Save the Date for Open Repositories 2020, 1-4 June

The Open Repositories Steering Committee and Stellenbosch University is delighted to announce that the 15th Open Repositories Conference will be held in Stellenbosch, South Africa, from 1-4 June 2020. The conference will be organised by Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service who looks forward to welcoming delegates to the first Open Repositories Conference (OR) on the African continent.

Stellenbosch University, located in the historical town of Stellenbosch, approximately 50 km from Cape Town, strives to be Africa’s leading research-intensive university, globally recognised as excellent, inclusive and innovative where knowledge is advanced in service of society.

The Library and Information Service has been playing an active role in the African and international Open Access community for a number of years and one of its strategic objectives is to develop and maintain collaborative relationships with a range of external and internal stakeholders by advancing local, national and international initiatives with regards to open scholarship.

Having chosen Stellenbosch as the venue, the annual OR Conference continues its objective to bring practitioners working at the interface of technology and scholarship together. Participants at OR come from higher education, government, libraries, archives and museums to share their experiences and knowledge about repository infrastructure, tools, services, and policies. We hope you will join us in Stellenbosch in 2020!

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SUNJournals welcomes a new addition

The Journal of Emerging African Scholarship (JEAS) is the first and currently only peer-reviewed journal based on the African continent publishing original scholarship written by undergraduate and honours students. Focused on publishing M.I.T (Multi-, Inter-, Transdisciplinary) research aimed at the African continent and its component parts.

Living by its motto Africa In Focus, Global In Impact, JEAS strives to promote African scholarship and pan-African cooperation in seeking to build Africa’s knowledge base from the ground up. JEAS also provides opportunities for masters and doctoral students to gain peer-review experience within the academic publishing environment.

Striving for excellence, JEAS follows the same procedures and requirements of academic peer-review and editorial policy of accredited journals. JEAS aims to become the first journal of its kind hosted on international indices and gain accreditation. We can be found at http://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/jeas.

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Marloth Digital Collection

A precious collection of the original botanical illustrations prepared for printing between 1912 and 1932 in Rudolf Marloth’s Flora of South Africa, has now been digitalised by the Stellenbosch University Library.

The collection of 176 plates contains the original illustrations by botanical artists such as Ethel May Dixie (1876-1973), Esther Smith (1878-1954), Florence Amy Thwaits and Peter McManus, with handwritten notes and instructions for the printers by Marloth.

Marloth (1855-1931) is regarded as one of South Africa’s greatest early botanists. He was a chemist and pharmacist who emigrated from Germany to the Cape of Good Hope in 1883. It is said that on the very first day of arriving in the Cape, he climbed Table Mountain and started collecting plants. Marloth’s association with Stellenbosch University started in 1888, when he was appointed as lecturer in Chemistry and Experimental Physics at the then Victoria College, the forerunner of Stellenbosch University today. In 1922 Stellenbosch University awarded him with an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his contribution to the understanding and knowledge of the Cape Floral Kingdom.

Over the years, the Marloth family donated several of the original illustrations and plates to the Stellenbosch University Library. This collection has now been taken up in the SUNDigital Collections of the library. The Special Collections Division of the library also hosts many of his personal documents, correspondence and photographs.

Visit the digital collection at http://digital.lib.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.2/14646

 

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SUNDigital Collections shines brighter

The Library’s digital heritage repository, SUNDigital Collections, which currently hosts 12 861 individual items in 30 collections, recently underwent an essential system upgrade. This upgrade resulted in a new look and feel for the repository, as well as enhanced features for easier navigation. These features include opening images and documents in separate windows and a multi-level hierarchical structure, which allows for more granular indexing of larger collections.

A few new collections were also added to SUNDigital Collections this year, most notably a collection of plates with original botanical illustrations and handwritten notes from the Rudolf Marloth Collection. In keeping with the spirit of the University’s centenary year, the Victoria College and Stellenbosch University photograph collection has been augmented with the addition of several new images, including photographs picturing student life through the years.

Undertaking a Stellenbosch University “Archaeological expedition”, 1920?; J. P. Marais on the far left. Source: Stellenbosch University and Victoria College Historical Photographs collection, SUNDigital Collections, http://hdl.handle.net/10019.2/14887

The collection of journalist August de Villiers (Gus) Cluver, who was a student at Stellenbosch University between 1932 and 1935, has also recently been digitised and uploaded to SUNDigital Collections. Cluver was a student cheerleader and editor of the liberal “Pro Libertate” student publication of which the fragile original is kept in the Africana section of Special Collections. A next step to complete the digital collection would be to digitise these scarce original copies.

In addition to the substantial growth SUNDigital Collections has shown since its inception in 2013, it appears as if the repository is also being widely accessed and used. Recent usage statistics show approximately 1300 visits and 890 downloads in the month up to the 29 May, including international visits from the USA, UK, Russia, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Canada. The most popular downloads are from collections featuring examples of South African vernacular architecture, such as the André Pretorius collection.

Mimi Seyffert-Wirth

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Predatory journals – important update

The Department of Higher Education & Training (DHET) has recently issued a follow-up statement regarding predatory journals.

Some of the journals indicated as “possibly predatory” are not predatory.

The list of journals now labelled “not predatory” are as follows:

Title ISSN EISSN
Africa Education Review 1814-6627 1753-5921
African studies quarterly: the online journal of African studies 2152-2448
Anthropology Southern Africa 2332-3256 2332-3264
Bulletin of comparative labour relations 0770-3724
Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology 1699-5880 16962095
Global Health Action 1654-9716 1654-9880
International Journal of Primatology 0164-0291 1573-8604
Journal of agribusiness and rural development 1899-5241 1899-5772
Journal of Asian and African Studies 0021-9096 1745-2538
Journal of global business and technology 1553-5495
Journal of media law 1757-7632 1757-7640
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Predatory journals – important notification

The Department of Higher Education & Training (DHET) recently highlighted the issue of predatory journals with regards to the recognition of research articles in accredited journals.

The DHET has now taken matters a step further and identified a list of predatory and possibly predatory journals.

Herewith the list of journals in both categories that will no longer be regarded as accredited:

List of predatory journals

Title ISSN EISSN
Banks and Bank Systems 1816-7403 1991-7074
International journal of educational sciences 0975-1122 2456-6322
Journal of communication [Delhi] 0976-691X 2456-6586
Journal of economics [Delhi] 0976-5239 2456-6594
Journal of human ecology 0970-9274 2456-6608
Journal of psychology [Delhi] 0976-4224 2456-6292
Journal of social sciences 0971-8923 2456-6756
Journal of social sciences 1812-0687
Journal of sociology and social anthropology 0976-6634 2456-6764
Problems and Perspectives in Management 1727-7051 1810-5467
Studies of tribes and tribals 0972-639X 2456-6799
Studies on Ethno-Medicine 0973-5070 2456-6772

 

List of possible predatory journals

Title ISSN EISSN
Africa Education Review 1814-6627 1753-5921
African studies quarterly: the online journal of African studies 2152-2448
Anthropology Southern Africa 2332-3256 2332-3264
Bulletin of comparative labour relations 0770-3724
Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology 1699-5880 16962095
Global Health Action 1654-9716 1654-9880
International Journal of Primatology 0164-0291 1573-8604
Journal of agribusiness and rural development 1899-5241 1899-5772
Journal of Asian and African Studies 0021-9096 1745-2538
Journal of global business and technology 1553-5495
Journal of media law 1757-7632 1757-7640

 

Contact Daléne Pieterse (mver@sun.ac.za)  of the Division for Research Development if you have any questions in this regard.

 

 

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Dr John Measey on Open Access

In case you missed it…

The Library and Information Service invited Dr John Measey, senior researcher at the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology, to talk about Open Access as part of International Open Access week 2017 in October.

Dr Measey’s enticing presentation titled “I put my journal behind a paywall, so why am I talking to you about Open Access?” was partly based on his blog post “A rant for Open Access week”.

His “rant” was further supplemented by a piece entitled “Why do I like publishing with PeerJ?”.

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Cambridge University celebrating OA week 2017 announced the full text Open Access to Prof Steven Hawking’s PhD.

The Office of Scholarly Communication is delighted to announce that Professor Stephen Hawking has given the University permission to make his thesis freely available and Open Access in Apollo. By making his PhD thesis open anyone in the world can now freely, and without any barriers, download and read this important piece of research by the world’s most recognizable scientist.

Professor Stephen Hawking’s 1966 doctoral thesis “Properties of expanding universes” (https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.11283) is the most requested item in the University of Cambridge’s Open Access repository, Apollo. The Apollo record for Prof. Hawking’s thesis is regularly viewed over 300 times per month, and since May 2017 the University has received over 200 requests from interested readers who want to download Prof. Hawking’s thesis. You can also view this seminal work on the University of Cambridge Digital Library: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-PHD-05437/1

Read More…

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BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)

BASE (operated by Bielefeld University Library) is one of the world’s most voluminous search engines for academic web resources.

BASE provides more than 100 million documents from more than 5,000 sources with access to the full texts of about 60% of the indexed documents for free (Open Access).

Stellenbosch University repository and journals hosting platforms – SUNScholar and SUNJournals – are also indexed in BASE.

Try it out at https://www.base-search.net/

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South African authored articles in predatory journals

Prof Johann Mouton of CREST and Astrid Valentine recently published a significant study on predatory publishing in SA in the South African Journal of Science.

This is the first study to analyse the extent of predatory publishing in South Africa.

The article is available from: http://www.sajs.co.za/extent-south-african-authored-articles-predatory-journals/johann-mouton-astrid-valentine

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