Herding dinosaurs

1. Scholarly publishing and access to research knowledge in Africa Herding dinosaurs Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest

2. African knowledge for Africa For our continent to take its rightful place in the history of humanity ... we need to undertake, with a degree of urgency, a process of reclamation and assertion. We must contest the colonial denial of our history and we must initiate our own conversations and dialogues about our past. We need our own historians and our own scholars to interpret the history of our continent.President Thabo Mbeki – launching the Timbuktu Library Project Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest

3. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest The marginalization of African knowledge Africa produces around 3% of books published, but consumes around 12%. Africa produced 0.2% of online content in 2002 – if South Africa is excluded, 0.02%. The major Northern scholarly journals account for 80% of articles in the ISI indexes. 163 developing countries produce just 2.5%.

4. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest The knowledge divide - the body count

5. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest The body 'uncount' – technology in India

6. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest Dissemination is not on the agenda The 'free rider syndrome' - someone else will do it...

7. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest The challenge to universities The universities need to assert the importance of their independence, and the value of the knowledge commons as a seedbed of innovation ranging from product development to the design of effective public policies…they need to show how their work is responsive to the pressing needs of development. Martin Hall, Freeing the Knowledge Resources of Public Universities. KM Africa conference, DBSA, March 2005

8. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest Research communication – not just between scholars Multiple levels of communication: Scholar to scholar Scholar to student Scholar to farmer Farmer to scholar Digital content storage and transmission for output in the most appropriate media

9. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest Physical barriers to print publications

10. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest The context - the networked information society The change wrought by the networked information economy is deep. A series of changes in the technologies, economic organisation and social practices of production in this environment has created new opportunities for how we make and exchange information, knowledge and culture. These changes have increased the role of non-market and non-proprietary production, both by individuals alone and by cooperative efforts in a wide range of loosely or tightly woven collaborations. Yochai Brenkler, The Wealth of Networks (2006)

11. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest A Southern African perspective Political power tended to be localized, boundaries fluid and vague, and the authority of chiefs highly variable. The political landscape was both homogeneous and kaleidoscopic, with widely dispersed material and symbolic resources and constantly changing political domains. Even at moments of relative stasis domains of authority very frequently overlapped. Political identities were multiple, with the fluidity of identities generally increasing with geographical distance from any given center of power... There were multiple nodes and overlapping domains of authority.... Crais 2002Custom and the Politics of Sovereignty in South Africa Africa. Journal of Social History 39 (3).

12. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest Publishing and Perishing

13. Intellectual property – lock-down or free? Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest

14. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest IP and developing countries – does strong IP support creativity? The above-marginal-cost prices paid in ... poorer countries are purely regressive redistribution. The information, knowledge, and information-embedded goods paid for would have been developed in expectation of rich world rents alone. The prospects of rents from poorer countries do not affect their development. They do not affect either the rate or the direction of research and development. They simply place some of the rents that pay for technology development in the rich countries on consumers in poor and middle-income countries. The morality of this redistribution from the world's poor to the world's rich has never been confronted or defended in the European or American public spheres. It simply goes unnoticed. Yochai Benkler (2006) The Wealth of Networks, Yale U Press

15. Herding dinosaurs We have a scientific publishing system that is massively dysfunctional and really, really broken.' James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law, Duke University, at the iCommons Summit, Rio, June 2006 Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest

16. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest The cost to the universities Universities ignore the real costs of their contribution In Australia the cost of getting an article published (authoring, peer reviewing, editorial activities) is AUD19,000.00 A monograph costs AUD115,000.00 The costs of administering the evaluation and assessment process are even higher Government of Australia, Department of Education, Science and Training. Research Communication Costs in Australia: Emerging opportunities and benefits.

17. Can digital publishing provide answers? Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest

18. Leapfrogging Can we fast-track to the 21st century? Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest

19. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest What new technologies can offer Instantaneous global reach – transcending geographical barriers Lower cost publishing and zero-cost distribution – the potential for more democratic access Links between research publications and supporting data Greater immediacy – faster dissemination of research results Multi-channel publishing allows for flexible output in a variety of media

20. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest The advantages of OA Substantial increase in impact factors, particularly for developing country journals Openness decreases the risk of duplication, removal of competition makes science less wasteful Science made faster, speeds up the solution of urgent development needs Wider reach of research, better returns for research investment Better monitoring, assessment and management of research

21. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest The ethos of OA Builds on collaboration and a tradition of collegiality Depends upon sharing rather than proprietorship, access rather than protection Efficiencies and economies of collaborative development Networked rather than hierarchical structures The publication can be seen as work in progress rather than the final and definitive word

22. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest What route for Africa? The green? Or the gold? Or both?

23. Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest Salvador Declaration – policy recommendations We urge governments to make Open Access a high priority in science policies including: requiring that publicly funded research is made available through Open Access; considering the cost of publication as part of the cost of research Strengthening the local OA journals, repositories and other relevant initiatives; promoting integration of developing countries scientific information in the worldwide body of knowledge.

24. Contact http://www.evegray.co.za. http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/gray_area http://www.policy.hu http://www.cet.uct.ac.za eve.gray@gmail.com Eve Gray, International Policy Fellowships - Budapest