Open Access in the Developing World

How Open Access can strategically beneﬁt African Universities Paper presented at the Biomed Central Open Access in Africa Conference Kenyatta University, Nairobi 10-11 November 2010

How Open Access can strategically beneﬁt African Universities Eve Gray Centre for Educational Technology University of Cape Town

The view of a publisher

... from Africa...

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In essence, what is being deﬁned as ‘knowledge society’ means two different things to the developed world and the African continent. The former are the producers and the latter are the consumers of knowledge, which seriously undermines the fostering of the multicultural nature of Higher Education, as virtually all partnerships are one-sided. This is not only negative for the African continent, but it also deprives global higher education of access to the indigenous knowledge of Africa, and it deprives Africans of the opportunity to develop their indigenous knowledge system and strengthen their relationship to western and eastern knowledge systems. Blade Nzimande, Minister of Higher Education and Training, South Africa

ʻHow could the application of knowledge end poverty and hunger in Africa? How could higher education empower women and promote gender equity? How can knowledge be considered in the African context to address child mortality and improve maternal health?ʼ Nahas Angula, Namibian Prime Minister, UNESCO 29th Conference on Higher Education, 2009

Science Research http://www.worldmapper.org 2006 SASI Group (University of Shefﬁeld) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).

Is the problem what is being produced, or what is being measured?

We measure impact factors and citations in a highly competitive and exclusionary system

..and pay less attention to the publications that emerge from development- focused research

It is not that our policy- makers do not see the problem...

Our universities, in particular, should be directing their research focus to address the development and social needs of our communities. The impact of their research should be measured by how much difference it makes to the needs of our communities, rather than by just how many international citations researchers receive in their publications. Blade Nzimande, UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education 2009

But we are stuck in a free rider mentality...

in which higher education does not see publication as its responsibility.

The result is tunnel vision

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/adactio/ CC attribution licence

which ignores all but a small segment of the publishing ecosystem..

the formal publishing that does not work very well for us...

Open access is an answer

The ethos of OA • Builds onof collegiality and a tradition collaboration Text • Depends upon sharingrather than proprietorship, access rather than protection • Efﬁciencies and economies of collaborative development • Networked rather than hierarchical structures

overcoming distribution and access barriers

and working across the whole ecosystem

Commercial publishing - journals

offers citation impact, global prestige, access, reach...

and freedom to reuse content for ‘translation’ of research...

Books Text

Cooperative publishing platforms

help reduce the South to North knowledge gap

South African national open access initiative

and building the quality and accessibility of national journals...

Repositories proﬁle the whole range of scholarship

African research centres produce research that addresses vital development needs

and release their communications for open access.

The question is how to build a scholarly communication policy environment that addresses the whole ecosystem.

Eve Gray Honorary Research Associate Centre for Educational Technology University of Cape Town http://www.gray-area.co.za http://www.http://www.sca2kafrica.org/ http://www.cet.uct.ac.za

Open Access in the Developing World

by Eve Gray on Nov 18, 2010

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Open Access in the Developing World — Presentation Transcript