Herding dinosaurs

1
Herding dinosaurs

• Scholarly publishing and access to research
  knowledge in Africa

2
African knowledge for Africa

• For our continent to take its rightful place in
  the history of humanity ... we need to undertake,
  with a degree of urgency, a process of
  reclamation and assertion. We must contest the
  colonial denial of our history and we must
  initiate our own conversations and dialogues
  about our past. We need our own historians and
  our own scholars to interpret the history of our
  continent.President Thabo Mbeki launching the
  Timbuktu Library Project

3
The marginalization of African knowledge

• Africa produces around 3 of books published, but
  consumes around 12.
• Africa produced 0.2 of online content in 2002
  if South Africa is excluded, 0.02.
• The major Northern scholarly journals account for
  80 of articles in the ISI indexes. 163
  developing countries produce just 2.5.

4
The knowledge divide - the body count
5
The body 'uncount' technology in India
6
Dissemination is not on the agenda

• The 'free rider syndrome' - someone else will
• do it...

7
The challenge to universities

• The universities need to assert the importance of
  their independence, and the value of the
  knowledge commons as a seedbed of innovation
  ranging from product development to the design of
  effective public policiesthey need to show how
  their work is responsive to the pressing needs of
  development.
• Martin Hall, Freeing the Knowledge Resources of
  Public Universities. KM Africa conference, DBSA,
  March 2005

8
Research communication not just between
scholars

• Multiple levels of communication
• Scholar to scholar
• Scholar to student
• Scholar to farmer
• Farmer to scholar
• Digital content storage and transmission for
  output in the most appropriate media

9
Physical barriers to print publications
10
The context - the networked information society

• The change wrought by the networked information
  economy is deep. A series of changes in the
  technologies, economic organisation and social
  practices of production in this environment has
  created new opportunities for how we make and
  exchange information, knowledge and culture.
  These changes have increased the role of
  non-market and non-proprietary production, both
  by individuals alone and by cooperative efforts
  in a wide range of loosely or tightly woven
  collaborations.
• Yochai Brenkler, The Wealth of Networks (2006)

11
A Southern African perspective

• Political power tended to be localized,
  boundaries fluid and vague, and the authority of
  chiefs highly variable. The political landscape
  was both homogeneous and kaleidoscopic, with
  widely dispersed material and symbolic resources
  and constantly changing political domains. Even
  at moments of relative stasis domains of
  authority very frequently overlapped. Political
  identities were multiple, with the fluidity of
  identities generally increasing with geographical
  distance from any given center of power... There
  were multiple nodes and overlapping domains of
  authority....
• Crais 2002Custom and the Politics of Sovereignty
  in South Africa Africa. Journal of Social History
  39 (3).

12
Publishing and Perishing

13
Intellectual property lock-down or free?
14
IP and developing countries does strong IP
support creativity?

• The above-marginal-cost prices paid in ... poorer
  countries are purely regressive redistribution.
  The information, knowledge, and
  information-embedded goods paid for would have
  been developed in expectation of rich world rents
  alone. The prospects of rents from poorer
  countries do not affect their development. They
  do not affect either the rate or the direction of
  research and development. They simply place some
  of the rents that pay for technology development
  in the rich countries on consumers in poor and
  middle-income countries. 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.
• Yochai Benkler (2006) The Wealth of Networks,
  Yale U Press

15
Herding dinosaurs

• We have a scientific publishing system that is
  massively dysfunctional and really, really
  broken.' James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds
  Professor of Law, Duke University, at the
  iCommons Summit, Rio, June 2006

16
The cost to the universities

• Universities ignore the real costs of their
  contribution
• In Australia the cost of getting an article
  published (authoring, peer reviewing, editorial
  activities) is AUD19,000.00
• A monograph costs AUD115,000.00
• The costs of administering the evaluation and
  assessment process are even higher
• Government of Australia, Department of Education,
  Science and Training. Research Communication
  Costs in Australia Emerging opportunities and
  benefits.

17
Can digital publishing provide answers?
18
Leapfrogging

• Can we fast-track to the 21st century?

19
What new technologies can offer

• Instantaneous global reach transcending
  geographical barriers
• Lower cost publishing and zero-cost distribution
  the potential for more democratic access
• Links between research publications and
  supporting data
• Greater immediacy faster dissemination of
  research results
• Multi-channel publishing allows for flexible
  output in a variety of media

20
The advantages of OA

• Substantial increase in impact factors,
  particularly for developing country journals
• Openness decreases the risk of duplication,
  removal of competition makes science less
  wasteful
• Science made faster, speeds up the solution of
  urgent development needs
• Wider reach of research, better returns for
  research investment
• Better monitoring, assessment and management of
  research

21
The ethos of OA

• Builds on collaboration 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 publication can be seen as work in progress
  rather than the final and definitive word

22
What route for Africa?

• The green?
• Or the gold?
• Or both?

23
Salvador Declaration policy recommendations

• We urge governments to make Open Access a high
  priority in science policies including
• requiring that publicly funded research is made
  available through Open Access
• considering the cost of publication as part of
  the cost of research
• Strengthening the local OA journals, repositories
  and other relevant initiatives
• promoting integration of developing countries
  scientific information in the worldwide body of
  knowledge.

24
Contact

• http//www.evegray.co.za.
• http//blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/gray_area
• http//www.policy.hu
• http//www.cet.uct.ac.za
• eve.gray_at_gmail.com