African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

Mike Schramm

Managing Director, NISC (Pty) Ltd

African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

Refinements and changes to existing policy aimed at

developing researchers, developing research and

creating an environment that will see the application of

this research into a wider world

Publishers play a small role in shaping policy and like to

think our voices get heard

Bigger role as facilitators of implementation of this policy

African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

Two significant new policy developments:

DHET has revised its publication subsidy arrangements

for published research output

NRF has released its open access statement – adoption

of an international initiative from the Global Research

Council for better access to research output by other

researchers, practitioners and the general public

“publically funded research should be available to the public”

Objectives

The policy endeavours ‘to sustain current research strengths and to promote research/ knowledge outputs required to meet national development needs’.

The intention is to support and encourage scholarship

The focus is on growing research and innovation; encourage research productivity and improve the quality of research

Policy on Journals

Journals are peer-reviewed periodical publications devoted to disseminating original research and new developments.

All research articles published in accredited journals are subsidised.

Only full length, peer reviewed research articles qualify for subsidy.

Book reviews, abstracts, news articles and similar publications are not subsidized.

Approved lists of journals

There are currently 3 lists of approved journals.

• ISI list: the Thomson Reuters Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science Lists contain just over 12200 journals. The majority of these (almost 8300) are in the sciences, but all subject fields are covered.

• IBSS list: the ProQuest IBSS list contains just over 2800 journals and focuses on the social sciences.

• DHET list: contains journals whose seat of publication is South Africa-administered by the DHET. Currently contains around 270 South African journals in various subject fields.

Long term vision for DHET accredited list

The revised policy extends the accredited lists of journals.

Addition of 3 journal indices: Scopus, SciELO SA, Norwegian list – bringing the total to 6 (ISI, IBSS, DHET list).

The DHET list is subject to revisions as and when deemed necessary-for quality purposes.

The DHET list is aimed at being developmental and encourages growth of Journals into international lists-movement encouraged at least after 5 years

African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

Inclusion of new indexes will mean some more qualifying

titles (but many titles common across indices).

Will the DHET list just be a temporary home for titles to

give them a chance to garner reputation and then move

into one of the more prestigious indices. Will failure to

progress mean elimination from the list?

As publishers, we strategise with editors and societies to

raise the quality and when ready submit the title for

inclusion in an appropriate index

African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

New titles are needed to cater for emerging fields of

research and to fill gaps in the market where established

titles may have closed.

Articles contributed to new journals (not yet on the DHET

list) will not qualify for subsidy. The minimum period

between launch of a new title and qualification for

subsidy is 18 months.

This will stifle the launch of new local journal titles - local

authors won’t sacrifice their best work without payment.

A solution may be to allow retrospective qualification for

subsidy payment.

African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

Derived from International Council for Science five goals for OA

– access to the scientific record should be free of financial barriers

for any researcher to contribute to

– free of financial barriers for any user to access immediately on

publication

– made available without restriction on reuse for any purpose, subject

to proper attribution

– quality‐assured and published in a timely manner

– archived and made available in perpetuity

Global Research Council has been working with regional research

councils in formulating the framework of the Open Access Action Plan

African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

NRF’s brief is to support research through public funding

to grow knowledge economy and promote innovation to

stimulate development.

Research articles emanating from NRF funded research

should be available Open Access.

Gold OA – entire VoR is open access (either in Open

Access journal or a hybrid journal)

NRF intention – APC built into original funding

Green OA – a version of the article (not VoR) available

Open Access. No costs but an embargo period

NRF intention – posted into institutional repository

African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

Transition to OA requires actions from other stakeholders:

NRF Recognised Institutions

Universities

Research Libraries

Scholarly Associations

Publishing Houses

African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

Over the past 10 years, changing author needs wrt

online content and the emergence of Open Access have

seen publishers experiment with a variety of solutions

and options. We are well positioned to meet these OA

requirements.

As editors, you will be able to assure authors that they

will be fully compliant with the new NRF policy should

they publish in one of our journals.

African Editorial Indaba – Taylor & Francis Group Cape Town – 24 March 2015

Angie Magabane, University Policy and Development,

DHET

Daisy Selematsela, Knowledge Management Corporate,

NRF

for use of their presentations from

the Johannesburg leg of the Editorial Indaba