From left: Louise van Heerden (ASSAf), Adèle van der Merwe (CSIR), Hettie Groenewald (UP), Ria Groenewald (UP), Zweli Ndayi (ASSAf) and Susan Veldsman (ASSAf)

On Wednesday, 23 November 2011, the Scholarly Publishing Unit of ASSAf hosted a ‘Community of Practice’ meeting focussing on Digitisation. The meeting was arranged by Louise van Heerden, SciELO SA Database Coordinator and Zweli Ndayi, Project Officer and Institutional Repository Coordinator.

Twenty six people attended the meeting. They were from University of Pretoria (UP), North-West University (NWU), University of Johannesburg (UJ), Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), University of the Witwatersrand (WITS), Sabinet, Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA), Vaal University of Technology (VUT) and the National Research Foundation (NRF). The first speaker was Adèle van der Merwe, the Records Manager and Archival Services Manager of the CSIR Library who gave a presentation on “Digitisation and migration activities at the CSIR: a case study”. The second speaker was Ria Groenewald, the Digitisation Coordinator of the E-Strategy Unit in the University of Pretoria Library who gave a presentation on “Digitisation and digital preservation sustainability issues to consider when digitising“. This was followed by time for questions and sharing experiences at the various organisations.

It emerged in 2003 from a conference on open access hosted in Berlin by the Max Planck Society. Organisations who share the vision of Open Access to Knowledge expressed in the Declaration are invited to sign the Declaration, committing their organisations to the promotion of Open Access to Knowledge. By 10 November 2011, 344 organisations had signed the declaration internationally. In South Africa the University of Pretoria, the University the Free State and the University of Stellenbosch signed the Declaration during Open Access events.

Susan Veldsman, the Director of Scholarly Publishing at ASSAf, was invited to speak on Open Access at the Open Access Week events held at the University of the Free State (24 October), the University of South Africa (25 October) and the University of Pretoria (27 October).

The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities was signed by Prof Jonathan Jansen, the Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State and an ASSAf member. Speakers at the Open Access event were: Front: Ina Smith (US), Prof Jonathan Jansen (UFS), Elsabe Olivier (UP), Monica Hammes (UP). Back: Wikus van Zyl  (SunMedia), Pierre de Villiers (AOSIS), Susan Veldsman (ASSAf) and Huibre Lombard (UFS)

The Scholarly Publishing Unit of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) is in the process of adding the following prestigious scholarly journal titles to the SciELO SA Open Access platform:

- Historia; and
- The Journal of the Southern African Journal of Mining and Metallurgy.

This will bring the total number of titles on the platform to 22. Approximately 1 additional title and 100 articles are added to the platform per month. During the last month the platform has, on average, been visited 1 020 times per day. At this stage the countries that visit the platform the most are South Africa, the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Visit the SciELO SA database : www.scielo.org.za

The SciELO SA open access database project falls under the Scholarly Publishing Programme of ASSAf.    The programme is funded by the Department of Science & Technology; and endorsed by the Department of Higher Education and Training.

Susan Veldsman, the Director of Scholarly Publishing at ASSAf was invited to speak on Open Access at the Open Access Week events held at the University of the Free State (24 October), the University of South Africa (25 October) and the University of Pretoria (27 October).

  Susan Veldsman

The participants outside the conference venue

Zarina Moola (Policy Advisory Programme) and Louise van Heerden (Scholarly Publishing Programme) from the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) were invited to participate in the Programme Officer’s Training Course organised by the Network of African Science Academies (NASAC), in collaboration with the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences. The training was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 3 to 6 October 2011. There were representatives from the academies of Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Senegal, Morocco, Ethiopia and South Africa. The course was made up of four days of lectures and practical exercises designed to provide participants with practical skills and knowledge useful for the designing, planning and managing of academy activities and the dissemination of results. Participants were also familiarised with the functions, organisation and operations of other African academies and fostered an exchange of ideas on how science academies in Africa support policymaking in their countries. 

The training facilitators were Lauren Alexander Augustine (The National Academy of Science, U.S.A), Jackie Olang (NASAC), Doyin Odubanjo (Nigerian Academy of Science) and Nthabiseng Taole (ASSAf). The training was made possible thanks to generous support from the Royal Society (U.K.) and the National Academies of Science (U.S.A.) through the ASADI programme.

Louise and Zarina at ‘Lucy’s Restaurant’ (named after Lucy, the famous partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis  found in Ethiopia)

There were 24 participants comprised of editors of local and regional scholarly journals from southern Africa (Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland). The aim of the workshop was to enlighten journal editors about the challenges and benefits of open-access publishing and empower them to adopt an open-access publishing model for their journal. 

The themes discussed and presented by the editors were:

• Challenges and problems facing journal editors today
• Sharing best practices in the editorial process
• Current open-access journals and developing an open-access model and business plan

The last session was devoted to a demonstration of Open Journal Systems, which is an open-source manuscript management and publishing system used to publish journals online – a gateway to open-access publishing.  

Presenters shared the challenges they face as editors of scholarly journals and in considering and adopting an open-access model, as well as possible solutions to these challenges.  

Whilst all editors in principle accepted the benefits of open access, it was acknowledged that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. A sub-committee of editors will be convened to discuss how some approaches can be implemented within South Africa.

The theme this year was: “Changing landscapes of academic research and publishing”. 

The day-long Editors’ Forum was divided into two sessions; the first session was a closed meeting between ASSAf and Forum members or their representatives. ASSAf gave a progress report back on the activities/projects undertaken in the past year. 

The agenda for the closed session included report back and discussions on five topics:

1. Introduction and explanation of the role of the Organizing Committee and the further evolution of the Forum
2. National free-online e-publication platform: SciELO SA update 
3. Relationships/contracts between journals and SciELO
4. Ministerial project: Possible national licensing of core commercial databases
5. Discipline-grouped peer review of South African journals 

The second session included a discussion on the open access business models and a panel discussion on open access themes. 

The meeting was attended by 90 people, made up of scholarly editors, publishers, members of the Committee for Scholarly Publishing in South Africa and ASSAf staff.

The vision and mission of the National Scholarly Book Publishers’ Forum is to make the Forum a significant new stakeholder in the South African national innovation system (NSI), with a voice that helps shape policy and promotes excellence and high visibility of the country’s research activities through the promotion and proper resourcing of scholarly book publishing in and from the country.

The objectives of the National Scholarly Book Publishers’ Forum will be generally to support and promote high-quality scholarly book publishing in South Africa, and especially to assist in the efforts of the Academy bringing about the following:

I. the establishment of a set of parameters for the promotion of scholarly books, based on the findings of the ASSAf report (see clause 2) and further developments;
II. an improved mechanism for the accreditation by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) of scholarly books or individual chapters in such books (collected works);
III. the development of a new generation of excellent, publishing scholars;
IV. to enhance the visibility of scholarly SA books, and to promote collaboration with scholars everywhere, through the expansion of electronic platforms where appropriate (possibly but not necessarily including an expansion of Open Access publishing);
V. the establishment of sustainable business models, among others in relation to Open Access publishing;
VI. a sustainable national system of harvesting scholarly books in institutional repositories; sustainable, appropriate and transparent subsidisation mechanisms of high-quality scholarly books and collected works in South Africa; and
VII. information systems about scholarly publishing that are useful in planning and accessible by all.

An initial focus of the Forum will be to tackle the issue of public funding for scholarly books, and therefore, resolved that it would propose a beneficial and viable funding model that would improve intellectual capacity to the Department of Higher Education and Training.

In the long term the Forum will examine ways to accommodate other academic book publishers, such as textbook and discipline-based publishers, because of overlaps in the system. In an effort to ensure that the Forum operates smoothly has ASSAf offered to take responsibility for managing and ensuring that the mandate of the forum is carried out.

Brazilian mammal-like fossil find suggests link to South Africa 

The discovery of a 260-million-year-old Tiarajudens eccentricus in Brazil that was announced to the world in March this year may for the first time suggest that anomodonts roamed both continents in the Permian period. 

The Tiarajudens find in Brazil consists of a partial skull with an ~120 mm long, laterally compressed canine, 5 leaf-shaped incisors and 13 expanded palatal teeth that formed a grinding surface. Scientists were able to recognise a resemblance to Anomocephalus, a basal anomodont recovered in 1999 from the Tapinocephalus assemblage zone of the Beaufort Group of the South African Karoo beds, near Williston in the Northern Cape. 

Previously, the two continent s  have had only dinocephalians and an aquatic reptile, Mesosaurus, in common. Basal anomodonts have been found in China, Russia and South Africa. The discovery of  Tiarajudens represents the first basal anomodont from South America and its discovery contributes to understanding of the biogeographical distribution of the Anomodontia and the early radiation of the Therapsida.

Read more:

Chinsamy-Turan A. Tiarajudens: A significant mammal-like reptile. S Afr J Sci. 107(5/6), Art. #717, 2 pages. doi:10.4102/sajs. v107i5/6.717 

A focus on land use and soil organic matter in South Africa 

This in-depth look at land use and soil organic matter in South Africa takes the form of two articles in the latest SAJS. The first of the articles reviews spatial variability and the influence of rangeland stock production and the second, the influence of arable crop production. 

Degradation of soil due to land use poses a threat to sustainable agriculture in South Africa, With stock farming uses the majority of land in South Africa, restoration of soil is of the utmost importance. The article suggests a countrywide baseline study to quantify organic matter contents within and between soil forms.

The ultimate aim of the study is to develop a soil protection strategy and policy for South Africa. Such a policy is important because organic matter influences the characteristics of soil disproportionately to the quantities thereof. Development of such a strategy and policy require cognisance of the extent and impact of soil degradation processes.

Read more:
Du Preez CC, Van Huyssteen CW, Mnkeni PNS. Land use and soil organic matter in South Africa 1: A review on spatial variability and the influence of rangeland stock production. S Afr J Sci. 2011;107(5/6), Art. #354, 8 pages. doi:10.4102/sajs.v107i5/6.354

Read more:
Du Preez CC, Van Huyssteen CW, Mnkeni PNS. Land use and soil organic matter in South Africa 2: A review on the influence of arable crop production. S Afr J Sci. 2011;107(5/6), Art. #358, 8 pages. doi:10.4102/sajs.v107i5/6.358 

South Africa loses distinguished poet 

Well-known poet, Stephen Watson, has died at the age of 56 in Cape Town, the city most depicted in his writings, along with the Cederberg where he walked all his life. 

PR Anderson of the University of Cape Town salutes Watson who in the last decade was the powerhouse behind UCT’s emergence as a creative writing school. He reviews his diverse writings which reflect the landscape of the city, Cape Town, and the Cedarberg, and the social and historical worlds underlying them. 

Read more:

Anderson PR. Stephen Watson: Poet, scholar and critic (1954–2011). S Afr J Sci. 2011;107(5/6), Art. #744, 2 pages. doi:10.4102/sajs. v107i5/6.744 

The impact of acid mine drainage in South Africa 

Environmental damage caused by acid mine drainage (AMD) in South Africa is severe and likely to continue for decades, posing a serious threat to future generations of South Africans. 

A review on the impact of AMD related to gold and coal mining maintains that the longer-term impacts of these industries, and especially the coal mining industry, are likely to be far more severe in South Africa than in other countries. This is attributed to South Africa’s unique combination of geography, climate, population distribution and the scale of the deposits. The coal mining industry, in particular, has had an adverse impact on the water quality in the Olifants River system. 

The review which focuses on mining in the Vaal and Olfiants River systems, calls for acumen in especially allowing further coal mining in the catchments of the Vaal River and rivers draining the eastern escarpment. 

These are not the only areas in the country afflicted by this problem, but because of the particular local conditions, the problems these two basins are huge by comparison and pose a serious threat to future generations of South Africans. 

Read more:

McCarthy TS. The impact of acid mine drainage in South Africa. S Afr J Sci. 107(5/6), Art. #712, 7 pages. doi:10.4102/sajs.v107i5/6.712

The extended article by Roux and de Beer entitled“Towards quality science 2: The role of strategy, vision and quality” is one of the most thoughtful recent contributions to key issues in science policy in South Africa, and is to be welcomed. They rightly plead for a deeper and wider debate on the ways in which scholarship and science should be fostered in the country, and linked to national development in the widest sense.

They frame their argument in the domain of how words (policy language) relate to actions (achieving laudable goals), an issue currently of decisive importance for the country. They ask that commonly used code-words be deconstructed and premises re-examined. We agree…….

Roux and De Beer are particularly concerned about the politicisation of scholarship/science and the centralisation of its governance. They detect both of these trends in two major policy documents issued respectively by the NRF and ASSAf. We write here on the stance taken towards the 2006 Consensus Report by ASSAf on the publishing of scholarly articles in research journals in and from South Africa.

The authors in introducing ASSAf do not mention that (unlike the NRF) the Academy is not a government agency, but (despite its statutory nature) a multidisciplinary voluntary association of senior academics nearly all drawn from higher education institutions, and across all disciplines, especially across the supposedly critical divide between the natural sciences and the humanities (see www.assaf.org.za). All Members of the Academy are scholars, including all members of its Council. It is to be expected, when scholars have to work cooperatively across major disciplinary lines, that best-possible ‘compromises’have to be made in their approach to recommending general science policy for the nation; they cannot present a collection of mutually incompatible mono-disciplinary perspectives to policy-makers, nor can they avoid generalising in many matters provided that enough room is left in the proposals to take care of most divergences that apply to particular disciplines. In some instances, the Academy is in fact examining how these divergences can be accommodated in policy, such as the in the cases of the recently published consensus study on Clinical Research and the current consensus study on the role and future specifically of the Humanities.

It is in this context that the key charges of politicisation and centralisation made against ASSAf’s policy proposals for scholarly publishing in South Africa must be assessed. The goals and objectives of the Academy’s Scholarly Publishing Programme have moved beyond the list quoted from the 2006 Report, and readers need to familiarise themselves with the many current elements of the programme in order to judge whether the approach is ‘top-down, centralising’ or ‘bottom-up, constituency-based’, and whether the charge levelled by Roux and De Beer that the Academy is presuming a role for itself, can be justified. In this latter context, it must be asked what roles any national science Academy may in fact ‘presume’ for itself if it is to have any meaningful function? As a non-governmental organisation comprising about 350 senior academics, must all its initiatives be strictly bottom-up, or can it be pro-active, knowing while it takes action that it must retain the confidence of its well-informed membership, as well as the broader intellectual community?

Roux and De Beer are surely aware that ASSAf uses academic approaches to policy-making whenever this is possible. ASSAf Panels are deliberately constituted as multi-perspective groups of scholars who examine and weigh evidence, and must seek a consensus position on their findings and recommendations. Draft consensus reports are multiply and independently peer-reviewed. Nothing is contextfree, as Roux and De Beer assert, and policy-recommending consensus positions are often couched in language that will be aligned with that used in public policy, no surprise there. The discipline-grouped evaluation of South African journals seen by Roux and De Beer as intrusive, topdown regulatory devices, in practice involves multiple, independent peer review, and a consensus report is prepared by a panel of peers. The emphasis is on improvement and support, not on restriction and top-down control of the local journals. Suggesting that such reviews would be better done by disciplinary associations is a debatable proposal; such associations have existed for many years and have rarely, if ever, spontaneously performed such reviews – should they now be ‘forced’ to do them, by centralising policy? Could such reviews in any case be regarded as disinterested?

The ASSAf consensus study on Scholarly Books contained a lengthy and critical treatment of peer review, and the Academy is not ‘mindless’ in its promotion of this form of ‘quality promotion’ as one of the key measures to achieve a number of academic goals. Its approach to bibliometric analysis is also cautious and considered, favouring discipline-and context-specific comparisons, the use of other impact measures, and a constant recognition of what citation analysis really is and how much and how little) it can tell us. ASSAf has launched the SciELO-SA platform for the subsidised open access e-publishing of as many South African scholarly journals as possible, as part of a developing-country indexing system that will complement the dominant ‘Web of Knowledge’(ISI) system, but extend the analysis beyond article citations to new metrics of regional/national impacts. It can also begin to address some of the language-of-publication issues that inhibit a truly global knowledge environment.

When it comes to the allegation of the ideological contamination of ASSAf recommendations, there appears to us little wrong with asking for “national progress and welfare”, “participatory policy-making”, and working “for the benefit of [...] civil society in general”.

We are intrigued by the ‘deconstruction’ of such phrases in academic discourse, but would then also ask that many phrases used by Roux and De Beer be similarly deconstructed.

The proposal mentioned above, of peer review of discipline-grouped journals by national disciplinary associations, can be deconstructed as a preference for ‘letting the foxes decide on henhouse design’. In fact, we could analyse many other positions taken by the authors in terms of pre-existing ideological positions, such as those denying links between S&T activity and the economy, the problematising of the criterion of originality in research publication, and many others.

In summary, Roux and De Beer have done us a service, but the conversation must continue and be refined, and ultimately they need to justify their title “Towards quality science 2: the function of strategy, vision and policy” in terms of how the discursive interplay of scholarly ideas can practically enable a state wisely, to use its resources for the benefit of all citizens.

This article and further responses can be viewed at www.litnet.co.za (“Menings en Opinies – Akademies – Gespreksruimte”)