Month: January 2025

The Library and Information Service has signed agreements with a number of publishers that make it easier for SU researchers to publish open access (OA), and in some cases to even publish OA without paying any article processing charge (APC). Many of these agreements have been negotiated by the South African National Library and Information Consortium (SANLiC), of which Stellenbosch University is a member. Herewith is a list of new and recently updated agreements with publishers.

Royal Society of Chemistry Platinum Agreement (2024-2027)

The Library and Information Service has signed a four-year agreement (2024-2027) with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). This agreement allows authors affiliated with Stellenbosch University to publish open access in any of the RSC journals without paying article processing charges. The Royal Society of Chemistry consists of journals that cover the core chemical sciences and related fields such as biology, energy and the environment, engineering, materials, medicine, and physics. There is no limit on the number of articles that can be published open access by authors affiliated with Stellenbosch University. To read more about the titles that are part of the agreement, please visit https://libguides.sun.ac.za/c.php?g=1232541&p=9019731.

SAGE Publishing

This agreement commenced in 2022 and has been renewed for three years (2025-2027).

SAGE is an independent academic and professional publisher of journals, books and electronic media spanning a wide range of subjects. The SAGE SANLiC agreement provides access to SAGE Premier journals collection of over 1,100 titles and permits affiliated authors to publish open access in the hybrid titles listed in the SAGE SANLiC agreement without paying article processing charges.

Fully open access titles: eligible corresponding authors will receive a discount of 20% on SAGE’s fully open access portfolio of titles. Please Click here to see the list of Gold open access titles. There are a few titles where SAGE is contractually prevented from offering open access publishing. A list of excluded journals is available from the publishers

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

This agreement commenced in 2021 and has been renewed for three years (2025-2027). Cambridge University Press (CUP) currently publishes over 400 peer-reviewed scholarly journals, of which 330 are hybrid journals and 40 are gold open-access journals. Participating institutions receive access to CUP’s full collection and affiliated authors can also publish in most hybrid and gold open-access Cambridge Universit Press journals without paying article processing charges (APCs).

Emerald

 This agreement commenced in 2022 and has been renewed for three years (2022-2027). Emerald publishes over 300 scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. The Emerald/SANLiC agreement for 2025-2027 is a transformational open-access agreement that provides read access to the collection that Stellenbosch University subscribes to and authors affiliated with the institution can publish a capped number of articles open access at no extra charge

Oxford University Press

This is a three-year agreement (2025-2027) where read access is provided to OUP’s full collection of more than 370 journals. Affiliated authors can publish open access in OUP’s hybrid journals without paying APCs. In addition, there is a 10% discount on APCs for publishing in OUP’s gold open-access titles.

See the full list of agreements in the Open Access Publishing library guide.

Author and contact person: Sakhile Mngomezulu

With a new and exciting year ahead, SUNScholar is ready for the submission of theses or dissertations to Thesis management.

Due to the many changes taking place last year, Thesis management can seem overwhelming. However, there are dedicated staff ready to assist with the three-step process of completing those final steps before graduation.

Part of last year’s changes include the perpetual availability of Thesis management throughout the year.  Therefore, there will be no waiting period as to when a graduate can be nominated on the system.  That said, the cut-off date for the final nomination of a student, the submission of a thesis/dissertation, and the approval of said submission will remain.

The cut-off dates for each graduation period are as follows:

• March/April 2025 graduation: closing date is 4 March 2025
• December 2025 graduation: closing date is 27 November 2025

Please follow this process:

1. The final thesis or dissertation must be submitted in PDF format.
2. Log onto SUNStudent Academia.
3. Click on Examinations, then click Thesis Management.
4. The supervisor/promoter or administrative staff nominates the candidate.
5. Please make use of Remarks to indicate the month and year of graduation.
6. The thesis/dissertation is uploaded by the supervisor/promoter or administrative staff.
7. The supervisor/promoter or administrative staff approves the submission.
8. The thesis/dissertation will be publicly accessible on SUNScholar following graduation, provided that no restrictions apply.

Please note that if you do not have access to SUNStudent access can be provisioned by following these steps:

1. Please access the SUNStudent Service Desk here.
2. The tile marked ‘user access management’ is the section that allows users to complete their user role access request.

For more information and assistance see here.

Please join us on 12 February when we present an online training webinar on Thesis management.  Please book via the the Training platform for staff.  Herewith is the link to make a booking.

Author: Paulette Talliard

Since its inception, SUNScholarData has been a game-changer in Stellenbosch University’s research landscape. As the institution’s official research data repository, SUNScholarData provides a secure, structured, and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) platform for researchers to store, manage, and openly share their datasets with the research community and the broader academic ecosystem.

SUNScholarData has significantly contributed to the visibility of research outputs by ensuring that datasets are assigned unique Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). This feature enhances the discoverability of research and promotes collaboration among scholars within and beyond the institution. Making data openly accessible allows researchers to boost citations and contribute to the global research community. Funders require proper research data management, and SUNScholarData serves as a crucial tool in ensuring compliance. It aligns with institutional policies on Research Data Management (RDM) and supports researchers in adhering to best practices and fostering a culture of responsible data stewardship.

Supporting Data Integrity and Long-Term Preservation

Preserving research data is vital for verification, replication, and continued inquiry. SUNScholarData provides a robust infrastructure that ensures long-term preservation, mitigating risks of data loss while maintaining the integrity of research outputs. This has proven particularly valuable for multi-year and interdisciplinary projects. Through training initiatives such as SunDMP Wednesdays and RDM workshops, Stellenbosch University Library has equipped emerging researchers with essential skills to manage their data effectively. By utilizing SUNScholarData, these researchers gain hands-on experience in data documentation, licensing, and sharing, positioning them for success in an increasingly data-driven academic environment.

SUNScholarData growing in leaps and bounds

The diagram below shows the usage statistics of the SU institutional data repository since 2020-2021.

SUNScholarData: Growth in views, downloads and depositors

The annual statistics indicate a substantial increase in engagement and data contributions over the five-year period from 2020 to 2024. The number of views has grown significantly, from 7,960 in 2020 to 53,755 in 2024, demonstrating a heightened awareness and utilisation of the repository. Similarly, downloads have steadily increased from 1,764 to 7,152, suggesting that researchers and other stakeholders are actively accessing and utilising the shared datasets. The rise in depositors, from 15 in 2020 to 47 in 2024, highlights a growing culture of data sharing and open access research. These trends suggest a positive trajectory in research data management adoption, aligning with broader global movements towards open science.

What’s Next for SUNScholarData?

Integrating Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into SUNScholarData marks a significant step in aligning Stellenbosch University’s research outputs with global sustainability priorities. By introducing an SDG selection feature, researchers will now be able to explicitly link their datasets to specific SDGs during submission. This initiative focuses on all the goals, from SDG 1 to SDG 17.

Additionally, a retroactive tagging project will ensure that existing datasets are updated with relevant SDG metadata, while datasets harvested from external platforms like PLOS ONE and Mendeley Data will also be integrated where possible. This enhancement not only increases the visibility of the university’s contributions to global challenges but also fosters collaboration, compliance with international frameworks, and opportunities for funding and recognition.

Author: Xabiso Xesi

Stellenbosch University is at the forefront of advancing open scholarship through its commitment to Diamond Open Access. This model eliminates financial barriers for both authors and readers and transforming the way knowledge is shared and accessed. From hosting open-access journals on the SUNJournals platform to plans for a dedicated monographs platform, Stellenbosch is ensuring that research outputs are freely accessible to all.

The University of Cape Town hosted a very informative conference on the 9-13 of December 2024. This conference afforded Open Science advocates the opportunity to interact and discuss issues around diamond open access and initiatives that exist to promote diamond open access. Diamond’s open-access existence revolves around ensuring that research output remains a public good, which must be produced and accessible without any form of restrictions. Making research outputs/knowledge freely accessible through open-access publishing contributes immensely to social justice by ensuring equitable access. Open science advocates from all parts of the world got a chance to interact and discuss the best practices to promote open access. Academic libraries have a critical role in ensuring equitable access to knowledge, and diamond open access aims to remove financial barriers and encourage equitable access to both the author and the reader. Access to knowledge remains a critical aspect in societies and academic institutions are at the forefront of ensuring that knowledge produced matches knowledge consumption. Diamond’s open access aims to eradicate APCs as a financial barrier to knowledge production. Novice and well-established authors have had to pay article processing charges to publish articles, and diamond open access emanates a great opportunity to publish without any barriers.

Article processing charges (APCs) are mostly in Euros and authors from the global south find it expensive to publish, and that harms knowledge production. Africa is rich in knowledge; through diamond open access, authors can publish on indigenous knowledge and issues that are related to our societal issues. Diamond open access is often associated with predatory publishing; however, it is a model where publications are freely available to readers at no cost and authors do not have to pay APCs for publishing. To ensure the quality of the outputs, transparency, and reliability, diamond open access platforms peer-review their research outputs. To promote diamond open access, institutions have introduced platforms to host journals and monographs to ensure that researchers can publish without paying APCs. Diamond open access also plays a vital role in the decolonization of the publishing model; it ensures that perspectives from marginalized societies have a platform and are not excluded. It offers publishing in a variety of languages, which allows wider accessibility and sharing of knowledge in its original form. Diamond open access is not here to replace traditional publishing models but to provide an alternative for publishing scholarly outputs to authors who cannot afford APCs and to promote equity and justice where authors from diverse communities have equal opportunities to publish.

Establishing Diamond Open Access Platforms at Stellenbosch University:

Open Journal system (SUNJournals)

It is a publishing platform built on open-source software for managing and publishing scholarly journals. Sun Journals hosts 27 journals on different subjects to allow authors from different disciplines to publish for free and provide free access to the readers. Authors are encouraged to make use of the SUN journals platform, targeting first-year students, researchers, postgraduates, and academic staff interested in publishing. The good thing about OJS is that it can be integrated with green open-access platforms, e.g., SunScholar, to enhance the dissemination of research. The platform is free to both the reader and the author but that doesn’t exclude the peer review process to ensure that outputs are of a high quality and reliable.

Monographs platform

A few institutions in South Africa have already established their monograph platforms to enable authors to publish a variety of books in a variety of languages. This platform offers authors a great opportunity to publish more about indigenous knowledge that is freely accessible to the readers and has no cost of publication for the author. This platform promotes wider dissemination of knowledge, equitable access, and free access for all without restrictions. The Stellenbosch Library plans to establish its own monographs platform as part of diamond open access to ensure that we have a community-driven publishing platform that eliminates all barriers involved in publishing. The monograph platform will promote improved research impact and equitable access compared to traditional publishing models and make scholarly research freely accessible to a wider audience.

Conclusion
Diamond Open Access represents a transformative shift in academic publishing, promoting equity, decolonization, and unrestricted access to knowledge. Stellenbosch University’s initiatives, such as SUNJournals and plans for a monograph’s platform, exemplify its commitment to advancing open scholarship. By eliminating financial barriers and fostering inclusive publishing, Diamond Open Access ensures that diverse voices are heard, and knowledge is shared freely. Let’s continue to support and expand these efforts, creating a more just and accessible future for scholarly communication.

Authors: Sakhile Mngomezulu, Xabiso Xesi