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.

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”)

A  keynote speech by South African Minister of Science and Technology, Ms Naledi Pandor, highlighted the under-representation of women in the field of science and technology as a whole, as well as their under-representation in research management positions and policy-making.

Leading scientists from developing countries were invited to present keynote papers, followed by workshops with papers and discussions on the scientific contribution of women to these critical areas. Eminent women scientists from the South presented their research work, stressing policy issues pertaining to the participation of women in science and technology in their countries.

TWOWS is an international organisation whose central role is to promote women’s access to science and technology (S&T), enhancing their greater involvement in the decision-making processes for the development of their countries and in the international scientific community. Created in 1989, TWOWS’ overall goal is to work towards bridging the gender gap in S&T. TWOWS uses its forum for intellectual discussions to assist in the development of national capabilities to evolve, explore, and improve strategies for increasing female participation in science. The South African national chapter is hosted by ASSAf, who provide a secretariat for the implementation of its activities.