Open Scholarship Practices Reshaping South Africa’s Scholarly Publishing Roadmap

Reggie Raju, Jaya Raju and Jill Claassen
Additional contact information
Reggie Raju: University of Cape Town Libraries, University of Cape Town, Chancellor Oppenheimer Library, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
Jaya Raju: Library and Information Studies Centre, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
Jill Claassen: University of Cape Town Libraries, University of Cape Town, Chancellor Oppenheimer Library, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa

Publications, 2015, vol. 3, issue 4, 1-22

Abstract: South African higher education institutions are the largest producers of research output on the African continent. Given this status, South African researchers have a moral obligation to share their research output with the rest of the continent via a medium that minimizes challenges of access; open scholarship is that medium. The majority of South African higher education libraries provide an open access publishing service. However, in most of these cases this service is via engagement with the green open access route, that is, institutional repositories (IR). Some of the libraries have piloted and adopted gold open access services such as publishing of “diamond” gold open access journals and supporting article processing charges. The experiment with publishing open monographs is a new venture. This venture must be viewed against the backdrop of the need for open educational resources (OERs). OER is an area that is very much in a fledgling stage and is gaining traction, albeit, at a slow pace. The growth of IRs, the growth in support for gold open access including the library acting as a publisher, the experimentation with open monographs, and OERs are all shaping South Africa’s scholarly publishing roadmap.

Keywords: open scholarship; open access; OERs; South Africa; article processing charges; diamond open access (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 D83 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/3/4/263/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/3/4/263/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:3:y:2015:i:4:p:263-284:d:60236

Access Statistics for this article

Publications is currently edited by Ms. Jennifer Zhang

More articles in Publications from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().