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 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”)

Goodwin Khuli

- Acta Theologica;
- SA Orthopaedic Journal; and
- Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research

This brings the total number of titles on the platform to 17. Approximately 1 additional title and 100 articles are added to the platform per month. Over the last six months the platform has, on average, been visited 690 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 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.

From almost every corner of the Anglophone world, the complaint is the same: “The Humanities are under threat”. I use the qualifier because, sadly, my ability to access other language worlds – beyond  the Dutch-Afrikaans link – is limited.*

The question is what is to be done to recover and revive the Humanities?

Research and deliberations into ASSAf’s own Consensus Report on the Humanities in South Africa is well under way and the hope is to issue a preliminary report in late October, 2010. My own view of this issue is framed by an understanding of political economy – the rise of neo-liberal economics has emphasized economic growth and efficiency and, in this particular universe, the Humanities have no place ( the State of Science in South Africa, pg 210). This is a fallacy, of course. Take the creation of jobs. In this country alone, right now, one of the strongest areas of economic growth is Afrikaans cultural production – most of this is both creates jobs and pushes economic growth.

But this ignores a series of issues into which the Humanities can shed light – the planetary crisis – known as ‘Climate Change’ – which is generated by mindless economic growth is perhaps the most obvious example. Another example, of course, is the financial crisis of late-2009: here, reckless speculation on money markets helped to generate the most severe financial crisis for 80 years and raised serious questions about the discipline of Economics which remain to be addressed.

But re-igniting interest in the Humanities (which for these purposes includes the Social Sciences) cannot be the responsibility of academies and of Blue Ribbon Panel-types alone. The responsibility falls upon us all – even upon Natural Scientists many of whom have a deep appreciation for the importance of the Humanities but, as the battle for resources in academia has intensified over the past three decades, have turned away from what we might call a ‘dual loyalty’ to intellectual life.

It is certain so that in many instances the Humanities are themselves to blame for the reversal in their fortunes. But the test of their viability should be quality and excellence, through peer-review, not whether they can generate economic growth.

Writing in London’s The Guardian, on these issues, the acclaimed journalist, Simon Jenkins, Scientists may gloat, but an assault is under way against the arts (an article by Simon Jenkins, 25 March, 2010; The Guardian) recently issued a warning to Natural Scientists. Any hope they might have that sweeping the Humanities to the corners would benefit them, was a risky proposition. For one thing, budgetary savings might encourage successive generations of politicians and bureaucrats that further cuts could be made in research funding – this would certainly come from the Natural Sciences.

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* Incidentally, in 2009, the Dutch issued a Blue-Ribbon report called “Sustainable Humanities”.

From left: Prof Robin Crewe (ASSAf), Prof Jacob Palis (TWAS), Prof Mohamed Hassan (TWAS), President Jacob Zuma (RSA), and Minister Naledi Pandor (DST).

The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) hosted an International Conference of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) from 18 – 23 October 2009 at the Durban International Convention Centre. The conference was attended by 452 participants from 63 countries in the developing world.

These participants included TWAS Fellows, TWAS Young Affiliates, DST senior officials, representatives from other government departments, Presidents of Science Councils in South Africa, Presidents of African science academies, and university representatives. The conference was also attended by the Ministers of Science and Technology of South Africa, Brazil, and India, other high ranking technical advisers of various governments in the developing and developed world, and representatives of Indian, Chinese, and Brazilian diplomatic missions in South Africa.

The recently held TWAS Conference brought with it numerous spin-offs for both the Academy and South African scientific community. ASSAf published a book on The State of Science in South Africa to mark the occasion of the hosting of the conference. The book reflects on the state of science in South Africa; considers the historical context and the key features that have shaped scientific research in the country and are determining its current trajectories; highlights some of the future challenges and opportunities; and celebrates some of the achievements of South African scientists.

The establishment of a TWAS National Chapter (NC) in South Africa was also announced at the conference. ASSAf will provide the secretariat for the NC and the Chapter will operate in virtual mode with minimal bureaucracy. ASSAf will play a predominantly coordination and dissemination role, and will provide an opportunity, inter alia, for networking and announcement of TWAS fellowships.

The hosting of this conference also provided the ideal platform to announce the establishment of a National Chapter of the Third World Organisation for Women in Science (TWOWS). There are currently 76 full members of TWOWS in South Africa, some of whom are also Members of ASSAf. With the establishment of a TWOWS National Chapter, it is planned to initiate activities that will accord strongly with South Africa’s S&T policy of increasing the participation of women in science.

During the annual conference, 36 new TWAS members were inducted, including South Africans Thokozani Majozi and Bernard Slippers as TWAS Young Affiliates. Salim Abdool Karim and Wieland Gevers were awarded the TWAS prize and medal respectively during the 2009 TWAS conference. Anna Coutsoudis, Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, Brenda Diana Wingfield, Brian Warner, Rashid Mekki Hassan, Robin Crewe, Salim Abdool Karim, and Tebello Nyokong, who are members of ASSAf, were elected as TWAS fellows during the conference, bringing the total number of TWAS fellows in South Africa to 19.

A Presidential medal was presented to the South African President, Mr. Jacob Zuma, by Profs. Robin Crewe (ASSAf President), Jacob Palis (TWAS President), and Mohamed Hassan (TWAS Executive Director) in Cape Town on 22 October 2009 in the presence of Minister Naledi Pandor. This gesture profiled both the academy and the importance of science and technology in the development of countries in the South in the Presidency.

The common thread between all universities is that they are centres of debate and independent and critical thinking. In this issue, Nithaya Chetty discusses the threat that the suppression of academic freedom poses to South African universities, and raises his concerns regarding their corporatisation; and an associated marginalisation of the views of academics.

 He points out that there is a widely-held view in South Africa, that academic freedom is a front for the perpetuation of elitism, and resistance to transformation. He thus argues that in order for our universities to protect academic freedom, it is essential for them to embrace valid processes of transformation.

Read more:  S. Afr. J. Sci. 105 (9/10), 325 – 327.

South Africa’s gold production: not worth its weight in gold?

South Africa’s gold mining industry continues to be a major economic force in the country, but it is not nearly as important  as it used to be. South Africa has, for example, recently fallen into second place behind China in the world ranking of gold producing countries. Despite this decline in production, South Africa still claims first place in the world ranking of gold reserves.  Hartnady discusses the credibility of this claim using a critical analysis of gold production on the Witwatersrand. He argues that the Witwatersrand goldfields are 95% exhausted, and that it is time to examine the benefits of a declining industry against the costs to the environment.

Read more:  S. Afr. J. Sci. 105 (9/10), 328 – 330.

Possible termite fossils in South Africa

The range of possible trace fossil architectures found in the Lower Jurassic sandstones in the Karoo region is reported for the first time in this issue by Bordy et al. The architecture of these sandstone structures indicates that they are fossils of an early Jurassic social insect, and they may be the best preserved social insect traces from the former Gondwana reported to date. This discovery in South Africa, together with an increasing number of fossils attributed to termite origin in North America, suggests that sociality in insects originated in the early Mesozoic, before the breakup of Pangea, which would explain their worldwide distribution today.

Read more:  S. Afr. J. Sci. 105 (9/10), 356 – 362

Fire management in threatened fynbos

Brian van Wilgen reviews current and historical fire management practices in fynbos. In fynbos, burning was initially considered to be destructive and prevented where possible. But gradually, as the vital role of fire in fynbos ecosystems became better understood, managers turned to prescribed burning and experimented with different space and time protocols. Despite these policies of prescribed burning, wild fires remain the dominant feature in fynbos, fortunately driving a variable fire regime that remains broadly aligned with conservation objectives. The problem of conserving fire-adapted fynbos is complicated by invading alien trees that are also fire adapted. Despite improvements in control methods, alien trees, notably pines, continue to spread almost unchecked. Biological control offered some hope for controlling pines, but was ruled out as too high a risk for these commercially important trees. Failure to address this problem adequately will almost certainly result in the severe degradation of remaining fynbos ecosystems.

Read more: S. Afr. J. Sci. 105 (9/10), 335-342.