Quality, Evaluation & Impact of OA in African Learning

About

The big picture 2000 - a breakthrough! Higher Education

& Economic Development Open Access in Africa

Quality and evaluation ideas for Africa

Overview

What is ?

In South African slang, a “jol” means a party

…stands for African Journals OnLine

…is the largest online aggregation of peer-reviewed, African-published scholarly journals in the world, majority nowhere else online

…is a Non Profit Organisation based in S.A.

…provides free hosting & free access to meta-data of over 35, 000 records (journal-defined full-text access soon)

…is working to increase online access, visibility and use of African-published research output & support African higher education

AJOL’s Vision is for African learning to translate into African development

AJOL’s Mission is to promote, establish, protect, preserve and maintain an online library and archive of academic

journals published throughout the continent of Africa

www.ajol.info

To join AJOL, journals must be:

Scholarly in content and contain original research

Peer-reviewed and quality controlled Able to provide all content to AJOL Guarantee permission for an AJOL article

delivery service Published within the African continent

AJOL includes

Over 330 journals & 36 000 articles Covering the full range of academic

disciplines – particularly strong section on health

Each journal decides their accessibility model and AJOL respects & accommodates this autonomy

Both Open Access & Subscription-based journals (going forward, resources for OA)

AJOL participant journals are from:

– user functionality

Search entire database or specific journal User-friendly access to meta-data free on

AJOL website Access to article full text (online from Jan 09)

full text is progressively subsidized; OA-journals free.

Free email alerts to registered users Journal information from each homepage

author guidelines, contact information, etc.

> 55,000 unique visitors / month

Visits by continent 2007

African researchers extremely critical of African-published journals...

AJOL appreciated for being only extant aggregator of African-published journals, and regarded by some as a measure of quality,

BUT AJOL is criticized by others for being to

inclusive...

2009 start the search for quality measure

Big picture... information age

Kondratieff waves Wheel, internal combustion engine, computer

chip Currently, ICT – the internet (information)

A brief history of global ideas on Higher Education and development

For 55 years, the World Bank said Higher Education not important for Africa… In 2000, this was proven wrong

But the impact of this harmful policy must is still to be fully removed by: Regional partnerships African Governments Donor organisations African University leaders

Actionable policies, supportive environment and sufficient funds necessary to improve research and research publishing

2000 – a breakthrough!

The World Bank and UNESCO announce that Higher Education is ESSENTIAL for developing countries

New studies and evidence show that the benefits of H.E. not just private after all.

- Higher tax revenues- higher saving and investment- higher consumption- more research- better national health (allowing higher productivity)- more innovation & entrepreneurship (more job creation)- needed for development of infrastructure- allows technological “catch-up”- increases quality of primary and secondary education- fair legal institutions and systems- better policies and less corrupt governance.

“There is no way we can succeed in the eradication of poverty if the developing world

is not part of knowledge creation, its dissemination and utilization to promote innovation. Higher education is a critical

factor in making this possible and must be part of any development strategy”

Mamphela RampheleManaging Director for Human Development, World Bank, 2000

The role of HEI in poverty

“Strengthening research and research-publishing are crucial priorities for improving higher education in Africa” (Teferra and Altbach, 2004)

Since knowledge, access to information and higher education have recently (Bloom et al, 2005) been shown to be critical in economic development and significant, long-term poverty alleviation, it is imperative for the poorest continent to overcome Africa’s ‘multiple peripherality’ to the international knowledge system (Altbach, 2003: 143).

How to improve this?

1. Policy adjustments & financial resources for higher education, research & research dissemination

2. Internet connectivity, bandwidth, hardware, software & skills

3. Correction of the market failure of scholarly publishing in Africa

4. Optimal use of the open access movement

Quality, Evaluation & Impact Assessment

Quality of the overseas journals +/- known E.g. RAE in UK abandoned due to correlation

with ISI (critical mass of high quality journals included in CR obtains)

Quality of African-published research??

Open Access TO Africa

HINARI, AGORA, TEEAL, OARE, JSTOR AA Initiative, pure OA Need to be pro-active to ensure this does

not displace or further weaken local systems of research & research dissemination

Open Access FROM Africa

Even more important RELEVANT to users’ context Evidence accumulating that OA use &

impact Online (and OA) allows development of

new tools to “measure, assess & manage scientific productivity and progress much better than is currently possible”, although this does rely on critical mass online. (Swan, 2006)

Source: SADC Statistics database, 2003

SADC GDP proportions 2002

http://www.internetworldstats.com

Find practical model for OA publishing in LDC’s African HEI characterized by resource

constraints Critical mass of OA journals is needed, but

also find ways to quality... Use of existing resources to reduce costs, eg.

OJS, AJOL, etc

Catalyse & support non-profit, professional publishers

Improve both quantity AND quality RANGE of quality in AfricaSome world class, but “more often than not, running the

business of (an African) journal is the work of one person who acts as editor-in-chief, editor, messenger, copy editor, managing editor, technical editor, referee, designer, and negotiator (with printers, distributors, and university officials)…” (Teferra 2003)

We need tools to measure quality across the board, not just the top journals.

Criteria for quality assessment system:1. Reliable

2. Digestible

3. Economical

4. Fast results

5. Resistant to “gaming”

(Jennings, 2006)

Acheived by distributed evaluation systems now possible

A combination of “Trust Metrics”

Keep CI as a tool – expand it to be global and develop regional CI’s.

Usage Factors (CiteBase, OpCit, UK Serials Group)

Social networking tools (Soft peer-review...social bookmarking data, collaborative annotation, rating the raters e.g. Del.icio.us (Taraborelli, 2008))

“Trusted digital repositories” (MIT) extended to include content quality not just preservation

Conclusions

More than one measure of quality… don’t throw out the baby

Use of newly possible “Trust Metrics” Potential for a new overall indicator as

trust metrics matures

And for Africa, get a critical mass of African-published research online and Open Access

THANK YOU

Susan Murray… susan@ajol.info

…OA MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER!!!!!!