Archives des mots-clés : south africa

Open access and its potential impact on public health – A South African perspective

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Authors : Adéle Strydom, Juanita Mellet, Jeanne Van Rensburg, Ignatius Viljoen, Anastasios Athanasiadis, Michael S. Pepper

Traditionally, access to research information has been restricted through journal subscriptions. This means that research entities and individuals who were unable to afford subscription costs did not have access to journal articles. There has however been a progressive shift toward electronic access to journal publications and subsequently growth in the number of journals available globally.

In the context of electronic journals, both open access and restricted access options exist. While the latter option is comparable to traditional, subscription-based paper journals, open access journal publications follow an “open science” publishing model allowing scholarly communications and outputs to be publicly available online at no cost to the reader.

However, for readers to enjoy open access, publication costs are shifted elsewhere, typically onto academic institutions and authors. SARS-CoV-2, and the resulting COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the benefits of open science through accelerated research and unprecedented levels of collaboration and data sharing. South Africa is one of the leading open access countries on the African continent.

This paper focuses on open access in the South African higher education research context with an emphasis on our Institution and our own experiences. It also addresses the financial implications of open access and provides possible solutions for reducing the cost of publication for researchers and their institutions.

Privacy in open access and the role of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) in medical research and secondary use of data in South Africa will also be discussed.

URL : Open access and its potential impact on public health – A South African perspective

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2022.975109

Gender gaps in research productivity and recognition among elite scientists in the U.S., Canada, and South Africa

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Authors : Creso Sá, Summer Cowley, Magdalena Martinez, Nadiia Kachynska, Emma Sabzalieva

This study builds upon the literature documenting gender disparities in science by investigating research productivity and recognition among elite scientists in three countries. This analysis departs from both the general comparison of researchers across organizational settings and academic appointments on one hand, and the definition of “elite” by the research outcome variables on the other, which are common in previous studies.

Instead, this paper’s approach considers the stratification of scientific careers by carefully constructing matched samples of men and women holding research chairs in Canada, the United States and South Africa, along with a control group of departmental peers.

The analysis is based on a unique, hand-curated dataset including 943 researchers, which allows for a systematic comparison of successful scientists vetted through similar selection mechanisms.

Our results show that even among elite scientists a pattern of stratified productivity and recognition by gender remains, with more prominent gaps in recognition. Our results point to the need for gender equity initiatives in science policy to critically examine assessment criteria and evaluation mechanisms to emphasize multiple expressions of research excellence.

URL : Gender gaps in research productivity and recognition among elite scientists in the U.S., Canada, and South Africa

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240903

Embracing New Trends in Scholarly Communication: From Competency Requirements in the Workplace to LIS Curriculum Presence

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Author : Jaya Raju

INTRODUCTION

Scholarly communication has undergone dramatic change in the digital era as a result of rapidly evolving digital technology. It is within this context of evolving scholarly communication that this paper reports on an inquiry into (1) the extent to which university libraries in South Africa are actively embracing new and emerging trends in scholarly communication; and (2), the extent to which LIS school curricula in South Africa are responding to new and emerging scholarly communication competencies required in university libraries.

METHODS

This qualitative study, located within an interpretivist epistemological worldview, was informed by the Operational Elements of Scientific Communication aspect of Khosrowjerdi’s (2011) Viable Scientific Communication Model.

Data was collected using summative content analysis of university library job advertisements over a four-year period; South African university libraries’ organizational organograms; and course descriptions available on the websites of South Africa’s LIS schools.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION

A review of job advertisements and organograms shows that on the whole university libraries in South Africa are embracing the new and emerging trends in scholarly communication, but some university libraries are performing better than others in adopting emerging scholarly communication services such as RDM, digital humanities, or research landscape analysis.

Course description analysis provides evidence that LIS schools’ curricula, as per global trend reported in the literature, do not seem to be keeping pace with developments in scholarly communication.

CONCLUSION

The ambivalent nature of an evolving scholarly communications field with unclear definitions and boundaries necessitates professional practitioners who are adaptable and open to change as well as an LIS education curriculum that is in constant review to seamlessly embrace an evolving field propelled by advancing digital technologies.

URL : Embracing New Trends in Scholarly Communication: From Competency Requirements in the Workplace to LIS Curriculum Presence

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2291

Data Sharing Practices among Researchers at South African Universities

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Authors : Siviwe Bangani, Mathew Moyo

Research data management practices have gained momentum the world over. This is due to increased demands by governments and other funding agencies to have research data archived and shared as widely as possible.

This paper sought to establish the data sharing practices of researchers in South Africa. The study further sought to establish the level of collaboration among researchers in sharing research data at the university level.

The outcomes of the survey will help the researchers to develop appropriate data literacy awareness programmes meant to stimulate growth in data sharing practices for the benefit of research, not only in South Africa, but the world at large.

A survey research method was used to gather data from willing public universities in South Africa. A similar study was conducted in other countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Turkey but the Researchers believe that circumstances in the developed world may differ with the South African research environment, hence the current study.

The major finding of this study was that most researchers preferred to use data produced by others but less keen on sharing their own data.

This study is the first of its kind in South Africa which investigates data sharing practices of researchers from multi-disciplinary fields at the university level and will contribute immensely to the growing body of literature in the area of research data management.

URL : Data Sharing Practices among Researchers at South African Universities

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2019-028

The use and perceptions of open Access resources by legal academics at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa

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Author : Elizabeth Moll-Willard

Although access to primary legal materials in South Africa is now easily accessible as a result of the Free Access to Law movement, access to legal scholarship is not as easy.

Through using the University of Cape Town (UCT) as a case study, due to its research intensive nature, it is possible to see how academics are publishing their legal scholarship through the use of bibliometrics and data mining.

After the success of a Research Visibility month, law librarians were able to attest to the perceptions of legal academics around the importance of the openness and visibility of their research.

The author contrasts these two to see if the perception of legal academics around the visibility of their resources reflects their publishing practices. It is seen that although academics at UCT publish mostly in closed journals, the publishing in open and hybrid journals has slowly increased during the period 2011-2015.

Further it is evidenced that legal academics are exploring other avenues, including that of self-archiving, to boost the visibility of their work. Law Librarians are able to assist in boosting at least the visibility, if not the openness of legal academics’ work.

URL : The use and perceptions of open Access resources by legal academics at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa

Alternative location : https://ojs.law.cornell.edu/index.php/joal/article/view/78

Student perceptions of the creation and reuse of open educational resources: A case study of the development-oriented student organisation

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Authors : Michael Paskevicius, Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams

This case study explores students’ perceptions of the creation and reuse of digital teaching and learning resources in their work as tutors as part of a volunteer community development organisation at a large South African University.

Through a series of semi-structured interviews, student-tutors reflect on their use and reuse of digital educational resources, and identify the challenges they experience in curating, adapting, and reusing educational resources for use in their teaching activities.

The data is analysed qualitatively within the framework of an activity system (Engeström, 1987) to surface the primary systemic tensions that student-tutors face in the reuse of resources found online as well as open educational resources (OER).

This study found that student-tutors sourced and used educational materials from the Internet, largely irrespective of their licensing conditions, while also creating and remixing a substantial number of educational materials to make them suitable for use in their context.

We conclude that greater awareness of the availability of OER and explicit open licencing for works sourced and created within community development organisations could enhance sharing, collaboration, and help sustain high impact resources.

URL : Student perceptions of the creation and reuse of open educational resources: A case study of the development-oriented student organisation

Alternative location : http://www.jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/253

Open Access to Scientific Information in Emerging Countries

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Author : Joachim Schöpfel

Access to information plays a critical role in supporting development. Open access to scientific information is one solution. Up to now, the open access movement has been most successful in the Western hemisphere.

The demand for open access is great in the developing world as it can contribute to solving problems related to access gaps. Five emerging countries, called BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — play a specific and leading role with a significant influence on regional and global affairs because of their large and fast-growing national economies, their demography and geographic situation.

In order to better understand open access in each of the five countries, in this paper we take a look at specific conditions in each country, relying on data from information professionals and scientists from BRICS, with an empirical approach focused on country-specific characteristics and challenges.

URL : http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march17/schopfel/03schopfel.html