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Open Access in the Developing World
This document discusses how open access can strategically benefit African universities. It notes that currently, Africa is viewed primarily as a consumer rather than producer of knowledge, undermining partnerships and indigenous knowledge. Open access is presented as an answer by overcoming barriers to distribution and access, and working across the entire publishing ecosystem including journals, books, cooperative platforms, repositories, and African research centers. The key question is how to build a scholarly communication policy that addresses the whole ecosystem and allows Africa to both produce and share knowledge.
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Open Access in the Developing World
- 1. How Open Accesscan strategically benefit African Universities Paper presented at the Biomed Central Open Access in Africa Conference Kenyatta University, Nairobi 10-11 November 2010
- 2. How Open Accesscan strategically benefit African Universities Eve Gray Centre for Educational Technology University of Cape Town
- 3. The view ofa publisher
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- 5. Some rights reservedby spinning jenny
- 6. In essence, whatis 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
- 7. ʻHow could theapplication 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
- 8. Science Research http://www.worldmapper.org 2006 SASIGroup (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).
- 9. Is the problemwhat is being produced, or what is being measured?
- 11. We measure impactfactors and citations in a highly competitive and exclusionary system
- 12. ..and pay lessattention to the publications that emerge from development- focused research
- 14. It is notthat our policy- makers do not see the problem...
- 15. Blade Nzimande, UNESCOWorld Conference on Higher Education 2009 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.
- 16. But we arestuck in a free rider mentality...
- 18. in which higher educationdoes not see publication as its responsibility.
- 19. The result istunnel vision
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- 21. which ignores allbut a small segment of the publishing ecosystem..
- 22. the formal publishing thatdoes not work very well for us...
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- 25. Text • Builds oncollaboration and a tradition of collegiality • Depends upon sharing rather than proprietorship, access rather than protection • Efficiencies and economies of collaborative development • Networked rather than hierarchical structures The ethos of OA
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- 28. and working across thewhole ecosystem
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- 30. offers citation impact, globalprestige, access, reach...
- 31. and freedom toreuse content for ‘translation’ of research...
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- 34. help reduce theSouth to North knowledge gap
- 35. South African nationalopen access initiative
- 36. and building thequality and accessibility of national journals...
- 37. Repositories profile thewhole range of scholarship
- 38. African research centres produceresearch that addresses vital development needs
- 40. and release their communicationsfor open access.
- 41. The question ishow to build a scholarly communication policy environment that addresses the whole ecosystem.
- 43. Eve Gray Honorary ResearchAssociate 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