This document provides an overview of journal publishing in South Africa and the work of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) Scholarly Publishing Programme. It discusses the number of South African journal titles, requirements for high quality journals, initiatives to improve visibility and impact like SciELO SA, and support provided to journals. The key points are: - There are 396 journal titles published in South Africa, with 329 accredited by the Department of Higher Education and Training. - ASSAf works to increase the visibility, accessibility and searchability of SA journals through initiatives like SciELO SA and their online journal system pilot project. - Requirements for high quality journals include peer review, editorial policies, accessibility,

1. Introduction & Trends
Journal Publishing in South Africa
Susan Veldsman

2. Agenda
• About ASSAf
• ASSAf Scholarly Publishing Programme
• Quest
• Journal Publishing in SA
• SciELO SA
• Requirements for a High Quality Journal -
Checklist
• Layout and Design
• Your Journal Online
2

3. ASSAf Mandate
• Honour distinguished scholars in all fields of
scientific enquiry
• Generate evidence-based solutions to national
and global challenges
3

4. ASSAf Goals
• Recognition and reward of excellence
• Promotion of innovation and scholarly activity
• Effective, evidence-based scientific advice
• Public interest in and awareness of science &
science education
• National, regional and international linkages
4

5. Alignment with Government Goals
• Responsive, coordinated and efficient National
System of Innovation (NSI)
• Increased knowledge generation
• Human capital development
• Using knowledge for economic development
• Knowledge utilization for inclusive development
5

6. Scholarly Publishing Programme (1)
Increase visibility, accessibility & searchability of SA
accredited scholarly journals
• Add 10 journal titles to SciELO SA platform
• Conclude license agreements with new journals
• Prepare new journals for OA platform
• Host annual SciELO SA Users’ Group Meeting
• Monitor & evaluate OA platform
6
Strategic Objective 1
Activities

7. Scholarly Publishing Programme (2)
Improve quality of SA scholarly journals, books &
conference proceedings
• Publish 2 discipline-grouped panel reports
• Coordinate activities of National Scholarly Book
Publishers’Forum & National Scholarly Editors’Forum
• Evaluation of books, conference proceedings for DHET
• Host 4 webinars on scholarly publishing topics
7
Strategic Objective 2
Activities

8. Scholarly Publishing Programme (3)
• Provide DOI service to SciELO SA journals
• Assist with online hosting & managing of SciELO SA
journals
• Update & expand SA journal database
• Monitor value & impact of activities of SPU
• Advise on implementation of DHET Research Outputs
Policy
• Adoption of new technologies i.e. ORCiD, Portico, DOI,
XML
8
Activities (cont.)

9. Scholarly Publishing Programme (4)
• Publish report on impact of DHET policy
• Establish impact of the SPU in South Africa
• Engage stakeholders
9
Study: Scientific Journal & Book Publishing: 2005-2015

10. Scholarly Publishing Programme (5)
Promote visibility & impact of SA
research through publication of SAJS
• Publish 6 issues per annum
• Highlight ASSAfs 20th anniversary
• Introduce article-level metrics for
improved impact measurement
• Undergo ASSAfs peer-reviewed
evaluation to assess quality
• Undertake an independent
bibliometric assessment to monitor
impact 10
Strategic Objective 3

11. Scholarly Publishing Programme (6)
Promote awareness of science among
youth
• Full-colour, quarterly, popular science
magazine
• Print-run 25 000 per issue
• Aimed at Grades 10-12, educators,
scientific community
• Improve impact through:
• Targeted distribution strategy
• Increased collaboration with DBE,
University Education Departments,
SAASTA, Science Centres
11
Strategic Objective 4

12. Journal Publishing in South Africa
• 396 journal titles published in SA
• 329 scholarly journal titles accredited by the SA
Dept. of Higher Education and Training
• DHET funds each article with ±R 118 000-00 once
successfully published in accredited journal
12

13. Accredited Scholarly Journal Titles
Lists acknowledged by the Dept. of Higher
Education & Training (SA):
• Web of Science (Thomson Reuters)
• Scopus (Elsevier)
• DHET List
• SciELO SA Journals
• IBSS (ProQuest)
• Norwegian Registry for Scientific Journals, Series
and Publishers (Level 2 only)
13

14. SA Policy on Research Output
14
+ 75% of contributions/articles
published must be from
outside a specific
organization
+ Editorial board: two thirds
beyond a single institution
http://www.dhet.gov.za/Policy%20and%20Development%20Support/Research%20Out
puts%20policy%20gazette%202015.pdf

15. Journal Publishers in South Africa
• African Journals Online (AJOL)
• Sabinet
• AOSIS Publishing
• Health & Medical Publishing Group (HMPG)
• African SUNMedia
• Medpharm
• SciELO SA (65)
• Juta (10)
• Taylor & Francis (48)
• NISC (17)
• UNISA Press
• Wiley Butterworth (3)
• Elsevier (6)
• Societies, Associations, Universities, Museums, Institues, Centres
15

16. Accredited Scholarly Journal Titles
(329) (58 in DOAJ)
16
172
157
Subscription Open Access

17. Indexing of Journal Titles in SA
17
Data collected
during:
2015 2016 Comments
DHET 271 273 2 titles added
Web of Science 66 63 3 titles removed
Decline in IF: 28 titles
Increase in IF: 25 titles
10 titles without IF
Scopus 131 133 2 titles added
IBSS 39 41 2 titles added
Norwegian List ----- 135 Only 0s and 1s; No 2s
SciELO SA 56 65 9 titles added

18. What do Authors prefer?
• Publish in journals accredited by the SA Dept.
of Higher Education and Training (DHET) (± R
118 000-00 per article)
• See 6 lists accredited by DHET
• High Impact Factor (IF) journals
• International acknowledged journals specially
those in their fields
18

19. STM vs SSH Scholarly Journals
19
STM
SSH
STM SSH

20. 20
Preserved
via Portico
DOIs &
metadata
registered
Indexed via
SciELO SA
Published in
print/online
Managed
via
OJS/other
ASSAf Scholarly Publishing Workflow
Journal Specific

21. Peer-review of Journal Titles (1)
• Cycle of 5 years
• Peer-review process:
• Identify journals
• Editors complete questionnaire and submit to
ASSAf
• Experts identified for peer-review panel
• Peer-review expert panels meet
• Cosolidate data and present consensus views
• Publish report (6)
• Number of titles reviewed up to date: 145
21

22. Peer-review of Journal Titles (2)
Currently under review
• Engineering and Architecture (15 journals)
• Humanities II: Visual and Performing Arts (10 journals)
• Communication and Information Science (14
journals)
Current panels being established
• Education (17 journals)
• Politics, History and Philosophy (26 journals)
• Mathematics and Science (22 journals)
Total additional titles reviewed: 104
Total: 247 of 309 titles reviewed 22

23. Support (1)
• Criteria for best practice in terms of journal publishing
(6 lists + DOAJ criteria)
• Pilot project – ±R 5 000-00 per year (excl. staffing)
• Roadshow on journal management and publishing
using OJS (WC, FS, Gauteng, KZN, EC)
• SciELO SA & WoS (65 titles) – growing collection?
• Investigation into APCs
• DOAJ Ambassador – input on international level
• DOAJ inclusion (58 journals)
23

24. Support (2)
• Transition to online – also digitise retrospective articles
• Online help wiki
• Online newsletter & blog
• National Scholarly Editors Forum – annually
• Code of Best Practice in Editorial Discretion and Peer
Review (currently being revised)
24

25. Online Journal System Pilot Project
25

26. What have we learned? (1)
• This software is relatively new to the South African
scholarly publishing landscape, and new thinking was
required from the Editors
• ASSAf has limited IT expertise, and IT expertise
(programming, system administrator) is not readily
available. ASSAf is dependent on outside experts,
when they have time to address our needs.
Outstanding IT problems.
• New plugins regularly become available. It requires
an openness towards new learning/lifelong
learning/self-learning/learning on the
go/experimenting, and also giving back in the spirit of
Open Source Software. It is different from a
commercial approach. South Africans still need to get
used to this approach.
26

27. What have we learned? (2)
• Great care was taken to transfer journals from the
previous DOI owner to the ASSAf DOI
• Work on parsing Word/PDF documents to an XML
format is still in progress, and a plugin will hopefully be
released later this year
• Work on article-level metrics is also still in progress,
AddThis API?
27

28. What have we learned? (3)
• Hopefully all OJS journals will – with time – upload
retrospective issues. This will increase the online
presence of each journal, and the more articles
available online, the better the chances of citations
increasing, which can then result in an increase in
journal impact.
• This is really a cost effectice and sustainable way of
supporting the editor and assocaited workflow and
the journals!
28

29. What else do we need to do?
• Consistent display of all journals
• Consistent applications/functionalities/developments
across journals
• Integration of social media
• Graphical design
• Hyperlinked references
• iThenticate plagiarism detection softwar
• ASSAf web page
29

30. SciELO SA
• Full-text searchable database of selected, high-
quality South African open access scholarly journals
• Main focus: global dissemination of open access
journal content
• Purpose: To increase the visibility, accessibility,
indexibility and impact of South African scholarly
journals
30

31. The SciELO Citation Index (SCI) is part of the WoS Portal
(Note that the SCI is not part of the WoS Core Collection)

32. 32

33. SciELO SA
To date, texts in the SciELO SA open access
collection have been viewed more than four
million times in total since its inception in 2009
33

34. Scholarly Journal Initiatives – SciELO
SA
• Implementation of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
• Creative Commons Licenses
• Digital Preservation Strategy
• Researcher IDs (ORCID)
• Allocation of online ISSNs
• XML
• New platform
34

35. Requirements for a High Quality
Journal - Checklist

37. • 23 editors/managing editors/ assistants
• 1 library director
• 1 interested organisation
Who are attending today?

38. • 23 journals are represented here (16 are DHET
accredited)
• 1 published by a commercial publisher
• 3 are published by a commercial OA publisher
• 7 self-publish through Open Journal Sytems (Online
Content Mangement System)
• All the journals have a website, but only 12 has a
website eminating from publishing software
• 7 SciELO SA
• 3 journals have been invited to SciELO SA
• 1 DSpace implementation
• 19 OA journals
Analysis of the 23 attending journals

39. About the Journal

40. Journal Articles - technical

41. Journal Articles - content

42. Journal Financial Sustainability

43. Journal Visibility & Impact

44. Journal Guidelines

45. Journal Policies & Statements

46. Journal Roles & Responsibilities

47. Layout and Design

48. File Formats: PDF
Layout and Design
Easy to save and
print
Interactive table
of contents
Widely used in
most scholarly
journals

49. File Formats: PDF
Author names, affiliations
and contact information
clearly visible. Space
options for ORCIDs.
How to cite
information,
with the DOI
displayed.
Licencing
information
Clickable DOI in reference list,
for easy citation information

50. EPUB In-article table of contents. With
clickable links
Ability to enlarge letter size.
Compatible with screen sizes.

51. EPUB
Links to online citations
Search ability and screen size
adaption

52. XML
Easy format for all harvester
Extensive metadata included
for optimal visibility

53. Your Journal Online

54. Google Analytics
In-depth analytics on site visits,
bounce rates and page views
Customisable time
Browser data
Overview of countr
with most visitsEasy reporting on
monthly/quarterly/annual or
per issue details

56. • Developing capacity in terms of scholarly
writing, editing, reviewing etc.
• Open Access Week & other advocacy
opportunities
• Webinars
• Funder: National Research Foundation
(NRF) made OA Statement
• ORCID Ambassador
• Collaboration with CrossRef, Portico,
Creative Commons, others
Continued Support

57. Please Diarise!

58. Questions? Thank you!
Susan Veldsman
Director: ASSAf Scholarly Publishing Unit
susan@assaf.org.za