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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)

Thank you

Website: www.assaf.org.za

E-mail: ina@assaf.org.za

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