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.

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

Prof Tinyiko Maluleke (Executive Director: Research, UNISA), Mrs Susan Veldsman (Director: Scholarly Publishing Programme, ASSAf) and Prof Cochrane (Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Queensland University of Technology)

ASSAf hosted Professor Tom Cochrane from the University of Queensland to speak on The development of the open access paradigm in scholarly publishing, on 25 February 2011. Prof Cochrane is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Technology, Information and Learning Support) at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He outlined the research policy and practice developments at QUT in the context of the development of open access in scholarly publishing.  Furthermore, he discussed open access methods and the links between research profile and impact, and the greater visibility of research outputs through open access. The public lecture was attended by 80 people from many levels of the South African research community.

Podcast of lecture

Cochrane 1

Cochrane 2

Cochrane 3

Cochrane 4

Cochrane 5 (Questions 1)

Cochrane 6 (Questions 2)

Cochrane 7 (Questions 3)

Cochrane 8 (Questions 4)

The first person to describe a new fossil gets the rights to name it. This has got be done at the time of the first publication as the privilege is not retrospect. Hesitate and someone else will pip you at the post. The payout is pretty impressive because the once the fossil has been named, the name is there forever with your priority stamped all over it in Latin.

But not everything in the name game is about priority and bragging rights. The whole system of classification is an art, not a science, and the choice of name tells you as much about the researcher as it does about the fossil.

Lee Berger and his team have just had the rare opportunity to name a new hominid species.  They have chosen the name Australopithecus sediba for the debut of the fossils from Malapa in the Cradle of Humankind and the new taxon is on the tip of the tongue of lots of South Africans, from the Deputy Minister of Technology to the kids in school who have been given the chance to give a popular name for the fossils.  

So what is in the name? What statement has Lee Berger made with his choice?  In fact, he has made two statements, one that concerns the genus name Australopithecus and the second concerning the species name sediba.

Let’s start with the easy one: sediba.  The language is seSotho and the meaning is ‘wellspring’ or ‘fountain’. Not a bad choice at all. Making use of one of the indigenous languages of South Africa is a smart move if South Africans are going to ‘take ownership’ of this new specimen. If Berger really wanted to go back to ‘roots’ for the name, he could have chosen one of the ‘Bushman’ languages for inspiration in the same way that we have for our national motto. It reads: !Ke e: /xarra //ke, and means “Unity in Diversity” or more literally “Diverse People Unite” in the extinct language of the /xam. In fact, an extinct language is exactly what is needed for national motto as you don’t want confusion about the precise meaning and a dead language never changes. But seSotho is not only very much alive, it is the first language of 4 million South Africans and a second language of nearly the same number. This is about claiming heritage for the living, not the dead, and Berger’s selection is a good one.

The choice for the genus name needs to be viewed from a cold scientific perspective. Choosing a genus name is about linking the specimen to other discoveries and it plants a flag at a point on the evolutionary road. The specimens from Malapa were clearly related to other fossil forms from around the same age, so the choice was not about a new name, but it was about deciding which name to link it to. In the end Berger chose Australopithecus rather than the more controversial Homo. It doesn’t sound like it, but this is pure philosophy, not science.

Had Berger chosen Homo, he would have been recognising human-like attributes in the bones implying that they were ‘real men’ and not ‘ape men’.  The accepted consensus is that Homo had the ability to make tools, manipulate the environment, probably used speech, and, in Phillip Tobias’s words, was at a “new level of organisation”. But Berger has chosen to lump his new fossils into Australopithecus, meaning that his new discovery had not yet reached Tobias’s new level of organisation.  

But Berger hasn’t quite excluded his new specimens from the human line because the species name sediba implies that his species is at the point of transition from Australopithecus to Homo. Berger is quite up front about this. In his opinion, his discovery is the root of humanity as we know it.

Well this is where the fun in science begins. There has already been some debate about Berger’s claims. The fossil seems too late in time to be at the origin point for Homo. There are also other candidates and the anatomically oriented anthropologists will need to discuss the meaning of the morphology of the new specimens in the light of the detailed anatomy of its predecessors and contemporaries. As I have always told my students, the best thing to do is to wait when a new discovery is made and affinities are proclaimed. It will take at least 5 years for the consensus to develop and much academic blood will be probably be shed in the process.

Note: Read Prof Morris’s article on Australopithecus sediba appearing in the South African Journal of Science.

The Academy is made up of researchers wanting to benefit society through their research. Libraries play a crucial role in this endeavour.

During Library Week we acknowledge the role that libraries play in the production of research. Whereas the internet at large provides general information resources, libraries provide authoritative information resources such as books, journals and access to academic electronic resources.  Click here to read more about SALW2010.

Even though these biosafety policies are good and necessary, there also seems to be a degree of paranoia in some countries. Some academic institutions/biotechnology research centers have suffered because of the restrictions imposed by these policies, where, amongst other things, they can’t work with certain pathogens as they are demeed biological risks. Paranoia about biosafety is even evident at airports in certain countries. Despite all this paranoia, many lessons have been learnt regarding good laboratory practice (GLP) and ethical issues surrounding biosafety. As the saying goes: it’s better to be safe than sorry!

SciELO SA is operating from the www.scielo.org.za domain. The SciELO SA site has went live on1 June 2009, and the following journals have been uploaded and are accessible: HTS, South African Journal of Science, Koedoe and the South Africa Journal of Education.

SciELO SA is modelled on SciELO Brazil, as it successfully combines the most desirable features , including effective mechanisms for the selection of journals to be included in the service (analogous to ASSAf’s envisaged peer review panels); free online open access publishing; a variety of features to facilitate contextual understanding and contact between readers and authors; and full mark-up and indexing, permitting direct online bibliometric analysis and  web-based usage statistics, etc.

The following journals are currently being uploaded on the platform but are not yet accessible: the South African Journal of Medicine, the South African Journal of Surgery, WaterSA and the Potchefstroom Law Journal.

As the country with the most HIV infections in the world, South Africa has the greatest need for an HIV vaccine. Rather than cutting back on vaccine development, the country should double its efforts in a smart and innovative way. History shows that vaccination is still the most effective way to counter viral epidemics – smallpox, measles, hepatitis and other infections have either been eradicated or successfully controlled. The lessons learned from developing the polio vaccine are useful reminders that making a vaccine is no easy task, and that we still face many obstacles.

 Read more:  S. Afr. J. Sci. 105 (5/6), 168-169.