Open Access, Schorlarly Publishing and Knowledge Production in Sub-Saharan Africa: Opportunities and Challenges

Ondari Okemwa

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1. Introduction

The Internet has fundamentally changed the processes of scholarly Publishing and hence, production of new knowledge, which according to Crow (2008), now takes place through blogs, social networks, and social media sites. Included in this evolution is the way scholarly communication is now conducted. The open access movement is increasingly guiding the publishing practices of scholarly research. Publishing can now be an immediate process accessible by anyone in the world with internet connectivity. Hide (2010) attributes the dramatic changes of how researchers access and use information over the last few years to technological innovations, changes within the publishing community and the need to enhance research impact. In recent decades, academic libraries all over the world have been struggling to provide access to all of the journal titles needed by their users owing to inadequacies of library budgets and skyrocketing journal subscription prices. Added to this, the current publishing models limit the access and re-use of research findings, potentially hindering the return on research investment. These changes have triggered an ongoing international debate on issues including ‗open access‘, ‗open data‘ and alternative models of scholarly publishing. These discussions have resulted in a number of initiatives and statements around the globe by various groups and organizations. Some Published information has been made free to read, sample and remix, as well as to create something new without fear of reprisal. New forms of scholarly communication are beginning to impact the way the publishing industry operates, a trend which may have lasting effects.

Open access has been touted as an alternative to making scholarly publishing and access to knowledge and information easier in sub-Saharan Africa but its implementation may take long before it is fully realised (Nwagwu and Ahmed, 2009). The Public Library of Science (2015) looks at open access as a situation where everything that is published should be freely available online throughout the world, for anybody to read, download, copy, distribute, and use (with attribution) any way you wish. No permission is required from any quarters. Establishing open access as a worthwhile procedure ideally requires the active commitment of each and every individual producer of scientific knowledge and holder of cultural heritage. Open access contributions include original scientific research results, raw data, metadata, source materials, digital representations of pictorial and graphical materials and scholarly multimedia material. It is argued that whether one is a patient seeking health information, an educator wishing to enliven a lesson plan, or a researcher looking to formulate a hypothesis, making papers freely available online provides one with the most current peer-reviewed scientific information and discoveries. The most current peer-reviewed scientific information and discoveries are supportive knowledge production elements. Nicholson (2015) argues that more than 850 enlightened publishers around the world now facilitate access to knowledge by allowing institutions to deposit their final PDF published articles onto open access institutional repositories. They will benefit from sharing knowledge; their publications will get more readers; the authors will get more citations and increased impact. This kind of move may also enable scholars in sub-Saharan Africa to benefit from sharing their knowledge, having access to knowledge produced in other regions of the world, getting more citations and of course increased impact. Open access publishing serves to question the fixtures in scholarly (book) publishing that we have grown accustomed to, especially those established as part of the modern system of

1 | P a g e scholarly communication and the mostly print-based media ecologies of the 20th century (Adema, 2015). Open access publishing as a mode of knowledge production, distribution and sharing has been seen to function as a critique of the traditional mode of publishing. However, open access publishing as a mode of knowledge production and distribution is not totally without criticism. Adema (2015) further argues that radical open access constitutes an integral critique of openness, both of the strategic openness of the wider open access movement, but also of the more neoliberal incarnations of open access that favour business logic and that promote the existing hegemonic power structures and vested interests of the scholarly publishing system. Both are in their own way very anxious about questioning or disturbing the object-formation of the book. Striphas (2010) tries to find out how, through experimentation, scholarly practices can be performed differently in order to rethink those practices that are pertinent today, both in theory and practice. Scholars‘ socially constructed habits and honoured ways of doing things lead them to engage with repetitive practices in the way they read, write, do research, publish and assess their research findings. Striphas (2010) is of the opinion that scholars need to think more creatively and expansively about the fixtures in scholarly communication and how they might work otherwise, like peer review and authorship, for instance. Striphas (2010) makes use of his Difference and Repetitions wiki to experiment with new, digital, and collaborative writing practices that challenge the accustomed tradition of single authorship and the idea of ownership of works and ideas, trying to not give in to the compulsion to repeat and merely produce more of the same. For Striphas, the open wiki experiment is not meant to function as a new type of institution but as a thing to think with, ongoing, changing, and uncertain. He points out this experiment has thought him, and can teach other scholars ‗a great deal about the types of questions they might ask about their performances of scholarly communication in general, and of academic journal publishing in particular‘ (Striphas 2011).

2.0 Scholarly Publishing

Scholarly publishing is mostly associated with scholars that teach and/or conduct research in institutions of higher learning and other institutions of research. Castells (2004) looks at the university as being critical for the generation of knowledge, technological innovation and the development of human resources. Scholarly publishing normally refers to published research output of the higher education sub-sector as well as that of government and science councils (De Beer, 2005). Some corporations in the private sector are also involved in research and publication. Maher (2006) argues that when a research university decides to hire or promote a faculty member, the university has to make sure it is hiring or promoting a very good scholar and a person who will do a very good job in both research and the instruction of students. Maher further argues that those evaluations of a good scholar are not easily separable from the evaluations of the quality of the scholarship in journals, given that it is the scholarship that the particular faculty member puts into journals that will give the best measure of how that faculty member is contributing. The four main parties usually involved in scholarly publishing are scholars, editors, publishers and subscribers. Large academic and/or research institutions are the major subscribers of scholarly publications.

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In the 21st century, scholarly publishing should be expected to serve the purpose of disseminating knowledge besides the traditional purposes of communicating results of research and enabling scholars to keep abreast of the latest developments in their disciplines or sub-disciplines. Scholars seeking promotions are also evaluated on the strength of the number of scholarly articles they have published and the reputation of the journals in which they publish their research findings. Journal rankings may also be used by university authorities to gauge the progress and impact of faculty members. World university rankings also take into account the number of articles published by faculty members of each university ranked. Scholarly publishing is an important manifestation of knowledge generation and diffusion (De Beer, 2005).

2.1 Scholarly publishing in sub-Saharan Africa

The United Nations Institute of Statistics, Bulletin on Science and Technology Statistics (UIS, 2005) indicate that the whole of Africa represents 1.4% of the world scholarly publications in 2000. However, scholarly publishing in sub-Saharan Africa is faced with challenges in the 21st Century. Scholarly publishing does not have a long history in sub-Saharan Africa and the larger African continent. Journals have been largely acknowledged by scholars as the most effective means of disseminating scholarly research findings. The twenty-first century also brings with it technological, political, social-economic challenges that scholarly publishing in sub-Saharan Africa must contend with. Challenges aside, the twenty-first century is also expected to present numerous opportunities to the scholarly publishing fraternity in the sub-Saharan Africa region. Information and communication technologies are poised to make digital access to scholarly resources more easily accessible. Digital publishing, preservation of information and fast access to scholarly resources are all being made possible by new developments in information and communication technologies.

A number of hurdles responsible for low scholarly publication rate and hence, low knowledge production in sub-Saharan Africa are identified by Ocholla (2006), Stilwell (2006), Ngulube (2005), Darch and Underwood (2005). This paper looks at open access as a new mode of scholarly communication which may address most, if not eventually all the problems which confront scholarly publishing in sub-Saharan Africa. The Open Access Movement proposes that scholars should make their works widely available through open access mechanism via the Internet. Willinsky (2006) avers that ―A commitment to the value and quality of research carries with it a responsibility to extend the circulation of such works as far as possible and ideally to all who are interested in it and all who might profit from it.‖ To Willinsky, the transformation of scholarly journals from print to online formats means that researchers and scholars, publishers, scholarly societies and research libraries should now ask themselves whether or not they are using this new technology to do as much as they can to advance and improve access to research and scholarship.

It is indicated that the share of sub-Saharan Africa has decreased from the mid-1980s to a level below 1%. Several other development indicators (World Development Report, World Competitiveness Yearbook, and technology Achievement index) do not paint a rosy picture of social economic and technological development in sub-Saharan Africa. Castells (1998) describes

3 | P a g e the economic, political and social decline in sub-Saharan Africa during the rise of information/global economy. Castells attributes the exclusion of sub-Saharan Africa from the information/global economy to three major factors:

 Unreliable institutional environment;  Lack of production and communication infrastructure; and  Erroneous economic policies.

Castells (1998) further describes Africa‘s ―technological apartheid‖ as due to low computer and Internet penetration and due to lack of a fundamental precursor to computerised networks, namely electricity. He also talks of how the Internet:

Is the technological tool and organizational form that distributes information power, knowledge generation, and networking capacity in all realms of activity. Thus, developing countries are caught in a tangled web. On the one hand, being disconnected, or superficially connected, to the Internet is tantamount to marginalization in the global networked system. Development without the Internet would be equivalent of industrialization without electricity in the industrial era (Castells, 2001:269).

The Internet has been credited not only for distributing information power and generation of knowledge, but also for storing large amounts of information and knowledge. However, this is only possible where there is ubiquitous computing, embedded networking and pervasive Internet. In sub-Saharan Africa, the presence of the Internet is still extremely low. 2.2 Knowledge Production How does knowledge production happen or what is meant by ―knowledge production‖ in a knowledge society? What role does publishing play in knowledge production and distribution? There is the impression created that the knowledge society is yet to come, but Gibbons et al. (1994) contend that the ―knowledge society‖ is already here and it is not a society that will be there in the distant future. There are two acknowledged modes of knowledge production – Mode 1 and Mode 2. According to Gibbons et al., (1994), there has been a transformation from Mode 1 to Mode 2 forms of knowledge production. Gibbons et al. argue that the Mode 2 type of knowledge production started emerging from the mid-20th century. It is context driven, problem- focused and interdisciplinary. It involves multidisciplinary teams brought together for short periods of time to work on specific problems in the real world. They contend that the traditional kind of knowledge characteristic of Mode 1 is linear and almost exclusively academic, investigator-initiated and discipline-based knowledge production. On the other hand, Mode 2 knowledge production is non-linear and reflexive in orientation. Gibbons et al. outline the differences between Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge production thus:

In Mode one, problems are set and solved in a context governed by the largely academic interests of a specific community. By contrast, Mode 2 knowledge is transdisciplinary. Mode 1 is characterized by homogeneity, Mode 2 by heterogeneity. Organizationally, Mode 1 is hierarchical and tends to preserve its form, while Model 2 is more heterarchical and transient. Each employs a different type of quality control. In

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comparison with Mode 1, Mode 2 is more socially accountable and reflexive. It includes a wider, more temporary and heterogeneous set of practitioners, collaborating on a problem defined in specific and localized context (Gibbons, et al., 1994:3).

Gibbons et al. (1994) seem to suggest that the ―knowledge society‖ favours the Mode 2 knowledge production characteristics. Delanty (2001) argues that one of the chief characteristics of knowledge in a knowledge society is the growing importance of the cognitive dimension. Knowledge should be regarded as being more than just science or information; it also entails the deeper level of cultural models. From a sociological view point, Delanty says that knowledge could be considered as a socially constructed structure having a creative as well as an intellectual dimension. However, knowledge is more than a social construction; it is also an open structure that admits of internal development.

The notion of Mode 2 knowledge production has elicited considerable discourses, but it has not been universally accepted as explained by Gibbons et al. (1994). Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (2000) argue thus:

The so called Mode 2 is not new: it is the original format of science before its academic institutionalization in the 19th century. Another question to be answered is why Mode 1 has arisen after Mode 2: the original organizational and institutional basis of science, consisting of networks and invisible colleges. Where have these ideas, of the scientist as the isolated individual and of science separated from the interests of society, come from? Mode 2 represents the material base of science, how it actually operates. Mode 1 is a construct, built upon that base in order to justify autonomy for science; especially in an earlier era when it was still a fragile institution and needed all the help it could get (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000:116).

Etzkowitz and Leydesorff (2000) use the notion of the Triple Helix of the nation state, academia and industry to explain innovation, development of new technology and knowledge transfer. They argue that ―The Triple Helix overlay provides a model at the level of social structure for the explanation of Mode 2 as a historically emerging structure for the production of scientific knowledge, and its relation to Mode 1. In the triple helix, universities are seen as taking on a third mission (in addition to the two missions of teaching and research, universities should also contribute to the local economy. According to Etzkowitz (1997), the taking up of this third mission represents the ‗second academic revolution‘ (the first having been when primarily teaching institutions took on the role of research. The result is the emergence of the ‗entrepreneurial university‘ which combines teaching, research and contributing to the local economy (Etzkowitz, 1997; Etzkowitz et al., 2000). This argument makes it clear to countries in the sub-Saharan Africa region, that production of new knowledge should be a joint venture between the governments, institutions of higher education and industry. However, production of knowledge by scholarly publishing falls in Mode 1.

2.2.1 The economics of knowledge Economic significance has been attributed to knowledge for a long time. Attributing economic significance to knowledge, Adam Smith (1776) contended that ‗A man educated at the expense of much labour and time to any of those employments which require extraordinary dexterity and skill, may be compared to one of those expensive machines‘ which has been seen as the basis for

5 | P a g e what was to eventually become known as ‗human capital.‘ Human capital can translate to human knowledge. Since Smith‘s time, various scholars have built on this notion (Blaug, 1970; Carnoy and Marenbach, 1975). Starting the 1960s, theories on human capital gained intellectual pre-eminence and even political influence. Starting around the same period, although from another perspective, Machlup (1982) did comprehensive work on the production and distribution of knowledge, which offered insights and stimulated a wave of academic studies on the economic significance of knowledge. Kuznets (1966) is of the opinion that modern economic growth rate, structure and spread depends on knowledge. The relevance of knowledge and learning in the process of economic development has been analyzed from two perspectives. One perspective is on human competencies, as well as the process of acquisition and the use of knowledge, considered to be at the core of economic development throughout history. On the other hand, the production, distribution and use of knowledge is seen as the paradigm for modern economic growth Kuznets (1966). By the 1980s and early 1990s, the central relevance of knowledge in the process of economic development had become widely recognized. Both neoclassical endogenous growth models and recent approaches of the economics of science and technological change have apparently used the concepts of production and distribution of knowledge to explain economic growth (Geuna, 1999). Conceptualizations such as the knowledge-based economy, the learning economy and more generally the knowledge-based society have all sprung from the cross-fertilization of economics, history and sociology. Common to all the studies, albeit at different levels, is the concern with the ‗sites‘ where knowledge is created and from which it is transmitted (Geuna, 1999). Geuna further argues that the main institutional sites where scientific and technological knowledge are generated are universities, firms, public research agencies, and private research centres. Due to the presence of externalities and spill overs, as well as to the development of specific transfer mechanisms, the knowledge created at a specific site in the system tends to percolate. However, the knowledge does not percolate immediately or completely, to other sites and to interact with learning processes that are taking place elsewhere in the system.

2.2.2 Knowledge creation, distribution and consumption in sub-Saharan Africa

Ondari-Okemwa (2011) argues that knowledge produced in sub-Saharan Africa can spur economic development in the sub-Saharan Africa region. A region may not experience economic growth if it depends entirely on knowledge generated in other regions. Most of the knowledge consumed by researchers and other knowledge consumers in sub-Saharan Africa is created elsewhere in the world. Even so, there is no doubt that knowledge is created in sub-Saharan Africa. However, is the knowledge created in sub-Saharan Africa consumed and shared in the region? How may open access publishing boost knowledge creation and knowledge sharing with the sub-Saharan Africa region? Data on scholarly publication by country or region provide an indication of the knowledge production and research capacity of that country or region (Ondari- Okemwa, 2007). A low scholarly publication rate in sub–Saharan Africa suggests a problem of knowledge diffusion for the region and possibly low knowledge generation. It has been variably noted that Sub–Saharan Africa has a low scholarly publishing rate when compared to other regions, both developed and developing (Hassan, 2001). Scientific research, which in most cases results in scholarly publishing, also lags behind in sub–Saharan Africa (World Bank, 2005). Put together, this may be interpreted to mean a declining global competitiveness of sub–Saharan African science as a whole, hence a structural problem in the regional system of innovation. Economic growth in the modern era has been grounded on the exploitation of scientific

6 | P a g e knowledge (Dasgupta and David, 1994). Scholarly publishing is considered the norm for disseminating and validating research results and is also crucial for career advancement in most academic fields.

2.3 Sub-Saharan Africa

A brief background of the region referred to as sub-Saharan Africa is in order. Sub-Saharan Africa refers to the countries of the African continent south of the Sahara desert. Geographically, the demarcation line is the southern edge of the Sahara desert. Some countries such as Chad, Mali, Sudan, Niger and Mauritania belong both to the Saharan desert region and sub-Saharan Africa region.

Figure 1: A map showing the boundaries of sub-Saharan Africa – South of the Sahara Desert.

Sub-Saharan Africa is made up of 48 independent nations, 42 of which are located on the mainland and six are island nations (see table 1 below). The island nations include Madagascar, Seychelles, Comoros, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe. In some quarters, Mauritius is generally not considered a sub-Saharan island nation as the ethnic make-up of the country is predominantly East Indian, Chinese and French. However, it is always counted as one of the sub- Saharan African countries.

3.0 Open-Access Publishing

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What is Open-Access Publishing? The Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) defines ‗open access‘ as that scholarly literature which is made freely available on the internet, so that it can be read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed, searched, text-mined or used for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal or technical barriers. The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment. Primarily, this category encompasses scholars‘ peer-reviewed journal articles, and any unreviewed preprints that they might wish to put online for comment or to alert colleagues to important research findings. By "open access" to this literature, it mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. This definition was subsequently followed by the Bethesda Statement and the Berlin Declaration. The According to the Bethesda declaration, An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:

. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. . A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).

According to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in Sciences and Humanities (2003), establishing open access as a worthwhile procedure ideally requires the active commitment of each and every individual producer of scientific knowledge and holder of cultural heritage. Open access contributions include original scientific research results, raw data and metadata, source materials, digital representations of pictorial and graphical materials and scholarly multimedia material.

. Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions:The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published

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work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. . A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, inter operability, and long-term archiving.

Although there are minor differences between these three statements, the key points are the same: . that scholarly publications must be made freely available, to as wide an audience as possible, immediately after publication, and . that the author or copyright owner grant any third party the rights to use, copy and distribute the research output as long as it is properly cited. The OA movement has developed momentum, and, in 2004, the British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report recommending that the research councils mandate their funded researchers to deposit a copy of all of their published outputs into open-access repositories. Many research funders, including the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Department of Health, have mandates for self- archiving and/or open-access publishing. Details of individual research funders‘ mandates are listed on the JULIET website.

3.1 The emergence of Open Access Publishing

Where did Open Access publishing come from and why? In the not‐so‐long‐ago days of the print model, scholarly communication publishing was accomplished through the mutualistic relationship between scholars and publishers. University scholars seeking to attain retention, tenure and/or promotion sent their scholarly writings free of charge to journals publishers. Fellow scholars gave and still give their time to edit and review articles free of charge. Publishers prepared and packaged journals to sell back to the institutions for a reasonable price. Academic library budgets assumed such costs. Although scholars still provide free articles in order to improve status in their fields of discipline, the fees for journal subscriptions have increased dramatically. Prices have continued to rise ten percent a year for the last thirty years (Lewis, 2008). During the past two decades, scientific journal publishing has undergone a veritable revolution, enabled by the emergence of the World Wide Web. This revolution contains two interconnected phases. The first, and to date most visible, is the rapid shift from print only journals to parallel print and electronic publishing (Tenopir and King, 2000). Ten years ago, scholars and scientists did almost all their reading from paper journal issues, obtained as personal copies, circulating inside their organizations, or by retrieving the issues from library archives. Today, the predominating mode is to download a digital copy and either read it directly off the screen or as a printout. This has been facilitated by publishers' electronic licensing to bundles of journals (―big deals‖) and awareness tools such as emails containing tables-of-content of new issues of

9 | P a g e favourite journals. Today the average researcher at a university has instant access to a much broader range of journal articles than ever before during the print era.

The second stage in this revolution is access to articles without any restrictions posed by subscriptions, commonly referred to as Open Access (Willinsky, 2006). Open Access emerged in the early 1990s, triggered by the possibilities offered by the web, but also partly as a reaction to the so-called ―serials crisis‖ (Parks, 2002) of subscription prices, which seemed to be constantly rising faster than the rate of inflation. In the early days, most Open Access journals were small- scale individual operations run by groups or individual scientists, much in the same spirit as Open Source Software projects (Walker, 1998). After the year 2000, an increasing number of professional Open Access publishers have emerged. Examples of such journals include BioMedCentral, Public Library of Science, Hindawi, and Bentham Open. These publishers typically finance their operations by publication charges which they levy on authors of the articles, reversing the business model from being content sellers to being dissemination service providers, in a way making the authors their clients rather than the readers.

Laakso et al. (2011) divide the development of open access journal publishing during the years 1993-2009 into three distinct phases, as may be seen in figure 3 below: Pioneering years (1993– 1999), Innovation years (2000–2004), Consolidation years (2005–2009). Laakso et al. point out that despite the quantitative analysis starting at the year 1993, individual journals had already adopted OA models of publishing before that.

Figure 1: The development of open access journal publishing

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Source: Laakso, et al. (2011)

Björk et al. (2010) conducted a study of peer reviewed scholarly journal articles which were available openly in full text on the web, using a sample of 1837 title and a web search engine. Some closely related subjects were clustered together. Of the articles published in 2008 in the subjects sampled, 8.5% were freely available at the publishers‘ sites. For an additional 11.9%, free manuscript versions could be found using search engines, making the overall open access percentage 20.4%. Chemistry at 13% had the lowest share of open access, Earth Sciences the highest at 33%. Björk et al. (2010) found out that in Medicine, biochemistry and chemistry publishing in open access journals was more common. In the rest of subjects, author-posted manuscripts dominated the picture. Björk et al. (2010) concluded that open access already had a significant positive impact on the availability of the scientific journal literature and that there were big differences between scientific disciplines in the uptake.

Table 1: Subject areas published in OA journals as of 2009 as recorded by Scopus

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Source: Björk et al. (2010)

Today, the number of OA peer reviewed journals is around 9,709 (well documented in the Directory of Open Access journals (DOAJ) (2014).

Table 2: Current number of OA journals

Number of Journals Number of journals Number of articles Number of countries currently listed by searchable at article available on OA DOAJ level 9,709 5,616 1,603,802 133

Source: Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): http://doaj.org/

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In addition to journals which are fully 100% Open Access, there are other journals which operate via subscriptions as mainstream journals do, but which offer open access to the electronic versions of their articles after a delay of usually a year, or selectively for individual articles provided the authors have paid an additional charge to ―open up‖ the articles.

In the Budapest Open Access Initiative Declaration (2002), two ways were identified for achieving Open Access publishing: the gold road – publishing of articles in Open Access journals, and the green road – self-archiving or depositing of all articles published in the traditional journals, on authors‘ web pages, or in institutional /thematic repositories that are Open Access either before print (preprint) or after (post print) their publications. The repositories, then, are archives of academic-scientific material available on the web containing articles published by researchers of a given institution or from a given domain of knowledge (Chan, 2004). The hybrid journal varies from these models. This is the type of journal which may require subscription, but the author possibility of paying an established tariff so that the article may be freely available to readers. Numerous journals in sub-Saharan Africa require authors to pay such tariffs but once the journals are published, they are not freely available to the readers.

4.0 Advantages of Open-Access

Of what advantages may Open-Access be to scholarly publishing in sub-Saharan Africa? Free availability of published literature comes to mind immediately one thinks of Open-Access scholarly publishing. Open Access journals provide one solution to the problem of restricted access to results of publicly funded research (. The other is supplementing the dominant subscription-based literature by free copies of the manuscripts, posted by the authors or their institutions on different types of web sites. Today digital copies are increasingly posted in subject-specific repositories. Free for all The core idea of open access is the basis of its key advantage—articles are freely available for anyone who wishes to read them. For readers and libraries, the benefits of not having to pay for an individual article or journal subscription are obvious. And for those that believe that publically funded research should be freely available to all, mandates to make the outcomes of these funding programs free to the public are now becoming the norm.

Increased readership For authors, publishing open access rather than behind a paywall can help open up their research to a wider audience. In an era where the number of articles being published is skyrocketing, open access can help an article to be more discoverable online. And ultimately, an increased number of readers can convert into an increased number of citations for the author.

Access for researchers in developing countries The lack of access to subscription-based journals is a commonly cited problem for researchers in low-income countries. Open access can help provide scientists in such countries with the opportunity to participate in the international research community, with

13 | P a g e some open access journals even offering discounted or waived publication fees for papers from low-income countries. Other advantages: Norris, Oppenheim, and Rowland (2008) identify advantages of open access articles as:

. Quick distribution of scholarly research. There is no need to wait for months, for example, for an article to fit with the theme of a journal before it can be published. . Free worldwide access for a large audience. This way makes it possible for people without connections to a scholarly institution to have access to results of scholarly research. . Greater visibility of scholarly output for both the researcher and the research institution. This can have a status-heightening effect. . Research shows that open access publications are cited more often on the average than closed publications. . Efficient archiving and availability. . Guaranteed sustainable storage and accessibility.

According to the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Project (2009), some of the advantages of Open Access publishing include:

. There is high quality control , with much of the content being peer-reviewed prior to publication; . Toll-free reader access to the online version of journal articles or books to anyone with Internet access; and . Less restrictive conditions are placed on use, although practices vary depending on publisher choice – with some publishers demanding copyright while others adopt more flexible licensing alternatives (e.g. creative commons or similar licensing).

Willinsky (2006), a proponent of open access and Director of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), Canada, contends that journal publishing is now headed to electronic circulation. Willinsky is of the opinion that the readability of a journal article on a computer screen may not compare to the ease of reading ink on paper, but still electronic journals do offer scholars certain advantages: . Compared to the print edition of a journal, the online version can be far more readily and exhaustively searched, whether for a concept or term. . Readers can quickly move online from citation to work cited, and when they find something that serves their needs, they can with a click, copy the article‘s bibliographic reference, and perhaps a quote or two, without leaving their keyboard and mouse. Valauskas (2007), founder and Chief Editor of First Monday, one of the first openly accessible, peer-reviewed journals on the Internet identifies the benefits of an electronic journal as:

. A simplified production process; . Greater transparency in editorial and review process;

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. Increased readership; and . Continuous production.

Bradley (2008) avers that there is much talk about open access, so that that there are those in academia who argue the pros extensively in all academic disciplines. Protagonists are making massive efforts to convert users to this ―essentially non-commercial‖ form of information and knowledge. On the other hand, Bradley argues there are those in the commercial world who are worried about ―who will pay and how can growth (current recession and credit crunch aside) continue in a capitalist, democratic society, without the opportunity to profit from one‘s intellectual property?‖ Against this backdrop, Bradley (2008) avers that those for and against open access weigh up both sides of the argument repeatedly. They however often neglect one aspect of the concept of open access: how it might be extended to the developing nations, to what ends and with what benefits. Whereas scholars in the developed countries who generate new knowledge by way of scholarly publishing are enjoying open access, one may be tempted to say that scholars from sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing ―closed access.‖ Many factors precipitate for the closed access that scholars in sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing. Tenopir (2004) contends that over the last dozen years, the typical journal has assumed a parallel digital life, with 50% of the current journal titles available electronically. The idea behind electronically published journals is to make it possible for knowledge that is of value in service of the common good to be disseminated widely without hindrance. Such journals accept manuscripts electronically as well as get the manuscripts peer-reviewed electronically. Harnad and Brody (2004) suggest that publishing in open access journals may result in greater higher numbers of citations, which is the desire of both new and old, established authors. In sub- Saharan Africa, the issue may not be so much that of older established authors fearing for the safety of their work, as it may be lack of the appropriate skills to enable them to access electronic publications. For purposes of promotion of academic staff members, the open access journals are not as yet recognized in most universities in sub-Saharan Africa. So it might as well feel like a waste of time and energy publishing in journals which are not well recognized. The advent of open access and the electronic journal should be seen as an opportunity for scholars from sub-Saharan Africa to: . Submit their manuscripts electronically for publishing, . Read other scholars‘ manuscripts electronically, . Act as peer reviewers and editors, and . Collaborate with scholars from elsewhere in knowledge production However, many scholars in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to personal computers, e- mail and the Internet, and may not be able to submit their manuscripts, nor read them or act as peer reviewers electronically. This may mean that scholars from sub-Saharan Africa who are highly qualified and capable of making contributions to knowledge production are excluded because of technology deprivation. Arunachalam (2003) thinks that the ICTs, rather than bridging the digital divide, will widen the knowledge divide or the disparities in the people‘s capacities to do research and their ability to use the technologies to their advantage.

4.1 Disadvantages of Open Access Publishing

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Open access publishing has its good and bad sides. Some of the negative aspects of Open access publishing include:

4.1.1 Publication fees

While the end user doesn‘t have to pay to read an open access article, someone has to pay for the costs of publication. Often, it is the responsibility of the author—perhaps through their employer or a research grant—to cover these costs. In times of austerity and funding cuts, this can discourage researchers from going open access.

4.1.2 Low levels of quality control While not a problem for reputable publishers, some argue that open access models incentivize journals to publish more articles. Journals have to cover their costs and when a large portion of their revenue comes from publication fees, they may be encouraged to publish more articles, with a negative impact on overall quality. This debate was recently reignited with the acceptance of a spoof article by a Science editor in many open access journals.

4.1.3 Sustainability challenges Some argue that traditional paid access models ensure publishers are adequately compensated for the substantial role they play. Whether open access models can sustainably support the research publication infrastructure in the long term remains to be seen.

4.1.4 Other disadvantages

Norris, Oppenheim, and Rowland (2008) identify disadvantages of open access articles as:

. Prestige. Faculties and management teams often base their evaluation of a scholar and the value of research on citation indices and the Journal Impact Factor of the scholarly journal in which the researcher published. This mentality must change before open access can replace the traditional form of publishing. . Quality control. In contrast with the strictly regulated process of peer review, quality control differs from one publication to the next in open access. The quality control is especially low in repositories; some repositories also contain dissertations as well as theses. The methods of quality control in open access journals vary greatly. . APCs (Article Processing Charges). Open access journals often ask for APCs, which are meant to be paid by the author or the scholarly institution. Consequently, new scholars (primarily) are not in the financial position to publish in open access journals. . Fewer options among journals with status/high impact factor.

Fundamental questions many policymakers ask include:

. How common is Open Access today? 16 | P a g e

. How fast is the share of Open Access increasing? . What proportion of journal articles are Open Access? . To what extent do researchers post OA copies in repositories?

Accurate answers to such questions would be very valuable for instance for research funders, university administrators and publishers.

Bohannon (2013) contends that from humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open- access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions. Bohannon is of the opinion that most of the players are murky. The identity and location of the journals' editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured. According to Bohannon, investigations by Science cast a powerful light. Internet Protocol (IP) address traces within the raw headers of e- mails sent by journal editors betray their locations. Invoices for publication fees reveal a network of bank accounts based mostly in the developing world. The location of a journal's publisher, editor, and bank account are often continents apart. And the acceptances and rejections of the paper provide the first global snapshot of peer review across the open-access scientific enterprise.

Figure 2: Tangled web. The location of a journal's publisher, editor, and bank account are often continents apart.

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Source: J. Bohannon, Science 2013; 342:60-65

5.0 Hurdles of scholarly publishing in sub- Saharan Africa

It is not easy to publish and therefore generate new knowledge in sub-Saharan Africa. This is in spite of what Ahmed and Nwagwu (2009) refer to as the multifaceted intellectual ‗wealth‘ and ‗natural resources‘ of sub-Saharan Africa and the entire Africa. Very broadly, failure to make use of knowledge produced within sub-Saharan Africa, invisibility of scholarly publications from the region, technology, socio-political factors, environmental and economic factors and changing trends lead in imposing hurdles on scholarly publishing and knowledge production in sub- Saharan Africa. Nicholson (2015) contends that access to information is a basic human right entrenched in the South African Constitution, yet there are many barriers restricting or preventing access to information. The biggest barriers Nicholson identifies include: access to the internet; restrictive copyright laws together with digital rights management systems that ―lock up‖ information or restrict access; unreasonable policies and embargo periods set by publishers on online material; and excessively priced books.

UNESCO (2015) concedes that although there have been great strides in Open Access in the sub- Saharan region and the larger African region, more awareness raising, advocacy work as well as capacity building are still needed to:

 Improve internet penetration in the region: In 2015, internet penetration rate in Africa stood at 27.5%, which is also the lowest in the world.

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 Introduce OA policies and mandates in the region;  Convert subscription-based journals into OA journals and launch new OA journals;  Set up OA repositories and make them sustainable and encourage researchers and students to self-archive.

5.1 Little use of locally produced knowledge

Not much of the little knowledge produced in sub-Saharan Africa is put to use or applied by those in charge of formulating and implementing public policy. According to the Netherlands Development Assistance Research Council (RAWOO) (2005), ―it is increasingly recognized that the linear model of science-society relationships that prevailed in the past has failed because it was based on the false assumption that the findings of basic research would more or less automatically find their way into new applications, innovations and development interventions.‖ RAWOO further argues that because of the linear mode of thinking; more emphasis has been placed on basic upstream research and less on applied downstream research and development activities aimed at translating the fruits of basic research into new applications, interventions and development action. This phenomenon has recently been described as the ‗know-do‘ gap, that is, the gulf between what we know and what we do in practice. In Sub-Saharan Africa, those in- charge of formulating and implementing public policy hardly consult researchers based at the local institutions of higher learning and research institutions.

Governments, public corporations and institutions in sub-Saharan Africa should be encouraged to utilize knowledge that is generated as a result of research conducted within the region. Juma and Clark (1995) contend that in sub-Saharan Africa, the practice of linking research and policy-making is rare. Think thanks, most of which are government-sponsored in sub-Saharan Africa should act as links between research, policy and practice and to absorb, process and synthesize the results of research for policy making, interventions and action. Such a bridging mechanism plays an important role in translating knowledge into policy options and in using existing knowledge more effectively for innovation in policy and practice.

5.2 Invisibility of publications from sub-Saharan Africa Research paradigms in different subject areas keep on emerging. Notably, such paradigms mostly emerge from the North and rarely emerge from developing regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. A developing region such as sub-Saharan Africa may only serve as a testing ground of new theories and paradigms. Editors of journals based in the North may be interested in publishing articles based on what in the North may be considered topical issues, but which may not be forthcoming from sub-Saharan Africa. Such editors therefore reject articles emanating from the region as being out of tune on topical issues. For that matter, many developing researchers and potential knowledge producers in sub-Saharan Africa may be unable to secure acceptance in core and prestigious journals, which according to Darch and Underwood (2005), are under pressure from a multitude of authors, and which may tend to undervalue research from the South. Rather than waiting forever to have their articles published in the prestigious journals of the North, emerging researchers from sub-Saharan Africa opt to publish in outlying journals to

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salvage their career prospects. These are journals that are not necessarily indexed by the ISI, but emerging researchers in sub-Saharan Africa find it better to publish in such journals than to risk affecting their career prospects.

5.3 Technological hurdles The Internet is the single most important enabler of open access. However, this is only possible where there is ubiquitous computing, embedded networking and pervasive Internet. In sub- Saharan Africa, the presence of the Internet is still low as may be seen in table 2 below. Table 3: Internet Usage Statistics in Africa

WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION STATISTICS June 30, 2012 Internet Penetration Growth Users Population Users Internet Users World Regions (% 2000- % ( 2012 Est.) Dec. 31, Latest Data Population) 2012 of Table 2000 3,606.7

Africa 1,073,380,925 4,514,400 167,335,676 15.6 % 7.0 % %

Asia 3,922,066,987 114,304,000 1,076,681,059 27.5 % 841.9 % 44.8 %

Europe 820,918,446 105,096,093 518,512,109 63.2 % 393.4 % 21.5 % 2,639.9

Middle East 223,608,203 3,284,800 90,000,455 40.2 % 3.7 % %

North America 348,280,154 108,096,800 273,785,413 78.6 % 153.3 % 11.4 % 1,310.8

Latin America / Caribbean 593,688,638 18,068,919 254,915,745 42.9 % 10.6 % %

Oceania / Australia 35,903,569 7,620,480 24,287,919 67.6 % 218.7 % 1.0 %

WORLD TOTAL 7,017,846,922 360,985,492 2,405,518,376 34.3 % 566.4 % 100.0 %

Source: Internetwordstats.com

5.4 High cost of Internet connectivity

The cost of internet connectivity in SSA as shown in figure 3 below is prohibitive and may act as a hindrance to open access scholarly publishing. The ITU (2013 argues that there are almost no ICT manufacturing industries in sub-Saharan Africa, with the notable exception of South Africa. All products, software and hardware, are imported. These products are subject to freight, insurance and customs charges, all of which add to the cost of telecommunications services. Deliveries of telecommunications equipment by manufacturers is subject to support and maintenance contracts, which also add to production costs. Software, which accounts for a

20 | P a g e growing proportion of investment in telecommunications, has an ever diminishing useful life because of manufacturers' commercial policies: mobile operators in the region have indicated that the average useful life of a software package is about eighteen months, at which point a new version is produced.

Figure 3: Rental price of 2 Mbit/s1 of international bandwidth on SAT 32 (South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable) in 2006

Source: ITU (2012): https://www.itu.int/ITU-D/finance/work-cost- tariffs/events/tariff-seminars/Geneva-IIC/pdf/Session1_Abosse_presentation_en_rev.pdf Figure 4: Measurements of an information society

1 Mbit/s: Megabits 2 SAT 3: South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable

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Source: Butcher and Associates (2011): http://www.gesci.org/assets/files/ICT,%20Education,%20Development,%20and%20the%2 0Knowledge%20Society(1).pdf.

5.5 Low demand for internet connectivity

The ITU (2013) argues that the number of Internet users in sub-Saharan Africa is very low as shown in figure 5 below. The insufficient number of Internet users has a direct impact on production costs of telecommunication services. Operators have therefore not reached the critical mass of customers that could enable them to lower acquisition costs and benefit from economies of scale. The low demand is disadvantageous for operators unable to negotiate directly with manufacturers. They may on occasion be entirely dependent on subcontractors which set much higher prices. The low demand for Internet connection inevitably means a low demand for international Internet bandwidth, resulting in higher costs than in the rest of the world.

Figure 5: Regional demand for internet connectivity

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6.0 Concluding remarks

Open access publishing seems to be increasingly becoming a mode of scholarly publishing as it seems to have overcome its initial break and is already in a consolidation stage. Laakso et al. (2011) establish three stages in the evolution of open access journals: the beginnings (1993-99), the innovation (2000-04) and the consolidation (from 2005). Regarding quantitative aspects, the figures from open access journals prove that the sector has by no means a symbolic presence. Against all odds, countries in sub-Saharan Africa are on the rise, providing high proportions of titles following the Open Access model.

Regarding quality, the standards of the scientific communication system have been entirely adopted and a good percentage of titles have managed to situate in the elite of journals. Regarding the sustainability model, it is also established the supremacy of the payment by the author system in biomedicine and experimental sciences and the payment by the public administration in social sciences and humanities. Some examples of consolidated publishers (PloS, Hindawi, Revistas CSIC, etc.) give clear indications to ensure the consolidation and extension of the model.

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There are some studies offering figures on both roads such as that from Björk et al (2010), situating in the 20% the number of articles published in 2008 that could be found in open access. This analysis is based on a sample of 1837 journals indicating that 8.5% of the articles can be consulted in the web of the publisher (gold road) and 11.9% can be found online (green road), either in repositories or in the authors websites.

Regarding the future of Open Access publishing, some estimates, consider that 20% of published articles are already in open access. It seems difficult to speculate on the growth rate of this type of publishing model in subsequent years, although it seems that policies promoted from universities, research centres and funding agencies will contribute to decisively promote the Open Access publishing model in the scientific community.

It is no doubt that most institutions of research and higher learning in sub-Saharan Africa are confronted by many strategic challenges when it comes to online sources. Such challenges include inaccessibility to digital journals, weak technological infrastructure and weak communication and social infrastructure (Nwagwu and Ahmed, 2009). There is serious concern that many online sources are not accessible because of lack of technological infrastructure which facilitates effective distribution of such sources. Governments in the region should strategise on how to improve communication and social infrastructure. Poor communication and social infrastructure block knowledge and information flow, stifle social and economic development, and production of new knowledge. The critical factor for open source and open access publishing is the ability to become part of the Internet because their development occurs primarily via e- mail communication and shared repositories published on the Internet. Governments in the sub- Saharan Africa should do everything possible to become part of the Internet. Some efforts are being made, for example the East African Submarine Cable System (EASCS), and it is hoped it will reduce the cost of accessing the Internet and improve connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa.

Information policy lacks in most sub-Saharan African countries. Information policy may not be a panacea for all the challenges confronting scholarly publishing and knowledge production in sub-Saharan Africa, but it can give guidelines on issues like freedom of access to information and promotion of information literacy. Besides information policy, public policies in sub- Saharan Africa should be formulated in a manner that may shape the environment in which scholars in the region are stimulated to conduct research, publish and hence create new knowledge. Policy issues that need to be addressed to create a knowledge creation environment in sub-Saharan Africa include the global infrastructures for telecommunications, the legal and regulatory environment and international agreements on access to technical knowledge created elsewhere in the world. Nwagwu and Ahmed (2009) recommend that governments in sub- Saharan Africa must pursue the free flow of scientific articles with vigour. The two further suggest that sub-Saharan African countries should as a matter of priority forge collaborative strategies with agencies and institutions in the developed countries where research infrastructures are better developed and where the quest for access to scientific publication is on the increase.

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