Perverse incentives and the political economy of South African academic journal publishing

Abstract

Academic publishing in South Africa attracts a state research incentive for the universities to which the authors are affiliated. The aim of this study was twofold: (1) to examine the composition of the research value chain and (2) to identify the effects of broken links within the chain. The methodology selected was a lived cultural economy study, which was constructed through incorporating dialogue with editors, authors and researchers in terms of my own experience as a journal editor, read through a political economy framework. The prime effect is to exclude journals, especially independent titles, from directly earning publishing incentives. The behaviour of universities in attracting this variable income is discussed in terms of rent-seeking which occurs when organisations and/or individuals leverage resources from state institutions. Firstly, this process commodifies research and its product, publication. Secondly, the value chain is incomplete as it is the journals that are funding publication rather than – in many cases – the research economy funding the journals. Thirdly, authors are seeking the rewards enabled by the incentive attached to measurement systems, rather than the incentive of impacting the discipline/s which they are addressing. Fourthly, the paper discuses some policy and institutional matters which impact the above and the relative costs between open access and subscription models. Editors, journals and publishers are the un- or underfunded conduits that enable the transfer of massive research subsidies to universities and authors, and, in the case of journals, editors’ voluntary work is the concealed link in the value chain enabling the national research economy. Significance: The South African scientific publishing economy is built on a foundation of clay: this economy distorts research impact and encourages universities and academics to commoditise output.

Normative drift and self‐correction in scholarly book publishing: The case of Makerere University

“…While the intent of incentive‐based publishing may be to encourage the production of new science, its effects may be perverse (see, e.g. Tomaselli's, description of rent‐seeking as a perversion of incentives designed to enhance knowledge production in the South Africa university system). When perversion becomes apparent, the reaction from within the scientific community is to make the implicit rules more explicit.…”

The Comparative Analysis of Rankings in South African and Nigerian Higher Education Systems

“…In some institutions, both staff and students receive financial incentives to publish. While this is commendable as research outputs constitute one of the key drivers for rankings, there are some concerns that this compromises quality as the staff and students pursue the number of publications not the quality that should be consistent with the ranking of their institution (Tomaselli 2018).…”

Plagiarism in South African management journals: A follow-up study

“…First, universities need to remain vigilant about the quality of research that is being produced by their faculty and a culture of zero tolerance should be created for work that involves cheating and misrepresentation of originality. The quest for research output to enhance reputation 29 must be balanced with the assurance of quality and the incentives linked to research output (overt and tacit) must be examined to ensure that they do not work against a culture of research integrity 12 . In this regard, the practices surrounding the 'publish or perish' syndrome 17 need to be exposed and examined.…”

“…Horn 11 notes that such income contributes substantially to institutional funding. In turn, many universities allocate part of this funding to the faculties, departments and individual academics who produced the publications -a practice not considered to be the norm elsewhere in the world 12 and one that could potentially promote unethical authorship 13 . Accordingly, this paper also serves to alert universities to the need to ensure that the research output submitted to the DHET for subsidy, is, in fact, the original work of the given author/s.…”