role of open in african higher education - university of botswana

Access to Africa’s

knowledge

University of Botswana

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Scholarly Communication in Africa

What do we, in African countries, seek to gain from our investment in

research?

The aim is surely African knowledge,

for Africa, from Africa, widely accessible...

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Globally, scholarly communication is at a crossroads

... as the internet offers higher

access, higher quality, lower

cost

We face two very different poles of

opportunity...

Enhanced global competitiveness and

prestige....

And ways of addressing

our development challenges

We constantly ask questions about

research and development...

‘How could the application of knowledge end poverty and hunger in Africa? How could higher education empower women and promote gender equity? How can knowledge be considered in the African context to address child mortality and improve maternal health?’

Nahas Angula, Namibian Prime Minister, UNESCO 29th Conference on Higher Education, 2009

Photo: coda Damien du Toit http://www.flickr.com/photos/coda/Creative Commons Share-Alike

Yet we are still caught up with old

paradigms...

...measuring success on the

basis of counts of journal articles

in the ISI indexes.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/ CC attribution licence

The result is tunnel vision...

...which ignores all but a small

segment of the publishing

ecosystem..

.. and offers little support and

recognition to the publications that

emerge from development-focused

research.

National policies tend to favour what Sir John Daniel at the UNESCO conference called ‘poles of superior quality’ rather than ‘the public good’

There is a penalty...

Science Research

http://www.worldmapper.org 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).

How can we address this?

... higher access, higher quality,

lower cost

Open access repositories profile the whole range of scholarship

Raising quality...

Publishing open access journals

Revaluing ‘grey publishing’

Rethinking business models and leveraging

open access

How can the University of

Botswana harness this potential to

deliver its strategic goals?

Eve GrayHonorary Research Associate

Centre for Educational Technology

University of Cape Townhttp://www.gray-area.co.za

http://www.http://www.sca2kafrica.org/

http://www.cet.uct.ac.za