Colloquium on current developments and challenges in scholarly publishing

On the 28 October 2019 University of Pretoria (UP) researchers deliberated on the traditional journal as the route for publishing scientific findings, and a peer review system which is insufficient for efficient communication, in today’s diverse and rapidly evolving world of science. A new sustainable model is needed for the future.

In her opening address at the above mentioned colloquium that was held at Future Africa campus, Prof Stephanie Burton reminded attendees of the motivation for open access namely the free and immediate online availability of scholarly research articles. Prof Burton said: “Today we are seeking to present a balanced look at what open access is. Open access publishing and new platforms provide urgently needed opportunities for improved scientific quality assurance. At the moment we have some systems to allow open access, but 82% of the scholarly journals are still behind paywalls, and open access costs can amount to 2000€ per article on average. The University of Pretoria researchers now have the opportunity to decide what we are going to do and how we are seeing the road ahead for UP and South Africa.”

The first session of the programme was titled Developments in the scholarly publishing landscape. Prof Robin Crewe, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, gave an overview of scholarly publishing, followed by Mr Lazarus Matizirofa, Deputy Director of the Department of Library Services (DLS) who talked about increasing visibility and enhancing impact with open access. Ms Sunette Steynberg, Research Commons Coordinator at the DLS covered the publishing patterns in South Africa and at UP and Ms Lindiwe Soyizwapi, Deputy Director at the DLS sketched the facts of what UP pays to publish and to read research articles. Prof Brenda Wingfield, Professor of Genetics and an A-rated researcher in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, talked about article processing charges and scholars from the South.

International lessons learnt were covered by the Max Planck Digital Library, the University of California and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). Ms Susan Veldsman, Director, Scholarly Publication Unit at ASSAf shared how ASSAf was raising the visibility, quality and indexability of South African research output. She was followed by Mr Glenn Truran, Director of SANLiC, who introduced the future road ahead to a national license and open access project.

The keynote address was presented by Prof Ahmed Bawa, the Chief Executive Officer of Universities SA (USAf), a membership organisation representing all 26 of South Africa’s public universities. He reported that locally and internationally there was an acute awareness of the need for new methods of scholarly publishing where peer review, production and editorial work was still needed. No matter what model was used, these all cost money. Prof Bawa concluded: “We cannot have unequal access to scholarly journals and information databases. No other industry has this escalation of costs. The current national subscription costs are between R500 and R600 million. In the end open access is also about social justice.”

In her conclusion Prof Burton suggested the following: “Whatever we do, we also need to think of the region and continent. We have regional options to follow, but it’s not the same everywhere. We need to know where we are going. If we are changing our model, we will have to accept that this is never going to be a completely equitable process. We will have to look at how we are going to manage a model that is fair. It is a process, we are part of it together and we do need to trust each other, to collaborate, to participate in developing an open access system. We are a small national system taking on very large organisations, large and important publishers. What do we want out of this? The obvious thing is complete open access - open access that does not come with a lot of conditions, preprint services or costs, and transparency is also very important. The other thing we need, is sustainability. Whatever we decide must be sustainable. The negotiation about what we are taking forward is very critical. We are now planning for that transition into open access and we need to be very clear about where we are taking it. We are putting a lot of trust in the task team that takes this forward. What comes out should be a system that everyone agrees with and can live with. We are making progress towards the library of the 21^st century and I am glad we can take this leap. I am pleased to have the opportunity to assist with the national planning. We, at UP, have been driving the implementation of the ORCID system as it has a strong effect on how visible we are. We also need to have more extensive education campaigns on open access as we need much more understanding across the university and the national system.”

Prof Burton concluded by saying that the Department of Library Services understood open access, their staff members were always forward looking and had an understanding of the UP data, and that was very reassuring. She thanked everyone for attending and taking part in the discussion on the road ahead for scholarly publishing.

View more photographs of the event here. Link: http://bit.ly/2UzaMRG