The host of speakers included Prof Ahmed Bawa, Universities South Africa (USAf) Chief Executive Officer, Glenn Truran, Director of the South African National Library and Information Consortium, CPUT’s Prof Tandi Matsha, NRF SARChI Research Chair in Cardiometabolic Health and CPUT Libraries Director, Dr Elisha Chiware.
Bawa said there is a “very unequal” access to scholarly journals and information databases across the system. The vice-chancellors who serve on the board of Usaf had raised concern about this.
He said there was a whole range of opportunities in the international and the local context.
These included Open Access journals as well as a model of “pay to publish” with global open access and copyright residing with the authors.
In a statement earlier this year The Board of Directors of USAf announced that it had decided to take a stand as South Africa’s university system, on Open Access 2020 (OA2020).
“OA2020 is a global initiative advocating for the abandonment of the current system of paying twice for scholarly journals, in favour of a model that advocates for once-off payment to publish and enjoy unrestricted access thereafter, across the globe. Vice-chancellors noted that South Africa must throw its muscle behind this global campaign and capitalise on the support coming out of Germany, China and the University of California to break ties with publishing houses which continued to insist on scholars paying to have their work published and again to access those journals at a later stage,” the statement read.
Prof Marshall Sheldon, Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Technology Innovation and Partnerships, said CPUT has agreed with the national position and “going forward it’s going to be a challenge for us to see if existing (CPUT) policies align with the new views that are being expressed”. She thanked Chiware and Research Director, Prof Dina Burger, for the engagement.
