1. A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO RESEARCH PUBLISHING IN SOUTH AFRICA S Veldsman Director: Scholarly Publishing Programme 22 November 2010 Applying scientific thinking in the service of society

2. Impetus to strategic report During 2001 the most ambitious project of DoE to restructure and reform HE in SA. Change in a number of things: Closure of the Bureau for Scientific Publications, Termination of state subsidy of flagship journals Modified funding of outputs of tertiary institutions :ISI-, IBSS-listed, plus accredited SA journals (DoE list)

5. Summarised findings no 1 The confirmation that the formal “research publishing system” (backbone of cumulative, global progress in scholarship and knowledge) will continue to depend critically on the integrity and functionality of the core mechanism editorial discretion : peer review: appropriate citation even if necessary and appropriate adaptations are made in the electronic age

7. infrequent, often irregular publication of thin issues is generally used to deal with a low supply of good papers

8. a majority of the journals play only a tiny role in the world research publishing system, as judged by citation in the most extensive, multi-disciplinary, indexed database available;

11. COVERAGE OF REGIONAL AND SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALS 9

13. Code of best practice in editing and peer review needed

14. Cyclical peer review of journals by ASSAf panels

16. Information system to be set up, plus citation indexing

17. Translation of scholarly content to public benefit – esp. education

19. Funding sought for implementation project – granted 2008-2011(contract)

20. ASSAf’s Committee on Scholarly Publishing in SA constituted – project oversight

21. ASSAf’s Scholarly Publishing Unit established – Director and project staff

23. Social Sciences & Agriculture--completed

24. Religion, Law, Humanities & related fields and Medical journals—in process

25. Consensus Study of scholarly publishing in books completed—Nov 2009

26. Possible online scientific writing course system under investigation

28. Advantages of SciELO SA SciELO is a fully cross indexed platform, which forms part of a developing country "ISI" system. Usage, downloads, visits can be monitored daily by the editor, author and users on the system! SciELO Brazil is in discussion with the "proper" ISI for the inclusion of SciELO journals in their database and citation analysis system Journals on the platform for inclusion will be stringently selected by our Review Panels--to ensure quality SA Scholarly journals

29. Advantages(cont) Publishing on this platform is free as it is funded by the Dept of Science and Technology Possible institutional per-article co-payments possibly linked to the DoE research output subsidy system possible partial subsidization by DST of the print versions (if they are of high quality, post peer reviewed) AND is unable to tolerate possible loss in income being part of a possible new DoE accreditation system linked to ASSAf's SPP activities

35. Platform mechanism(s) for online journal editing/reviewing/publishing; copyright arrangements; “economies of scale” production processes; facilitation of print production/distribution; information capture, including citation indexing

36. Ongoing improvement through national scholarly editors’ forum, oversight by ASSAf Committee; policy development, etc

38. quantity and