Research Culture South Africa’s journey towards open access publishing Ahmed C. Bawa South Africa’s journey into open access publishing is not new, but it has received renewed energy and (Universities South Africa) vigour. The current dominant commercial model of scholarly publishing undermines the production and dissemination of knowledge in science systems such as South Africa’s, first through a hopelessly Downloaded from http://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article-pdf/42/3/30/917403/bio20200029.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 inequitable higher education and science system with large disparities amongst institutions and because of the increasing unaffordability of the current subscription-based model. This is a description of the approach being adopted to address one part of the quest towards open access scholarly publishing. Reports have emerged of a new national agreement between very recent Covid-19–inspired slide of the value of the South Elsevier, the giant science publishing enterprise, and the Irish African Rand to the US Dollar will increase these costs by up science system on open access (OA). Elsevier, long seen as to 30% in the 2020–2021 round of negotiations with the large being intransigent to OA approaches to scientific journals publishing houses. There is no question that there needs to be in its stable, has also concluded transformative agreements a change of model to secure this broadened access. with the Netherlands, Hungary, Sweden, Qatar and Norway. Also, at a national level, this project has to be seen in Several other publishing houses are making progress in this the context of the open science policy framework that the direction. This bodes well for the eventual emergence of a new Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) is working global publishing regime where scholarly communication towards and which is contained in the new Science, is available and free for all readers with internet access. This Technology and Innovation (STI) White Paper, published in change has been the result of a number of factors, primary February 2019. This OA project is a small, but an important amongst which are bottom-up pressures from university subset of that much larger project. systems and researchers as producers of knowledge, but it On the other hand, at the global level, there are large represents also a reflection of many new adventures towards national and international projects and movements aimed the reimagination of the intricate and complex relationships at producing an OA basis to scientific information through between science and society. direct engagement with the publishing industry. While South Here in South Africa, the colonial and apartheid history Africa’s system is small in comparison with other national of South Africa’s higher education and science systems has systems, it is into this international momentum that South resulted in the legacy of deeply unequal access to scholarly Africa’s science system is plugging. South Africa produces journals and information databases. The detrimental impact about 1% of the global output of journal articles and has of this on broadening the development of scholarly activities approximately a 10% share of the upper decile of the most and scholarly publishing across the 26 public universities and cited articles globally. While it is small, it is a significant global the rest of South Africa’s knowledge system is immense and player. What this means is that there would be the need for there is a national consensus that this has to be corrected. South Africa to work with other science systems around the Amongst university leaders, there is a strong consensus that world in addressing this issue – simply put, South Africa the procurement of research information and data should would not, by itself, have the leverage to shift the negotiation move towards a platform that gives equal access to all South agenda with the large publishing houses: Elsevier, Wiley, African scholars and students and to a broader public. Springer- Nature, Taylor and Francis, etc., and yet, it could be The context that defines this period has several parameters. an influential partner. In recent years, the cost of access to scientific publishing has On the basis of these conditions, the Board of Universities increased significantly for all users. The impact in South South Africa (USAf), made up of the 26 vice- chancellors of Africa is compounded by weakening of the Rand against the public universities, adopted a resolution that the issue other major currencies, such as the Euro and the US Dollar. of access for all 26 universities should be explored with the In consequence, it has proven very tricky even to maintain proviso that there is no further increase in costs. In principle, the current limited access to scientific information. Even this excluded the idea of a national site licence for read access. this grossly unequal access costs South African institutions The imperative of trying to ensure access to journal and other between R500 million and R600 million per annum to access information databases for all South African scholars and the traditional pay- to- read journal subscription models. The students at South African universities and other audiences 30 June 2020 © The Authors. Published by Portland Press Limited under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY- NC- ND) Research Culture has given rise to a large project coordinated by the USAf Statement on Open Access Publishing, we have drafted the and the National Research Foundation (NRF) together with Berlin Declaration to promote the internet as a functional the Academy of Science of SA (ASSAf), the Department of instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human Higher Education and Training (DHET), the DSI and the reflection and to specify measures which research policy South African National Library and Information Consortium makers, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, (SANLiC). The purpose of the task team was to decide how archives and museums need to consider”. to address the issues of affordability and access in the most The key emphasis over the last two and half decades has effective ways. South Africa’s journey to OA will have many been on developing institutional and national repositories routes and options taking into account the continuing need for articles written and published by academics for broader for high- quality, high- impact journals, the need for OA, the access and the development of OA journals. South Africa question of affordability, etc. has not been a slouch with the development of a number Globally, there are interesting explorations of OA that of repositories and the development of OA academic Downloaded from http://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article-pdf/42/3/30/917403/bio20200029.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 take into account the various forms of OA and in particular, journals built into the SciElo platform run by the ASSAf. experiments in institutional open repositories, new much Notwithstanding these major developments, there remains more affordable not- for- profit OA journal publishers, much to be done, and the traditional subscription- based repositories of preprints such as arXiv, the Sponsoring journals continue to be the primary destination for journal Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics articles. This is driven largely by choices made by researchers (SCOAP3) project and the OA2020 project which has (and the systems in which they operate) and the influence on captured the interest and engagement of many of the world’s them of national and international metrics used to measure large science systems. the impact and influence of research output. South Africa’s own journey towards OA is not new with its universities and the science system more generally joining in on the international discourse in the mid-1990s. Most of The project its universities signed the Budapest Declaration of 2002 and then, more recently, the Berlin Declaration. In the Preface to Just to reiterate, convergence of a number of initiatives from the latter, there is a clear indication of the link between OA and Universities South Africa, the DHET and the DSI resulted the larger project of access to information and knowledge: “In in the establishment of a set of projects to understand how accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest best to procure a national site licence for journals and other open access Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda information databases. This was given impetus by the two The mass student movement calling for new forms of relationship between universities and society during the 2015–2017 #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall campaigns in South Africa. Photo from Tony Carr shared under a CC BY-NC licence. June 2020 © The Authors. Published by Portland Press Limited under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY-NC- ND) 31 Research Culture departments when they commissioned a study carried out 3. We are all committed to accelerating the progress of OA by the ASSAf on the ways in which the institutions in the through transformative agreements that are temporary National System of Innovation were procuring journals and and transitional, with a shift to full OA within a very the cost of such procurement. This study was done in 2010 few years. These agreements should, at least initially, and it looked both at subscription payments as well the be cost neutral, with the expectation that economic ad- payments for article publication charges (APCs). While much justments will follow as the markets transform. has changed since this study was done, at its completion it was While there is a growing international consensus amongst clear that the costs related to the procurement of national site academic communities and funders of research on the need licences was prohibitively large, which in turn indicated the for OA, about 75% of the world’s research outputs are locked need for the consideration of new models.