Library Research News

The 21st-century librarian not only supports research but also serves as an important partner to researchers, contributing directly to the research process. One of the ways in which we partner with researchers at the Medicine and Health Sciences Library (MHSL) is by contributing to systematic and scoping reviews as integral members of research teams.

MHSL librarians play a strategic and collaborative role in strengthening research within the faculty through specialised support in research synthesis methodologies, particularly systematic and scoping reviews. As faculty librarians, we work closely with academic departments, postgraduate students, and researchers across disciplines to contribute meaningfully to high-quality, evidence-based synthesis. At the Medicine Health Sciences Library, we have three faculty librarians and two junior librarians, Yusuf Ras, Alvina Matthee, Nombulelo-Magwebu-Mrali, Kay Jacobs and Pamela Nyokwana, who assist with evidence-based synthesis.

Systematic and scoping reviews are essential components of medicine and health sciences research. These methodologies require careful planning, structured search strategies, transparent workflows, and documentation to ensure reproducibility and reliability. Faculty librarians bring expertise to this process by partnering with research teams from the early stages of review development through to completion. Our collaboration begins with consultation and guidance on refining research questions and identifying appropriate databases and sources. We design comprehensive, reproducible search strategies tailored to each project’s scope and methodology. These searches ensure that researchers retrieve relevant literature while maintaining methodological integrity.

Beyond literature searching, we support research teams in managing the screening and selection process using specialised systematic review platforms such as Cadima and Rayyan. We assist postgraduate students and researchers in organising references, demonstrating the title and abstract screening, managing duplicates, and assisting with documenting decisions required for transparent reporting. This support helps improve workflow efficiency and strengthens the overall quality of review outputs. Postgraduate students benefit particularly from this partnership. Many students undertake systematic or scoping reviews as part of their thesis or research projects and require methodological guidance beyond traditional literature searching. The faculty librarians provide training, consultations, and ongoing support that can assist students in developing confidence in research synthesis techniques.

Our work extends across departments within the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, where we collaborate with supervisors, research groups, and clinical academics on interdisciplinary projects. These partnerships enhance research visibility, strengthen publication readiness, and contribute to the faculty’s commitment to evidence-informed practice and innovation. The Medicine and Health Sciences Library continue to position itself as an essential research partner in the faculty. By supporting systematic and scoping reviews, we contribute directly to strengthening research quality, postgraduate success, and the production of impactful health sciences knowledge.

This work has resulted in several research outputs where librarians have been acknowledged for their contribution, which can potentially lead to co-authorship.

Author: Yusuf Ras

Please contact your Faculty Librarian if you need assistance with a systematic or scoping review.

As a feature of the Library Research News, we have decided to interview researchers and students to share their views on their experiences collaborating with our Librarians to support their research. Below is the first interview with Prof. Strever, Head of the Department and Associate Professor in the Department of Viticulture and Oenology at Stellenbosch University. He also coordinates innovation and entrepreneurship activities in the AgriSciences Faculty and he is a teaching fellow, specialising in entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence incorporation into Teaching, Learning and Assessment activities at the University.

Which services of the Library do you use often?

Prof Albert Strever

I work closely with our Faculty Librarian, in partnership to co-present a course for our second year students on library techniques and finding information, but also interwoven with a task involving comparing AI resources with ‘traditional’ library search techniques. This is done over four weeks of practicals. I also joined forces with Elizabeth Moll-Willard to present a postgraduate session with Engineering students on the use of AI in research.

I am involved in discussions with the Engineering Factulty in using the Makerspace for postgraduate projects, as well as in my entrepreneurship courses, where we intend to make use of the 3d printing and design facilities for prototyping work.

Further, I am also in discussion with Research Data Services on procuring climate data, which would potentially be of wider use in agricultural research and teaching.

What is the most significant way the library supports your research, and what would be the impact on your work if that service was no longer available?

The above-mentioned aspects would be very difficult to execute without the assistance of the library personnel, and use of the shared facilities. With regards to the facility (computer user area) that we use in the library/AI practical that we run – we do not have a facility in our faculty that can accommodate up to 50 students, so it would make that impossible to run if we don’t have the facilities.

How does the library’s expertise and support services help you save time in your day-to-day research work? 

We share the practical slots with our faculty librarian, so it also takes some pressure and weight of our teaching and tutoring in that part of the second year course. The library tools and resources – especially the guides on research literature reviews, including systematic reviews, but also the AI use guides are extremely useful resources, which frees a lot of time when one has to look around to find resources.

How have library consultation services aided you in managing your research data, creating data management plans (DMPs), or ensuring data compliance?

I have not had extensive experience in this, but students I supervise make use of the DMP guides when completing their ethical clearance applications, and also when I write funding applications I use these resources.

What role does the library play in helping you navigate open access publication options/funding?

The library websites have great resources for navigating these publication options, which I have used in many occasions, as have my postgraduate students.

Do you feel the library staff is proactive in offering new services that align with your current research needs? Please give examples.

Yes, and I want to specifically mention Elizabeth Moll-Willard and Norman Hebler in this regard – they go out of their way to provide a state-of-the-art service to us with regards to being at the forefront of innovation in our research and teaching techniques, which I must commend.

If you had the authority to change one library service to better support your research, what would it be?

We need a more integrated solution than SunScholardata for data curation and hosting, and I know this do not (only) reside with the library, but I am currently navigating IT, library, information governance, DRD to find ways in improving research data management from a technical/storage/service perspective.  As I mentioned – this is not a core ‘library function’ problem – but I do think the library – being a core component of RDM – could play a strong role in improving this for researchers.

Interview via e-mail correspondence with Prof Strever

Contrary to popular perceptions, academic libraries are not only depositories of books, journals, newspapers and other popular scholarly publications, but they are stewards and custodians of heritage and memory not just of the institutions, but also of the broader communities. At Stellenbosch University, this is reflected through the Library and Information Service’s digital preservation repository, SUNDigital.

SUNDigital Collections was established in 2013 and hosts historical documents, cultural artefacts, images, music collections, indigenous knowledge collections and finding aids for these collections to increase the visibility of special and unique collections held by the library, and for posterity.

Use of the repository is tracked and shows approximately 40,000 to 50,000 visits per annum and approximately 20,000 to 40,000 downloads per annum from all continents of the world, demonstrating wider and deeper impacts. Visits and downloads can be used as a proxy for determining the reach and engagement of scholarly outputs.

Research or scholarly impact, on the other hand, is often determined through counting the number of scholarly outputs and by analysing citations from such outputs.

As an example, one of the collections hosted in SUNDigital is the Zuid-Afrikaan, a nineteenth-century Dutch language newspaper based in Cape Town that circulated throughout the Cape Colony, published between 1830 and 1930, which we digitised and uploaded to SUNDigital Collections in 2013.

Among the publications that have resulted from accessing this collection are the research articles ‘Creating the Cape Colony runaway advertisements datasets, 1830-1842’ by Karl Bergemann (2025) in the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation (https://doi.org/10.14321/jsdp.6.1.0001), De Zuid-Afrikaan en die teenstrydighede van 19de-eeuse Kaapse liberalisme by G Botma, 2022 in Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe (https://doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2022/v62n1a5) and book chapter “Advertising the enslaved for sale: a quantitative approach to the Zuid-Afrikaan”, 2023 by Raaijmakers and Ekama in Quantitative history and uncharted people: Case studies from the South African past. These three publications have in turn garnered 7 citations on Google Scholar to date.

This is just one example of how the library impacts not only the academy but society at large by making unique information resources that would otherwise not be available anywhere else accessible online without charging a fee.

Please contact Mimi Seyffert-Wirth for more information.

We are delighted to share an update on the Library and Information Service’s recent Open Access (OA) ‘read and publish’ agreements with various publishers. Over the years, we have established deals that provide substantial discounts on article processing charges (APCs) and, in many instances, enable authors to publish their work open access at no cost to them. In practical terms, as of 2026, SU researchers can now publish Open Access in 10 933 journal titles, many of which are subscription-based journals to which the Library subscribes. These advancements are largely facilitated through SANLiC (South African National Library and Information Consortium) negotiated ‘read and publish’ agreements with the aim of removing financial barriers to information access and boosting the global visibility of South African research.

For some of the agreements, there is a cap on the number of articles that may be published by South African authors, while others are unlimited. Unfortunately, in the last few months of 2025 and in early January 2026, there were instances where authors were informed that the cap for South African open access publishing had been exhausted. In response, the Library has put a monitoring mechanism in place this year to ensure that authors are informed timeously when the publishing cap for specific publishers is reached. We hope that all authors whose open access publications could not proceed towards the end of last year due to the exhaustion of the publication cap for South African authors have already been informed of the renewal of the publisher agreements.

In 2026, the American Institute of Physics was added to the list of publishers with which the Library holds “read-and-publish” agreements. Six agreements due to expire in 2025 were successfully renewed: the American Chemical Society, Elsevier, IOPscience Extra, Oxford University Press, Springer Nature, and Wiley. These were in addition to agreements still in force with the Association for Computing Machinery, Cambridge University Press, Emerald, the Royal Society of Chemistry, SAGE Publishing, Taylor & Francis, and The Company of Biologists.

The Library will continue to pursue opportunities to make open-access publishing the default for SU researchers, to enhance global visibility, research impact, and ultimately the University’s ranking. For the latest eligible journals, publisher-specific details, or submission guidance, you can visit the SU Library’s Open Access publishing support page and libguide.

For enquiries about open access agreements or any open access related queries, contact Mr Sizwe Ngcobo (Manager: Open Access Scholarship).

Telephone: 021 808 9907

Author: Sizwe Ngcobo

Researchers have witnessed exponential growth in the number of journals and articles published over the past few decades. Much of this expansion is often attributed to the public introduction of the internet in 1993. However, it has also created challenges such as broken links, researcher name ambiguity, and difficulty in distinguishing between different articles and journals. To address these challenges, persistent identifiers (PIDs) were introduced.

Persistent identifiers are unique, long-lasting, and machine-resolvable codes that serve as permanent references to digital objects, people, or organisations on the web. Unlike standard URLs, PIDs ensure that resources remain accessible even if their location changes, making them essential for scholarly publishing processes.

Some of the key features of PIDs include reliability and resolvability. A PID never changes and therefore helps to avoid broken links. Each PID is a unique identification and assists with the disambiguation of authors, research data, publications and more. The embedded metadata often found in PIDs provides more context, for example publisher details and publication dates.

The following common types of PIDs are available in the research and publishing environment:

• DOI (Digital Object Identifier): Used for articles, datasets, and publications.
• ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID): Identifies individual researchers throughout their careers.
• ISSN/ISBN: Mandatory identifiers for journals and books
• Handles/URNs: Used by some repositories for persistent, non-commercial identification.
• ROR (Research Organisation Registry): Identifies research organisations and institutions.
• ARK (Archival Resource Key): Provides stable, long-term access to digital information, physical objects, and concepts.
• IGSN (International Generic Sample Number): Identifies physical samples in scientific research.

The importance of PIDs lies in the enhanced discoverability of research outputs, to find them, cite and track them and therefore increasing the visibility of the item, author, resource or sample. Disambiguation and interoperability are two other very important features of PIDs. They work across different systems, libraries and publishers to ensure seamless data connections. They also contribute to the reproducibility and trustworthiness in scientific scholarly communication.

For authors and researchers, one of the most important PIDs is your ORCID iD. Stellenbosch University has been a member of ORCID since 2015. By February 2026, at least 9 504 SU-affiliated researchers and students have ORCID IDs. About
5 250 of these have added a current affiliation to their records. For the University to fully realise the benefits of this affiliation, it is essential that researchers actively maintain their ORCID records and link them to the institution and their research outputs. Researchers can link their ORCID iDs to their researcher profiles on Sympletic Elements and then export their research output from here to ORCID. The more well-populated ORCID records there are, the more value the research community will gain from participating in ORCID.

Please contact Marié Roux for further assistance.

To strengthen research support in the Library’s offering, the following three staff members have been appointed or promoted in the past few months at the Research Services or Information Services divisions. We welcome them warmly to their new positions.

Sizwe Ngcobo

To strengthen our open access support, Sizwe Ngcobo was recently appointed as Manager: Open Access Scholarship. Prior to him assuming this position, he served as Stellenbosch University’s (SU) Research Data Services Librarian, where he was responsible for the management and curation of research data assets, as well as providing specialised research data management support to SU researchers.

Sizwe joined SU as a qualified Information Professional, holding a B Information Science Honours degree from the University of South Africa. He completed his Master’s in Information Science from the same institution in 2025. Sizwe demonstrates a strong commitment to promoting equitable access to knowledge and advancing the transformation of scholarly communication within the Library and Information Service.

Over the course of his career, Sizwe has developed extensive expertise in research support, scholarly publishing, and open access advocacy. In his current role, he oversees the Library’s open access initiatives, supports the publication submissions by SU researchers through SANLiC’s (South African National Library and Information Consortium) ‘read and publish’ agreements, and promotes sustainable publishing practices.

Sizwe collaborates closely with SU researchers, academic departments and divisions, and strategic partners to enhance research visibility, ensure compliance with funder mandates, and support innovative approaches to knowledge dissemination.

Bhekizizwe Nkosi

Bhekizizwe Nkosi has recently been promoted to a Scholarly Communication Librarian, where he supports and advances open scholarship and research dissemination. He joined Stellenbosch University in June 2025 as a Junior Librarian: Scholarly Communication. In his current role, he helps manage digital repository platforms and e-journal systems, provides training and guidance to researchers and students, and actively advocates for open access initiatives. His work focuses on strengthening scholarly publishing support, improving access to research outputs, and enhancing institutional research visibility and impact.

Before joining Stellenbosch University, Bheki held several roles at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), including Library Assistant and Senior Library Assistant: Research Support & Scholarly Communications, where he contributed to institutional repository management, digitisation workflows, bibliometric analysis, RDM training, journal evaluation support, and open access journal development.

Currently pursuing a Master’s in Library and Information Science with a specialisation in data stewardship and knowledge management, Bheki’s research focuses on data stewardship in physics and astronomy – bridging research excellence with responsible data practices. He is passionate about ethical, transparent, and accessible scholarly publishing and is dedicated to helping researchers navigate journal selection, research data management (RDM) best practices, and open access publishing platforms.

Grace van Niekerk

Advocate Grace van Niekerk currently serves as Senior Faculty Librarian (Law). She previously held the position of Faculty Librarian for Law at the University of the Western Cape for 29 years, where she provided specialised research support, advanced training, and academic guidance to law students, researchers, and faculty members.

Throughout her career, she has played a pivotal role in strengthening legal research capacity within the faculty by designing structured information literacy programmes, developing comprehensive research guides, and facilitating access to complex legal resources in both print and digital environments.

Grace holds an LLB degree together with qualifications in Library and Information Science, complemented by additional professional certifications in legal research and information management. She is also an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa, bringing a distinctive integration of legal expertise and academic librarianship to her role. In addition, she has provided Commissioner of Oaths services within the university environment, reflecting her broader professional contribution to institutional support.

Recognised for her professionalism, strong organisational ability, and student-centred approach, Grace is committed to strengthening research excellence and advancing innovative library services that respond to the evolving needs of legal education.

Author: Theresa Schoeman

Surveys and other research conducted by the Library highlighted the need for a more client-focused and smarter website to better support research. As a client-centred environment, the Library took this feedback seriously. In response, on 19 December 2025, the Library and Information Service proudly launched its newly implemented website, now live at https://www.su.ac.za/library.

This launch forms part of Stellenbosch University’s broader initiative to migrate all SharePoint website content to the institutional Drupal web content management system. By leveraging SU-specific templates and Drupal components, the library has been able to streamline content, present information more compactly, and deliver a fresh, modern, and user-friendly online experience.

The library supports researchers at every stage of research, and these resources are designed to guide you through every phase of your academic journey. From starting a project with information resources and consultations with librarians, to managing data and references, publishing your research and measuring its impact, the library provides expert tools and guidance, all accessible from this page. You will also find opportunities to grow through workshops, events, and training. With these services the library is your partner in discovery, research and innovation. From the Library homepage, simply select Research to explore all available research services and resources.

Some of the research services highlighted include:

• Carnegie Research Commons: A dedicated space offering support and services to strengthen postgraduate and academic research.
• Open access publishing support: Including the Read & Publish agreements with multiple publishers make open access publishing more affordable and increase visibility for SU researchers.
• Research impact tools: Access specialised resources to assess scholarly performance and measure research impact.
• Research data management: Consultations, training, interactive tools, and the secure SUNScholarData repository help researchers manage, preserve and share data effectively.
• Special Collections: Rare and valuable materials preserved for future generations, supporting current research needs.

For more information and other services, visit the Library website or consult your faculty librarian.

The Library welcomes feedback on the new website. Share your thoughts at https://web.lib.sun.ac.za/feedback.

Author: Natasja Malherbe

South Africa has made significant strides toward Open Access (OA) in scholarly publishing, yet critical challenges remain. While Transformative or Read-and-Publish Agreements (TAs) have helped shift traditional subscription models toward open access, evidence increasingly shows that these agreements have not fully delivered on their promise of equity, sustainability, and transparency.

Limitations of Transformative Agreements

Experiences from countries like Sweden and the United Kingdom reveal that despite increased OA content, paywalled research continues to grow, and costs have risen. In many cases, only well-resourced institutions can afford to participate, leaving much of the research community behind. Moreover, publisher opacity around pricing and limited competition have reinforced rather than dismantled inequitable systems.

Sweden’s recent policy shift provides useful guidance. The country has moved away from hybrid TAs and is instead focusing on agreements with fully OA publishers, developing a national OA platform, supporting researcher-owned journals, and addressing copyright barriers. Similarly, the UK’s JISC review highlights that eight years after the first TAs, full and immediate OA remains elusive.

Myths and Realities of TAs

A review of Transitional Agreements in the UK – JISC  March 2024, lists and debunks several common myths:

1. Equity – False; OA publishing remains unaffordable for many.
2. Transition to OA – Only wealthy institutions can fully participate.
3. Moving away from APCs – Caps and hybrid costs make TAs even more expensive.
4. Transparency – Publishers often refuse to reveal costs.
5. Competitive pricing – Market remains uncompetitive and opaque.
6. Better library positioning – Libraries remain intermediaries without real negotiating power.

For South Africa, the lesson is clear: it is time to move beyond Transformative Agreements to more impactful and sustainable models of OA. The Universities South Africa Research and Innovation Strategy Project proposes a forward-looking solution — a national Diamond Open Access publishing platform that removes author and reader fees, promotes equitable participation across institutions, raises the visibility of South African research, and fosters collaboration by removing access barriers. Coalition S defines Diamond Open Access as “a scholarly publication model in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to either authors or readers. These journals are community-driven, academic-led, and academic-owned publishing initiatives… They are equitable by nature and design.” Through its SUNJournals platform, the Library is able to provide Diamond Open Access publishing services to faculties and departments.

It is critical that we ensure that true open access enhances broader and deeper research impacts to serve the public good, not commercial interests. South Africa has a great opportunity to lead the way in building a more inclusive, transparent, and sustainable open scholarly ecosystem. However, this will require bolder decisions by the government and other stakeholders that will move us beyond the extortionate and unsustainable TA models.

For information on how to join the Diamond Open Access movement by publishing Stellenbosch University journals on the SUNJournals platform, please contact Mrs Mimi Seyffert-Wirth.

References

A review of Transitional Agreements in the UK – JISC  March 2024. https://zenodo.org/records/10787392/files/A_review_of_transitional_agreements_in_the_UK.pdf?download=1

Widmark, W. (2024). How can we get beyond the Transformative Agreements: a Swedish perspective. Revista Española De Documentación Científica, 47(4), e402.

Author: Ellen Tise

As a transformative approach to scholarly communication, Open Access (OA) seeks to remove barriers to accessing, sharing and reusing research outputs.

Scholars such as Raffaela Kunz and Monika Plozza believe that this approach not only contributes to the sharing of research but could potentially advance universal access to information, as envisioned by the United Nations Human Rights framework and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

It can also play a transformative social justice role by closing the digital gaps and dismantling information disparities between those who have the resources and means to purchase and access information and those who do not, according to Paul Ginsparg, founder of the open-access archive arXiv. University of Cape Town academics Laura Czerniewicz and Sarah Goodier highlight the need for OA as both an economic and democratic one.

Worldwide, universities and academic libraries are involved in OA advocacy, encouraging researchers to publish their work in OA platforms.

These institutions believe that OA enhances the reach and impact of scholarship.

The commitment of Stellenbosch University (SU) to OA was cemented 15 years ago with the signing of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access by the former rector and vice-chancellor, Professor Russel Botman, on 20 October 2010. In doing so, Botman became the first VC of an African university to sign the declaration, positioning SU as a pioneer on the continent in taking the OA pledge.

This landmark commitment marked the acceleration of OA, giving the university library strategic impetus and legitimacy in its advancement, support and advocacy of OA and other open-science initiatives.

The signing of the declaration itself was symbolic as it was signed during International Open Access Week. In an opinion piece for the Mail and Guardian on 29 October 2010, aptly titled ‘Stellenbosch takes open access lead’, the Senior Director of the SU Library and Information Services, referred to the signing of the OA pledge as “an important step towards sustainable human development” and towards the realisation of equitable information access.

Fifteen years later, we reflect on the progress, challenges, and future under the theme of the International Access Week 2025: “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”‘

Open Access has been embraced by the Library and the University and has become a vehicle for increasing the impact of research at this institution and allowed the library to go on this journey.

The Library’s OA journey began in 2008 with the establishment of the institutional repository, SUNScholar, and the implementation of an electronic submission system for theses and dissertations. SUNScholar boasts over 35 000 full text research outputs with more being added annually.

The Library’s commitment to Open Access was furthermore manifested in the establishment of an Open Access Publication Fund in 2009, which funded 1035 SU research publications until its closure in 2021.

The hosting of an Open Access Seminar in 2010 was also a highlight where Stellenbosch University became the first African University to sign the Berlin Declaration of Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

In 2011 the Library established SUNJournals, an open access journal hosting platform for journals with an SU affiliation. We currently host 23 journals in various disciplines.

In 2012 we hosted the International Berlin Conference on Open Access. This was the first time that the Berlin Open Access Conference was held in Africa. It explored the transformative impact that open, online access to research has on scholarship, scientific discovery, and the translation of results to the benefit of the public.

In 2013 the library established an open digital heritage repository to showcase and allow access to the library’s special and unique collections and currently provides access to over 18 000 unique records in 50 collections. We can see examples of these materials being accessed and used in a range of outputs.

In 2014 the University adopted a self-archiving policy that asks SU authors to submit a copy of their accepted manuscript to the institutional repository.

In 2019, with research data widely recognised as crucial to the research process and the preservation of and access to such data becoming an absolute necessity, the library launched SUNScholarData.

This research data repository enables Stellenbosch University researchers to share and disseminate their research data in accordance with good research data management practices and will serve to facilitate the findability, accessibility and reusability of the university’s research data.

In 2023 the Library hosted the International Open Repositories Conference, the first time this event was held on African soil.

Our Open Access journey continues with ongoing negotiations regarding transformational agreements and our commitment to Open Access will remain steadfast and help us to take on whatever new OA developments may come our way.

Authors: Ellen Tise, Mimi Seyffert-Wirth, Siviwe Bangani

This article is based on notes prepared for Miss Ellen Tise’s speech during the International Open Access Week celebrations and the 15-year commemoration of the signing of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access at Stellenbosch University on 22 October 2025. Some of the text was extracted from an article Open access and research outputs: Who owns our knowledge? which was published in University World News, Africa Edition.