Library Research News

A valuable collection of documents on the history of The Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), The New Unity Movement (NUM), The Anti-C.A.D. Movement and All Africa Convention, (collectively named the Unity Movement Collection) was launched on 22 May 2026. The launch included an exhibition of Unity Movement documentary heritage.

Following discussions between Ms Ellen Tise, Senior Director of the SU Library and Information Services, and Dr Basil Brown, President of the New Unity Movement (NUM), the comprehensive collection of documentary material was donated to the Manuscripts Section, Special Collections, SU Library and Information Service in June 2023. The project to sort and catalogue this extensive collection commenced in March 2024.

The NUM was launched in 1985 and can be seen as the successor to the NEUM, dedicated and committed to its founding principles and policies. One of the most important principles of the NUM was that of non-racialism and the importance of human rights.

“The significance of this collection lies not only in documenting the history of the New Unity Movement, but also in contributing to a broader understanding of South Africa’s political, social, economic, and educational history,” explains Ellen Tise. “As a body of primary sources, it enables more nuanced and balanced research within the Special Collections of Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service.”

From left are Basil Brown, Leslie van Rooi, Ellen Tise, Pakama Ncume, Shaun Viljoen, Allan Zinn, Mickey Titus, Felicity Titus, Nico Koopman, Lungisile Ntsebeza, Mimi Seyffert-Wirth, Lincoln Jacobs and Denise Zinn.

The collection includes correspondence, constitutions, policies, financial statements, minutes of meetings, conference proceedings, memoranda, newsletters, notebooks, photographs and various publications, including journals.

Noteworthy are “A Call to Unity” – a manifesto adopted by the Executive of the AAC on 26 August 1943, calling for unity among oppressed groups and contributing to the formation of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM); Minutes of the 1st Unity Conference (17 December 1943), where the Draft Declaration of Unity was accepted and the Ten Point Programme was adopted as the basis of unity; A document outlining what the NEUM stands for; and a letter to Nelson Mandela on the question of organisational unity in South Africa by I.B. Tabata (June 1948).

The collection has been organised into categories to enhance accessibility for researchers and a detailed inventory of the collection will be available soon to help researchers navigate the rich research material.

An exhibition of the collection may be viewed in the SU Library in front of the Learning Commons and a recording of the launch event, which included an informative panel discussion is available here.

The collection will be housed alongside other manuscript collections focusing on apartheid-era legislation and policy which provide important contextual support. These related collections include the Frederik van Zyl Slabbert Collection, Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA) Collection, the South African Debt Crisis (1985–1986) Collection and the Willie Adams Collection.

Read another article about the launch of this collection here.

Author: Mimi Seyffert-Wirth

Recently three new staff members were appointed in different research-related divisions of the Library. We would like to welcome the following staff members warmly and wish them all the best:

Dr Lynn Kleinveldt has been appointed as Manager: Carnegie Research Commons at Stellenbosch University Library, with effect from 01 June 2026. Her responsibilities include strategic planning and management of the Research Commons and postgraduate support services; managing, coordinating and presenting research support workshops. She has 19 years of experience working in academic libraries and seven years of experience in academia.

Before joining Stellenbosch University, Dr. Kleinveldt was the Co-head of Department and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley in Canada. In this position, she played a vital role in building internal and external partnerships and took the lead in incorporating cutting-edge technology into the Library and Information Technology curriculum. She strives towards bridging theory and practice in library and information science, with a focus on “literacies of the digital”, ethical information use, and the strategic development of user experience, teaching and learning and research support services in higher education.

Dr. Kleinveldt’s research explores the evolving role of academic libraries in supporting teaching and learning, scholarly communication and research. Her doctoral study investigated how libraries serve the research needs of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering scholars at two universities, the gaps between researcher expectations and library services, and the professional identity of faculty librarians in research support. She is committed to advancing inclusive, user-centred library services and fostering collaborative relationships between academics, researchers, information professionals and LIS students.

Her recent research project focused on exploring the transformation of ‘search’ as we know it and what it means for the future of Libraries and Information Science in the AI Era. Dr. Kleinveldt has actively contributed to international scholarly discourse through recent presentations at leading conferences, including:

• IFLA AI Symposia (2023–2025), where she presented on integrating generative AI into LIS and business curricula and critically evaluating online search results.
• BCLA Conference (2025), co-presenting on user experience in libraries and enhancing student success through AI-integrated LibGuides.
• LIASA-SCECSAL Conference (2022), where she delivered a lightning talk on embedding research data management into academic programs.

Dr. Kleinveldt served as Standing Committee Member of the IFLA IT Section for the term 2017-2023, and chaired LIASA’s Higher Education Libraries Interest Group, 2021-2023. She continues to actively participate in these library professional bodies.

Snenhlanhla Hlongwana has been appointed as Research Data Services Librarian at Stellenbosch University Library, with effect from 1 June 2026. This appointment reflects the strong alignment between her professional experience in metadata management, digital resource administration, and scholarly support services, and her growing focus on research data services and digital scholarship.

Before this appointment, she served as a Junior Librarian in the Acquisitions Division within the Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service, where she worked extensively with the library management system and vendor tools to ensure the quality of records, access standards, and usage statistics. Through this role, she developed strong expertise in metadata quality, digital resource discoverability, and ensuring reliable access to electronic information resources.

She also brings prior experience in repository and digital records management through her role as Metadata Librarian for the HSRC Zondo Commission Project. In this capacity, she was responsible for the organisation, indexing, preservation, and management of digital records generated by the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, including affidavits, evidence transcripts, and exhibits. This work supported long-term access, discoverability, and future research use of the collection, and strengthened her expertise in digital preservation, structured metadata practices, and the curation of complex research data environments.

She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in information science, with research focusing on the role of institutional repositories in scholarly communication within a private dual-mode higher education context in South Africa. Her professional interests include research data management, Open Access, institutional repositories, metadata standards, and the advancement of digital scholarship. She is also passionate about responsible research practices and the ethical use of artificial intelligence in academia.

Cwayita Notshokovu has been appointed as a Junior Librarian: Scholarly Communication and started her work at the Library on 2 May 2026.

Her responsibilities include content and metadata management for digital repositories, support for the administration of the e-journal management platform and advancing scholarly communication initiatives. She is committed to strengthening research visibility, discoverability, accessibility, and Open Access advocacy.

Before joining Stellenbosch University, Cwayita served as an Information Specialist at Emeris, where she was later promoted to Postgraduate Information Specialist. In this role, she provided advanced research support to postgraduate students and researchers, including training on reference management tools, database navigation, literature review support, and guidance on identifying suitable Open Access journals for publication and uploaded student research reports into the institutional repository. She also promoted researcher visibility through training on author profile registration and researcher identifiers such as ORCID.

Cwayita holds a Master of Library and Information Studies degree obtained from the University of Cape Town. Her master’s dissertation investigated the readiness of public libraries to deliver information literacy instruction to school learners. She presented at the LIASA Annual Conference 2025 and at the City of Cape Town Public Library Seminar 2025. Cwayita is passionate about ethical scholarly practices, responsible AI use, information literacy, Open Access initiatives that enhance equitable access to knowledge.

Author: Theresa Schoeman

The Library is always exploring the most efficient ways to support Stellenbosch University (SU) researchers with open access publishing. Before the nationally negotiated Open Access (OA) Agreement with Springer Nature was concluded, SU already had a unique arrangement in place with the publisher. This agreement enabled SU researchers to publish specifically in BMC journal titles without personally paying article processing charges (APCs) upfront. Under this model, the Library paid the APCs in advance and subsequently recovered the full amount from researchers. In addition, SU researchers automatically benefited from a 15% APC discount when publishing in BMC journal titles.

Unfortunately, this arrangement has not functioned seamlessly. Many SU researchers experienced difficulties in securing reimbursement funding after their respective departments withdrew earlier commitments. In some cases, reimbursement delays became so prolonged that researchers left the employ of the University before the Library could recover the outstanding costs. Consequently, the Library has had to write off unrecovered amounts.

Due to the significant administrative and financial burden associated with this arrangement, the Library has decided to discontinue the Springer Nature deposit account model for BMC journals with effect from 30 June 2026. Only articles already under peer review by this date will be covered from the remaining account balance.

This change will, however, not disadvantage SU researchers. We have since established that SU authors submitting manuscripts to BMC journals may directly request a 25% APC discount in line with Springer Nature’s country-tiered APC rates. The main change is that researchers will now be required to arrange payment directly with the publisher.

SU researchers with manuscripts currently under review or already accepted for publication are encouraged to contact the Manager: OA Scholarship, Mr Sizwe Ngcobo, for guidance regarding transitional arrangements and eligibility for support.

The SU Library and Information Service remains committed to supporting open scholarship and will continue to explore sustainable mechanisms for supporting open access publishing. This discontinuation does not affect Stellenbosch University’s Transformational Agreement with Springer Nature.

Authors: Dr Siviwe Bangani and Sizwe Ngcobo

Open access (OA), the movement to publish and distribute scholarly works without too many restrictions, for better visibility and research impact, is often advocated as one of the most critical pathways toward achieving information access parity, where both the “information-poor” and “information-rich” have access to similar knowledge resources. Suber (2012) explained that OA is concerned with the “removal of price barriers” and the “removal of permission barriers.” However, OA is more nuanced that it is often assumed. Different OA models and paths exist, varying in their degree of openness and in the extent to which scholarly works may be shared and reused. These models include Diamond OA, Green OA, Gold OA, Hybrid OA, Bronze OA, and even Black OA. The distinctions between these models have been discussed on another blog article.

Suber (2008) further referred to the degrees of openness in OA publishing as gratis OA and libre OA. Gratis OA refers to scholarly publications that are free to read but carry limited reuse rights, while libre OA refers to works that are both free to read and accompanied by additional reuse permissions.

The Creative Commons Licences

To govern the degree of openness of their works, authors often sign Creative Commons (CC) licences, which are standardised legal tools that creators use to indicate how others may reuse their work. In OA publishing, CC licences clarify whether users may legally share a publication and define the extent to which it may be reused for educational, research, policy, and commercial purposes.

Researchers are frequently confronted with several types of CC licences during the publication process. These are reflected in the visual depiction below (Figure 1):

Figure 1: University of Edinburg (n.d.)

Confronted with these options at the publication stage, many researchers sign licences without fully considering their implications. In doing so, they may unintentionally transfer significant distribution rights back to publishers and restrict access to their own scholarly works, an outcome that defeats the very purpose of OA (Schneider, 2025). Certain licences may also affect the visibility, dissemination, and potential impact of scholarly outputs.

Which CC Licence Should Researchers Choose?

It is often difficult to advise researchers on which CC licence they should select when signing authorship agreements as these may differ between publications. The National Research Foundation (NRF) Open Access Statement (NRF, 2019) outlines several principles regarding publications arising from publicly funded research, including the facilitation of:

• dissemination of knowledge;
• utilisation, uptake, and application of knowledge;
• accelerated transformation and globalisation of science; and
• rapid translation of knowledge into innovative and developmental applications for the benefit of society.

Similarly, the new South African Open Science Policy (South Africa, 2026) promotes the principle of “As Open As Possible, As Closed As Necessary.” At face value, the least restrictive licence, CC BY, appears to align most closely with this principle because it maximises reuse and dissemination opportunities. However, researchers who are concerned about the commercial exploitation of their works may prefer the CC BY-NC licence, which restricts commercial use while still permitting educational and research-related reuse.

Should you face a dilemma regarding the CC license to choose when signing the author agreement, please feel free to contact Sizwe Ngcobo at sngcobo@sun.ac.za.

Reference list

NRF. 2015. Statement on Open Access to Research Publications from the National Research Foundation (NRF)-Funded Research. https://chelsa.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NRF_open_access_-statement_19Jan2015_V6.pdf.

Schneider, R. 2025. How publishers use “license to publish” agreements to try to transfer all rights held by authors and contravene the spirit and goals of open access. https://files.su.ac.za/public/about-library/documents/2026-01/beoasmart-20250917-how-publishers-use-licensetopublish-agreement.pdf.

South Africa. 2026. South African Open Science Policy. https://www.dsti.gov.za/index.php/documents/policies/296-south-african-open-science-policy.

Suber, P. 2008. Gratis and libre open access. SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 124.

Suber, P. 2012. The rise of libre open access. SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 164.

University of Edinburg. n.d. Choosing a Creative Commons Licence for your resource. Edinburg: University of Edinburg. https://open.ed.ac.uk/how-to-guides/choosing-a-creative-commons-licence-for-your-resource/.

Authors: Dr Siviwe Bangani and Sizwe Ngcobo

The launch of Library Research Week 2026

“AI-augmented science is the new scientific method that every researcher must embrace in the current technology-driven age,” argued Professor Francesco Petruccione. The Stellenbosch University (SU) Pro Vice-Chancellor for Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Technologies was speaking as a guest during the launch of the Library Research Week, an annual event aimed at empowering emerging researchers.

The hybrid launch event, which took place at the SU Library auditorium and via MS Teams, was opened by Professor Sibusiso Moyo, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Internationalisation.

In his keynote address, “The New Scientific Method: Navigating Research in the Age of AI and Quantum Technologies”, Professor Petruccione argued that as the “Fifth Paradigm” of science, AI plays a mediating role where computational systems act as active participants in the research process. This new scientific method expands beyond mere number crunching; AI now assists in formulating complex questions, generating vast landscapes of hypotheses, and accelerating technical tasks like coding. He further emphasised that “the question is whether AI has become an instrument that acts on the cognitive structure of research itself.” Consequently, the scientist’s role is shifting from a hands-on artisan to an “architect” responsible for designing and directing trustworthy discovery systems. Petruccione warned that while this can accelerate breakthroughs, it also risks “epistemic pollution” and the exponential scaling of mediocre science if human judgment is outsourced to machines. He consequently emphasised that “the common feature (in future research) is not full autonomy, but the redistribution of exploratory labour between human and machine.”

To navigate this landscape, researchers are encouraged to use AI as a “sparring partner” for brainstorming while prioritising the mastery of discipline fundamentals to critically evaluate automated outputs. Maintaining provenance – a verifiable record of model versions, prompts, and data sources – is crucial for protecting the integrity of the scientific record. For universities, Petruccione proposed structural changes, such as rethinking student assessment by favouring oral exams (vivas) over easily automated take-home essays.

Prof. Petruccione also warned against the “Matthew Effect,” the risk that the immense costs of AI infrastructure will allow wealthy nations to pull further ahead, widening the global research gap. He called for investment in “sovereign compute” – independent, local supercomputing infrastructure – to ensure that African institutions control their own research data and tools. By networking and pooling resources through collaborative consortia, he argued that Africa can remain an active co-author of scientific breakthroughs rather than a passive consumer of foreign technology.

A Week of Tactical Insights

Following the launch, the online webinar series provided researchers with a comprehensive “tactical playbook” across several key pillars:

• Ethical AI & Scholarly Writing: Sessions addressed the practicalities of integrating generative AI into literature reviews responsibly, understanding Large Language Models (LLMs), and maintaining the academic authorship contract. Prof. Leslie Swartz also delivered a vital session on transitioning a thesis into a publication.
• Methodological Tools: Participants received technical, hands-on guidance for essential research tools, including REDCap for secure data capture, ATLAS.ti for qualitative analysis, and EndNote for reference management.
• Compliance & Data Integrity: Key presentations focused on institutional Research Data Management (RDM) compliance, focusing on SU-specific platforms such as SunDMP for data management planning and SUNScholarData for FAIR-compliant sharing.
• Researcher Wellbeing: Concluding the week, a specialised session addressed academic burnout by exploring “Interoceptive Mismatch” — the neurological conflict between a highly stressed brain and a sedentary body — offering practical cognitive restoration strategies.

Access the recordings

If you missed any of the sessions, or want to revisit the insights shared by our expert presenters, the recordings are available online on our YouTube channel.

To watch the Presentations: via the official Library Research Week 2026 YouTube Playlist

Enquiries: Kirchner van Deventer

South Africa now has a National Open Science Policy — and your Data Management Plan is key to navigating it?

In December 2025, the South African government approved a National Open Science Policy requiring that research outputs arising from public funding be made openly accessible. However, the policy is guided by the principle of “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” — recognising that sensitive, personal, or proprietary data may legitimately remain restricted. This means that openly sharing your data is encouraged where possible, but that participant consent, confidentiality obligations, and POPIA compliance always take precedence.

A well-structured Data Management Plan (DMP) is your roadmap for navigating this balance. It helps you think through how your data will be collected, stored, shared, and preserved from the outset of your project — documenting not only what can be shared openly, but also what must remain closed and why. SunDMP, SU’s online DMP tool (available at https://dmp.sun.ac.za/), guides you through this process step by step.

Contact Research Data Services in the Library for support.

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.