Author: bronwynb

Together with 10 other Stellenbosch University (SU) support staff and Lidia du Plessis of the SU International Office, I set off for one week on a journey to Lund in Sweden, via Copenhagen in Denmark. We were hosted by Lund University (LU) International Office. The first day was spent being introduced to LU and taking a walk through the historical town. The two International Offices had organised a job shadowing programme for each of the support staff.

I was hosted by the Lund University School of Economics and Management Library (LUSEM). The librarians at LUSEM are preparing to move their library to a new facility and are in the process of weeding their print journals. Instantly I found similarities in what we at USBL (Stellenbosch University Bellville Park Campus Library) went through in preparing for our renovations. There were further similarities regarding many aspects of my work as a faculty librarian as well as in what the SU Library and Information Service is working towards in terms of postgraduate research support, open access and research data management. Central to LU’s success in driving open access and research data management is that LU Library forms part of a network (internally, faculty-wide and nationally) that actively works towards achieving its shared goals. The network combines resources and shares knowledge to find solutions.

I enjoyed getting to know and travelling with my colleagues from the SU main campus. We used the daylight hours to wander around Copenhagen and Lund. At night the temperature dropped as low as 5°C and we spent our evenings around the table sharing experiences. One of the experiences shared was how unsafe it felt walking on the pavement. Speeding cyclists and pedestrians share the pavement. I had an issue with going through doors in Sweden. I was never sure if the doors would open automatically or if I should push or pull.  And keeping excited South Africans quiet on their first train ride in a dedicated quiet area was a challenge.

Some interesting facts:

Lund University	Stellenbosch University
Established in 1666	Established 1918
2nd Oldest university in Sweden	2nd Oldest university in South Africa
Independent government university	Independent government university
7 600 employees of which 1 000 support staff	3 454 employees of which 2 363 support staff
8 faculties	10 faculties
26 libraries	6 libraries
40 000 students	31 765 students
87 000 population of Lund	176 523 population of Stellenbosch
LU School of Economics and Management has 6 departments	Stellenbosch University Business School has 3 departments
Research areas: innovation & entrepreneurship	USB Research areas: leadership, equality, futures and business in society

Thank you to Ms Ellen Tise and Ms Henriëtte Swart of the SU Library and Information Service for nominating me to participate in this Staff Development Programme. I enjoyed the international exposure and came back with renewed energy and insight to make the most of my role in the Library.

Thank you to the SU International Office for this opportunity to visit Denmark and Sweden. Thank you to Lidia du Plessis from the SU International Office and Par Svenson of the LU International Office for organising our stay and job shadowing programme. Thank you to LUSEM Library for organising the job shadowing programme and sharing your expertise. Thank you to the SU support staff for the camaraderie during our travels. It was a joy travelling with you!

Judy Williams

Photographs: Judy Williams

 

South African researchers could be priced out of the mainstream of global scholarship under new, expensive plans for open access publishing being considered by the government in Pretoria.

The new framework would require authors rather than readers to pay for publication, and only those with deep pockets would be able to pay the article processing charges (APCs) levied by many of the most widely read journals.

The framework, called Plan S, which was launched last year by the European Union (EU) with the goal of making scholarly reports freely available to all, is being seriously considered by South Africa’s National Research Foundation and the government, according to Tandi Matsha, founder and lead researcher at the Cardiometabolic Health Research Unit at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.

The author-pays model for open access proposed by the plan is already limiting the publishing prospects for South African scholars, according to Professor Robin Crewe, senior research fellow in the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria.

“Even now individual scholars are not able to publish in their preferred journals because they can’t afford the article processing charges,” Crewe told a roundtable convened by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) at Stellenbosch University in October.

“So, they are being forced to publish in journals they can afford. One of the effects of this is the marginalisation of authors from the [Global] South.”

Against local interests

Panellists at the roundtable, which was held to discuss the question: “Is scholarly publishing becoming unaffordable?”, expressed the fear that South Africa was sleepwalking into an arrangement between publishers and research institutions and funders, which it was unprepared to manage or properly fund, and which may harm the interests of its own scholars and learned societies.

“We are not concerned about Plan S because we don’t think it is going to affect us. Our heads are in the sand,” said Keyan Tomaselli, distinguished professor in the faculty of humanities at the University of Johannesburg.

However, the impacts of Plan S would be very real. For example, the new funding model proved more expensive when it was tested by Stellenbosch University library against current deals with two major journal publishers: Wiley and Taylor & Francis.

“For research-intensive universities, these new agreements are not going to be beneficial. We are going to pay more for the current subscriptions,” said Ellen Tise, senior director of library and information services at Stellenbosch University.

In addition, Tise argued, although institutions with low research outputs may benefit from the kinds of open access deals being promoted by Plan S, “it will not address the deep knowledge gap between developed and developing nations; and, at the end of the day, the big commercial publishers will continue to benefit”.

The problem, it was broadly agreed at the roundtable, was not the actual principle of open access, which is largely accepted by the academy in South Africa. The potential benefits of openness to scientific integrity and innovation in the public interest, as well as to the democratisation of the research cycle and regional development, have been widely acknowledged, including by the United Nations.

“The issue is not that we disagree that we want to do this, but rather the how-we-do-it issue,” said Tise.

Lack of support for open access

A lack of financial and policy-making commitment to the principle of open access from the national government in South Africa constitutes a major challenge in this regard.

“The Department of Higher Education and Training, which is the main funding agency for supporting research activities, encourages open access for research publications and the archiving of results. But it doesn’t put its money where its mouth is and support open access financially,” said Crewe.

Indeed, the National Research Foundation in South Africa announced a similar plan to that proposed by Europe’s Plan S several years ago, according to Tise. “But there was no system in place. It was not even a policy, just a statement.

“We are still waiting for the policy to mandate and force researchers to at least deposit their research in the institutional repositories.”

Such depositing constitutes a minimal form of open access, known as ‘green open access’ and falls far short of the kind of access envisaged as the standard under Plan S, which would require research to be made freely available in its published form immediately and in perpetuity.

Plan S, which is due to come into effect in 2021, was forged by a number of major international research funders, including from the philanthropic and international governance sectors, which came together with national research councils and the EU to create pressure to dismantle the paywalls erected by the main academic publishing houses.

‘Double-dipping’

However, instead of reducing costs, the approach that has been adopted by Plan S is liable to further enrich the big five academic publishers which dominate the industry – Reed-Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer and SAGE – by enabling ‘double-dipping’ practices under which big journals can both levy APCs and charge for reader subscriptions.

“In South Africa, we don’t qualify for the waivers available for researchers from low-income countries,” said Matsha. Given the uncertainty over the extent to which the APC costs of authors from countries outside Europe joining Plan S may be defrayed, the open access obligation imposed by the scheme could, Matsha calculated, cost the Department of Higher Education and Training billions of rands in publishing fees.

The proposed publishing regime was further criticised at the ASSAf roundtable for eroding academic freedoms; further dividing an already fractured global scholarly publishing community; and undermining scholarly societies and their high-quality journals.

“Plan S, which has been criticised for being forged without any consultation with researchers, scholarly societies or publishers, will disqualify 85% of existing society journals and divide the world into different research coalitions, effectively banning European authors from publishing in non-approved journals outside Europe,” said Tomaselli.

A ‘race to the bottom’

With paid-for ‘gold open access’ publication likely to become the norm under the plan, he gave warning of a race to the bottom, as rigorous quality-control standards for material will be sacrificed in the interests of profit.

“By smashing the traditional publishers with their added values of peer-review, libel checks, cross-referencing, copy editing, legal protections, ethical regimes, marketing, etc, further opportunities will be made available to the predators,” he said.

Tomaselli further predicted a hollowing out of the market for quality scholarship under the plan. “The cost of publishing, rather than the quality of the research, will decide where the research is published. Plan S may also lead to the demise of scholarly societies, especially those which rely heavily on their journals to produce income through their permissions, royalties and re-publication charges.”

For researchers, particularly those chasing limited funds, the creative commons form of copyright offered by Plan S, which affords no material recompense, may lead them to publish later rather than sooner, allowing them to exploit their intellectual property more exhaustively and also preventing other better-resourced peers from jumping on their intellectual bandwagon, said Matsha.

“The authors [always] want to join a club that is more impactful than the one they are currently in,” said Tise, noting that the new publishing models being proposed as part of the open access debate “had left authors and researchers confused”.

New models

“The model for Plan S is already in decline and there are moves to new models that are starting to appear,” Tise said, advocating the value of so-called “transformative” agreements, such as read-and-publish and publish-and-read deals which are being promoted by the South African National Library and Information Consortium as a sustainable solution in its negotiations with major commercial publishers.

“If we don’t look for a model that will fit our situation and the things we need to address, it is going to put at risk the global visibility of research for researchers from the South who cannot afford to participate,” she said.

ASSAf President Professor Jonathan Jansen reinforced the point. “Unless you understand that this intellectual, financial complex is embedded in a system of power and money, it is hard to come up with a fair and equitable solution,” he said.

In this regard, ASSAf has sought to promote ‘diamond’ open access, which means free-to-publish and free-to-read, through its in-house journal, the South African Journal of Science; its support for national scholarly editors’ and publishers’ forums; and its establishment and management of the open access SciELO SA database of journals.

The initiatives may be viewed as part of larger efforts to establish a collaborative, non-commercial, sustainable, non-subordinated system, which would take publishing out of the hands of the international firms and return it to the academy in the form of diamond open access – as has been advocated by the Latin American AmeliCA consortium.

Under such a system, Tomaselli said, the Department of Higher Education and Training would be obliged to require universities to invest in infrastructure and technology such as journals and editorial teams, or fund the journals directly itself. A more democratic model could also see researchers being paid for peer reviews, according to Matsha.

Mark Paterson is a senior journalist and communications consultant with a wide range of non-governmental, government and academic organisations. Read the original article here.

Copyright: University World News

Photograph: Library and Information Service, Stellenbosch University

Ms Ellen Tise, Senior Director of the Library and Information Service, has been appointed chair of the IFLA Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) Advisory Committee for the period 2019 – 2021 at the recent IFLA World Library and Information Congress held in Athens.

IFLA is the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions and the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It serves as the global voice of the library and information profession.

FAIFE is IFLA’s Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression. It is an initiative to protect and promote the basic human rights defined in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The FAIFE Committee fosters freedom of access to information and freedom of expression in all respects, directly or indirectly, related to libraries and librarianship. FAIFE monitors the state of intellectual freedom within the library community worldwide, supports IFLA policy development and co-operation with other international human rights organisations, and responds to violations of free access to information and freedom of expression. The chair of FAIFE plays an important role in supporting the work of the IFLA Governing Board on many key ethical and policy questions.

Ms Tise served as IFLA president from 2009 – 2011 and was appointed an Honorary Fellow of IFLA in 2012, IFLA’s highest award to a person who has delivered long and distinguished service to IFLA.

Ms Tise is wished much success during her term of office in this challenging role.

 

Sources:

FAIFE. https://www.ifla.org/about-faife. Accessed on 28 August 2019.

Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) Advisory Committee. https://www.ifla.org/faife. Accessed on 28 August 2019.

IFLA. https://www.ifla.org/about. Accessed on 28 August 2019.

The Library now subscribes to PressReader, a platform that provides online access to more than 7 200 international newspapers and magazines, including about 200 from South Africa (such as Die Burger, Cape Times, Mail & Guardian, Financial Mail, Business Day, City Press, Isolezwe, The Guardian, The Sowetan and Huisgenoot). New issues of the newspapers and magazines appear on PressReader as soon as they are published. We also have archival access to publications for up to 20 years.

Articles or full publications may be downloaded to any smartphone, tablet or laptop to be read when offline. Access to these downloaded articles or publications never expires.

When accessing PressReader on your mobile device for the first time, you should do so via the Databases A-Z list on the Library website. This will authenticate your device and you will be able to continue using PressReader for up to seven days after leaving the campus. The timer on the welcome message will indicate how many days of access you have left on your device. Once the timer runs out, you simply need to re-authenticate your device through the Databases A-Z list on the Library website, or by bringing your device into the Maties Wifi range (if your device is registered for wireless connection to the University network).

PressReader has an audio feature that lets you listen to articles while you are on the go and offers instant translation in up to 18 different languages for most articles and even full publications.

PressReader’s popularity on campus is illustrated by the fact that, during the first month of access, 36 460 articles have been read by SU users.

For more information, please contact Naomi Visser at nrv@sun.ac.za or 021 808 4433.

Watch our SUNBibVideo How to use PressReader.

The Library and Information Service launched the institutional research data repository, SUNScholarData, on 12 August 2019. In the past decade, the management of research data has taken on a more prominent role in tertiary education institutions around the world. This has been primarily due to the increasingly data-centric nature that academic research has taken.

As a leading research institution, SU is helping to address this issue by taking the necessary steps to adopt appropriate data management practices. One of these steps is the establishment of an institutional research data repository. The implementation of SUNScholarData forms part of the Library and Information Service’s role regarding research data support which has been identified as a strategic objective of the Library and Information Service in terms of supporting research by providing world-class, diverse, innovative and client-oriented services.

Some of the set of services that SUNScholarData as institutional research data repository will provide is to capture, store, index, preserve and redistribute the University’s research data in digital formats. There are also two purposes for relying on an institutional research data repository. Firstly, this would create a medium through which SU’s research data can be made findable and accessible. Secondly, it would facilitate the interoperability and re-usability of the University’s research data.

The establishment of the repository is in line with SU’s vision of being “Africa’s leading research-intensive university, globally recognised as excellent, inclusive and innovative, where we advance knowledge in service of society” as well as the University’s strategy of supporting Open Science.

Pictured above at the launch, are (left to right): Prof Eugene Cloete (Vice-Rector: Research, Innovation and Postgraduate Studies), Prof Louise Warnich (Dean of Science), Prof Wim de Villiers (Rector & Vice-Chancellor), Ms Ellen R Tise (Senior Director: Library and Information Service), Ms Mimi Seyffert-Wirth (Deputy Director: Digital Scholarship, Library and Information Service), Prof Wikus van Niekerk (Dean of Engineering).

Several staff appointments have recently been made within the Library and Information Service.

Ms Elizabeth Moll-Willard was appointed as Faculty Librarian: AgriSciences from 1 May 2019.  Elizabeth previously held the position as Librarian in the Research Commons.  Elizabeth can be found at Desk 1, on the Upper level of Stellenbosch University Library, in her new role.

 

Ms Yandiswa Nombewu was appointed as Clerical Assistant in Technical Services from 1 June 2019. Yandiswa’s work supports both the divisions of Metadata Management and Acquisitions. Yandiswa previously worked as a Research Assistant at the Desmond Tutu TB Centre at Tygerberg campus, for some six years.

 

Mr Jimmy Makoloane was appointed as Makerspace Technical Officer from 1 July 2019. Jimmy previously worked at the South African Weather Services, as a Senior Technologist. He has a National Diploma in Computer Systems Engineering and a BTech degree in Electrical Engineering from the Central University of Technology.

 

Also taking up her position from 1 July, was Ms Rhoda Moses, who has been appointed as Administrative Officer. Rhoda previously worked at the SU Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology (CIB) which is situated in the Natural Sciences Building.

 

Mr Kirchner van Deventer was appointed as Head: Carnegie Research Commons from 5 August 2019. Kirchner has worked at the Northwest University Libraries in Potchefstroom, most recently as Faculty Librarian in the Education Sciences Library. Kirchner has a BA in Humanities, a BA Honours in English Literature and a Postgraduate Diploma in Library and Information Science.

 

Ms Sizeka Lengisi-Sikhondo was appointed as Assistant Librarian in Metadata Management on 1 September 2019. Sizeka previously worked as Junior Librarian in the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS), the special collections division of the SU Music Library. Sizeka’s work included the sorting of collections and, the assigning of metadata.

 

We wish Elizabeth, Yandiswa, Jimmy, Rhoda, Kirchner and Sizeka well in their new roles.

The Library recently purchased Colonial Africa in Official Statistics, 1821-1953 as an online resource. This resource is also referred to as the “African Blue Books, 1821-1953”.

The resource provides rich statistical information about thirteen colonies across Africa during the colonial period. Statistics include the revenue and expenditure, population, education, trade, agriculture, and land of a colony. The Cape of Good Hope is one of the colonies included in the resource, with statistics provided for the period 1821 to 1909. Other colonies covered include Basutoland (Lesotho), Gold Coast (Ghana), East Africa Protectorate (Kenya), Lagos (Nigeria), Nyasaland (Malawi) and Tanganyika (Tanzania).

Colonial Africa in Official Statistics, 1821-1953 will be particularly useful to researchers who, equipped with new statistical tools, explore historical datasets to answer new questions about the African past.

Colonial Africa in Official Statistics, 1821-1953 is available via the Databases A-Z list on the Library website, on campus as well as off campus.

For more information, please contact Naomi Visser at nrv@sun.ac.za or 021 808 4433.

 

Sources:

Governing Africa: British records from African countries under colonial rule. British Online Archives. https://microform-digital.ez.sun.ac.za/boa/series/18/governing-africa-british-records-from-african-countries-under-colonial-rule. Accessed 13 September 2019.

 

On 13 March 2019, the Library and Information Service hosted visiting students from the Institute of Legal Practice Development and Research for training in the use of legal resources. Above, Ms Sibongiseni Mrwashu, Junior Law Librarian (on the right), is seen informing the group about important printed resources.

It pays off to attend Library Research Week. Mr David Okimait did just that! Not only has he had the opportunity to augment his research skills from expert presenters, but David is also the lucky draw winner of a Lenovo TAB7 Essential Tablet. The prize is sponsored by Sabinet. David is the lucky winner out of all attendees of Library Research Week.

On being informed, David expressed that he was excited and thankful to be the winner of this super prize. He also wrote:

The Library Research Week was both a humbling and learning experience for me as I have not seen libraries in other academic institutions go to such lengths to help their library users and researchers optimally utilise the different library resources. It’s my strong belief that my continued interaction and utilisation of the library and several opportunities it offers will immensely shape my research skills.

I once again thank you for the opportunity and I am humbled by the gesture of library partners like Sabinet. …

David is a doctoral student in Sociology. He is pictured above receiving his prize on Friday 31 May from Ilse de Lange (Director: Technical Services & Electronic Resources Management) and Pepler Head (Subject Librarian, and member of the Research Week Committee), at the Stellenbosch University Library.

Congratulations, David, and thank you for taking part in Library Research Week!

During Library Research Week, Glenn Truran, Director of SANLiC (the South African National Library Consortium), shed light on the current situation regarding open access publishing globally.

Glenn reminded the audience that we are still using a centuries-old model for communicating research which, once published, is hidden behind a paywall of annual subscription fees.

About 20 years ago, publishers started to move individual journals into journal packages (the so-called “big deals”) in order to provide libraries access to more electronic journals. This, however, is a double-edged sword. The benefit is that by paying a little bit more libraries suddenly have access to far more electronic resources than they would otherwise have been able to afford. The drawback is that big deals gradually can take up an increasingly larger portion of a library’s collection budget, leaving less funds for other resources.

However, while libraries are struggling, publishers continue to prosper. Glenn illustrated how Elsevier, the biggest publisher in the world, averaged an annual profit of 36,7% over the past 9 years.

In response to this situation, the Open Access movement started some years ago, with the aim of making research available online, free of the requirement to subscribe to a resource to obtain access. Open access did not grow as quickly as everyone had hoped, but in recent years a number of new initiatives have emerged around the globe, all with the intention of forcing publishers to change the way in which research publication is funded. For example, in July 2017 German universities cancelled their subscriptions to Elsevier’s ScienceDirect, and in the subsequent two years Sweden and the University of California did the same.

In September 2018, cOAlition S announced Plan S which requires that, from 2020 onwards, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants provided by participating national and European research councils and funding bodies must be published in journals or on platforms compliant with open access. In February 2019 cOAlition S welcomed its first African member (the National Science Council of Zambia) and the African Academy of Sciences expressed support for Plan S.

In December 2018, representatives of 37 countries signed the 14^th Berlin Declaration, committing to

• authors retaining their copyright,
• complete and immediate open access, and
• accelerating the progress of open access through transformative agreements that are temporary and transitional, with a shift to full open access within a few years.

According to this statement these agreements should, at least initially, be cost-neutral, with the expectation that economic adjustments will follow as the markets transform. Publishers are expected to work with all members of the global research community to effect complete and immediate open access upon publication.

South Africa was represented by USAf, ASSAf, the NRF, DST, DHET and SANLiC. Afterwards USAf produced a briefing document, which includes a draft roadmap to guide South Africa’s negotiations towards open access to scholarly journals. The document ends with:

The success of the OA2020 campaigns in other national systems is driven by the level of consensus that exists in those scholarly communities. This requires engagement and discussion. There is need for urgency since the negotiations for the next set of contracts have already begun.

In his response to Glenn’s talk, Prof Michael Cherry of the Department of Botany and Zoology at Stellenbosch University agreed with Glenn about the value of and the need for open access publishing, but also lamented the fact that it was expensive and therefore difficult for researchers to afford.

Naomi Visser