Open access in South Africa: A case study and reflections

Czerniewicz, Laura; Goodier, Sarah

doi:10.1590/sajs.2014/20140111

Cited by 23 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 9 publications

(8 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…11 As the EU moves forward with open access policies, it will be crucial for African countries, especially South Africa, to take a strong stance in support of open access, not only to protect their research interests, but also to maintain the goal of increasing the global sharing of scientific knowledge. 12,13 With these efforts, South Africa may also benefit from tailored open access policies that better meet the needs of their knowledge users and producers. There are two pathways to open access that the EU will rely on: green (self-archiving) and gold (publishing in open access journals).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Open access in South Africa: A coherent strategy is needed (with corrigendum)

Hartman¹,

Wu²

2018

S. Afr. J. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

If you asked an idealist to describe the scientific endeavour, the phrase 'seeking the objective truth' might come to mind. But how is this truth obtained? The sharing and translating of knowledge is perhaps the key ingredient, along with a dash of persistence and luck. As budding researchers, this notion excites us -the thought that our ideas can cut across the globe, serving a greater purpose of helping others along their path of truth seeking.One of us (MH) left Canada after graduating to work with the South African Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. The work involved a literature review and replying to requests for evidence summaries that flowed into the department. However, there was immediately a barrier to overcome that we have never encountered within our bubble of Canadian academia. This barrier -both a literal and virtual wall -most often presented itself as a paywall; colleagues in the department simply could not access a significant amount of published scientific research without having to pay exorbitant fees for access.Hailing from Canada means our home university affords us the privilege of institutional access to more publications and data than we would ever use. Encountering paywalls for the first time, brought up the question of how it was possible to function in a research unit without this ability to tap into the shared scientific body of knowledge. How can research units, let alone a branch of the South African government, be expected to deliver quality, evidenceinformed deliverables in a timely and feasible manner if the very evidence it relies on is inaccessible? The more we questioned, the clearer it was to us that this was not an isolated challenge.A recent survey of the capacity for evidence synthesis in Africa amongst 176 researchers, government officials and NGO workers indicated that a lack of access to research literature and data was one of the greatest hindrances to their work -second only to lack of funding. 3 This research climate may contribute to the fact that in the South African government, the use of research outputs as a main source of evidence is tepid, at best. In a recent survey, only 6 of 54 senior officials in the government indicated that they rely on research, while the majority (38) responded that they rely on their networks.4 While inability to access publications was not included in this survey, it would be reasonable to hypothesise the role it plays.5 Although tacit knowledge from strong networks can be useful, research data and publications remain imperative for evidence-informed decision-making. 6 In situations where institutional subscriptions are not feasible, open access provides another paradigm to facilitate evidencedinformed decision-making. 7,8 The case for open access is perhaps best understood in the context of health care. In the era of evidence-based medicine, 9 the public has an underlying assumption that physicians and frontline health-care workers are updated with high-quality health information so as to provide the best care possi...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Open access in South Africa: A coherent strategy is needed (with corrigendum)

Hartman¹,

Wu²

2018

S. Afr. J. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As previously stated, OA came into existence partly because the price of journals and other publications for institutions has become prohibitively high (Czerniewicz & Goodier, 2014). OA has made volumes of published works free via the Internet (Beall, 2013d).…”

Section: Open Access Publishingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Czerniewicz and Goodier (2014) stressed the "research-driven model" (p. 8) should be a continuing conversation among academics and researchers to ensure the quality of the research is not compromised. Despite the potential negative impact from open-access publishing, OA serves a benefit to scholarly communities because it allows a broader set of researchers to contribute their work to the body of knowledge (Czerniewicz & Goodier, 2014;Perry, 2014). Dudley (2013) reported that institutions are the biggest culprit when it comes to predatory publishing.…”

Section: Open Access Publishingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Faculty Perceptions on Publishing Research

Pennington

Swanson

Akwaowo

et al. 2017

Interactive Collaborative Learning

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Chan et al (2005) and Dulle et al (2013). 55 Chan et al (2005), Czerniewicz and Goodier (2014) and Veldsman and Gevers (2014). machinery, equipment, specialised and trained personnel is unaffordable for most DCs.…”

Section: Open Bioinformation In the Developing World: An Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%