Universities’ core role remains the provision of teaching and the generation of high quality, openly disseminated, basic research. Even where universities undertake research that has practical applications, it is the transfer, diffusion and utilisation of such knowledge and technology that matters in terms of community well-being. Commercialisation is just one way of achieving this. Productivity Commission
2007: xiii – my emphasis)

In other words, there needs to be more flexibility in the provisions of this Bill for the commercialisation of research results and space for non-proprietary collaborative approaches that could advantage the poorest sections of our community at the same time as we grow our competitiveness in global business.

Intellectual Property in Publicly Funded Research – what the Bill says

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The Department of Science and Technology has, as I noted in my last blog, published a Draft Bill on IP in Publicly Funded Research for comment – and comments have to be submitted by 18 July which is next Wednesday. This is causing a scramble among those of us who have an interest in IP issues and particularly those of us who support commons and non-proprietary approaches to knowledge dissemination, especially for developing countries.

First, what the Bill says. What I offer here is a quick and crude summary but Andrew Rens will let us have a human-readable version very soon. I will set out the provisions of the Bill – as I understand them – in this blog and will then go one to reflect on various aspects of this legislation in further blogs. The issues are complex, the time for discussion and submissions very limited, so any responses, arguments and reflections would be very welcome.

Briefly, the Draft Bill requires all publicly funded institutions (which includes all universities) to have an IP Management Office and provides for the creation of a National IP Management Office. (Because my interest is in the universities, this is how I will frame my discussion from here on.)

The Bill provides for the IP in all patentable inventions to reside in the university. If the university does not want to patent a particular invention, then the right passes to the National IP Office. Only if the national office does not want to patent an invention do the rights pass back to the researcher concerned. The Bill also provides for the sharing of rewards in the patented invention.

In other words, it appears to be modeled on the Bayh-Dole Act in the US. But there are also important differences. One is that the SA Bill is more stringent and less flexible. There seem to be fewer rights for the inventor and the Bill extends beyond the protection of patents to ‘copyrights in any work related to patentable inventions’ which also become the IP of the university. This seems to me, as a publisher, to be very wide, as it looks as if the university would have IP and would therefore control for publication purposes a very large number of potential publications. Would a researcher be able to publish, without university permission, a conference paper or journal article on her research even after the patent is registered?

The next move is that the legislation also covers ‘the protection of basic scientific research results that are capable of forming the basis of a patentable invention but are not yet capable of protection under the Patents Act..’ The Minster can extend these categories further by notice in the Government Gazette. In other words, this is a very wide-ranging definition of the IP that will become the property of the university or the State. Because these definitions are vague, it looks as if just about everything could fall under these provisions.

All employees will be deemed to have assigned their IP as defined by the Bill. Employees are defined as including students undertaking research in the institution. The universities and their employees (and students) seem to be obliged to exploit commercially any research that is capable of commercialisation. If they do not, they can be subject to disciplinary action. Any potential IP from research carried out in the university has to be reported to the IP office within 30 days of identification by the researcher.

Then – and this startles me as a publisher – the university IP office has to screen ‘all publications from the institution for potential IP that through publication might lose protection in terms of the Patent Act.’ All publications? I ask. That would mean journal articles, conference papers, chapters in books, research reports, etc, before they are published. Because a ‘publication’ is not defined, it probably means blogs, website, online discussion forums as well. In other words, researchers are constrained from communication until their work has been vetted by the IP office to ensure that they are not revealing something about a potential patent. I cannot imagine this being carried out unless the university hires teams of specialist people to scan all publications at pre-publication stage. This would surely have s seriously chilling effect on publication and this is turn would impact negatively on the revenues that the universities get from their publication subsidies, which are an important revenue stream for them.

It is the institution, in consultation with the national IP office, that decides the licence conditions for an invention, not the researcher concerned. Exclusive licensing is preferred.

Where research is co-financed, there are very specific provisions as to how the IP for these funded research projects shall be managed. It appears that funders would not be able to stipulate that IP should be exploited any other way other than commercially, through patenting. The funder can only become a co-owner or IP holder if they are in a position to commercialise the the IP. This section does not appear to provide for non-profit bodies and I question whether this is not going to be a serious disincentive for donor funders who currently invest in South African research.

It also looks as if, given the copyright provisions in this Bill, that stipulations and mandates from funders for Open Access dissemination would be seriously constrained.

These are serious issues, but before we go ballistic and start taking all this apart, we need to step back and consider why the very good department enacting this legislation is considering such draconian provisions. That is another story – – – next thrilling installment in my next blog.

A new draft bill on IP rights in publicly funded research

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We have known for a while that there was a bill in the offing on the management of IP in publicly funded research and this Draft Bill is now available for perusal on the website of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group. The Deputy Minister of Science and
Technology, when he visited CET, said that there would be a period for comment on the Bill and, as this draft Bill does affect
universities and researchers in universities, I am providing a heads-up for those of you who have a particular interest in the
management and ownership of the IP in the research that you carry out.

I was half expecting a Bill on the rights of public access to publicly funded research, along the lines of discussions in the UK,
the USA and the EU, among others, for access to research publication. South Africa is a signatory of the OECD
Declaration on Access to Knowledge from Publicly Funded Research, so probably needs to enact provisions of this kind at some stage.

This Draft Bill is not along those lines at all. It appears to be about institutional and government control of the commericalisation of research and provisions for any research that is potentially patentable. I have not had time to peruse it properly nor think through its implications – these in any event probably need to be teased out by an IP lawyer. However, it would be interesting to get reactions from researchers at UCT and other universities as to how they perceive this Draft Bill and how it might affect them.

The Australian government’s Productivity Commission has recently undertaken a major exercise on returns from public investment in research and there is much discussion in the 800-odd pages of its report, issued in March 2007, about the kind of issues faced in this Draft Bill. From my perspective, as someone who deals in copyrights – the dissemination of research – rather than in patents, the following statement struck a chord:

Ultimately, in terms of community well being, it is the transfer, diffusion and utilisation of knowledge and technology
that matters. The social return from public investment in R&D depends on: whether knowledge and technology are transferred out of universities (that is, whether they see the light of day); how fast and widely the knowledge diffuses among potential users; whether the knowledge and technology is developed into some form of practical application (that is, whether it is taken up in some form or other that is welfare enhancing); and how widely the resulting innovation is utilised. There
are multiple pathways for achieving these benefits (p.280).