SOUTH AFRICA New publishing model pins hopes on ‘unity of purpose’ Tweet



Under the plan, an estimated ZAR500 to ZAR600 million, which is currently being spent on journal subscriptions, would be funneled into new “transformative” agreements with the big five academic publishers – Reed-Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer and Sage – as the country’s universities move to a pay-to-publish model for funding the dissemination of research.



However, the plan would be fatally undermined if any of the country’s leading research universities, which would contribute the lion’s share to a common pot for funding the new transformative agreements, were to withdraw their support.



“If those universities pull out and decide to go it alone, that would simply kill the project,” said Universities South Africa (USAf) Chief Executive Ahmed Bawa, who is leading the national drive to transform the funding basis for academic publishing.



The plan to move to the new model has been slammed as unduly expensive by some experts. At a meeting held at the end of last year by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), critics said only those with deep pockets would be able to pay the article processing charges (APCs) levied by many of the most widely read journals under the proposed new framework.



Bawa dismissed the claims, emphasising the open-access benefits of the proposed model which follows in the footsteps of the Plan S framework launched last year by the European Union with the goal of making scholarly reports freely available.



No additional costs



He stressed that the new framework, which would require authors rather than readers to pay for publication, would not come at any additional cost either to the national research project or to the individual researchers.



“What we are saying to the publishers is: ‘Please, don’t ask us for more money. What we are prepared to pay is what we are currently paying for subscriptions and we will negotiate on that basis – and anything on top of that is out of the question.’



“And once the transformative agreements come to an end, we will be negotiating downwards,” said Bawa.



All the existing contracts with the big-five publishers come up for renegotiation within the next two years. The goal will be to replace these with the transformative agreements which in turn will give way, after a teething period of about three years, to even cheaper pay-to-publish deals, said Bawa.



The new plan was hatched, according to Bawa, at a discussion held among the country’s 26 vice-chancellors who belong to USAf’s board.



It was agreed at the meeting that the current model for academic publishing was unsustainable, in part because of its mounting cost, which had risen significantly as the value of the rand had dropped.



Dealing with inequities



It was also felt that deep inequities within the higher education system, in which some universities enjoyed sufficient access to published research while others had relatively little, should be addressed.



“The idea was to develop a system that would ensure equal access among all the universities,” said Bawa.



In addition, there was consensus on the importance of open access. The potential benefits of openness to scientific integrity and innovation in the public interest, as well as to the democratisation of the research cycle and regional development, have been widely acknowledged, including by the United Nations.



In South Africa, the Department of Science and Innovation also promotes this view. “The department has adopted an open science approach that indicates with vigour that publicly funded research should find its way to public domains and not be located behind a paywall,” said Bawa.



Accordingly, after considering a number of alternative ways of ensuring open access – including a national site licence for journals, which proved prohibitively expensive – the universities; science councils including ASSAf; National Research Foundation; and relevant government departments reached the view that the Plan S framework represented a feasible model for South Africa.



Plan S, due to come into effect in 2021, was forged by a number of major international research funders, including from the philanthropic and international governance sectors, which came together with national research councils and the EU to create pressure to dismantle the paywalls erected by the main academic publishing houses.



Open access



The funders behind Plan S also work closely with OA 2020, a global alliance forged by researchers to accelerate the transition to open access.



In this regard, USAf is proposing a researcher-driven model in the vein of OA 2020, rather than Plan S, which has not yet been approved by research funders in South Africa.



The USAf board has established a task team to implement this model, which, in turn, has appointed an interim negotiating group which includes Director of the South Africa National Library and Information Consortium (SANLiC) Glenn Turan, two university deputy vice chancellors, the chief financial officer of a leading university, and one external business person.



The plan is to negotiate transformative agreements with the main academic publishers on a national basis, once the current contracts with these large journal houses expire. According to Bawa, the fundamental principles underpinning these talks will be that:



• Once payment for publication has been made, the research will be available for anyone, anywhere to read, including if the material has been published in a high-impact-factor journal;

• Copyright over the published text resides with the author and must be acknowledged under a creative commons licence by anyone else referencing the material; and

• The new publishing arrangements will cost no more than the previous subscription-based deals.



In addition, although the new system would place the onus for funding academic publishing on authors rather than readers, a national approach would mean no requirement on individual researchers to find the money to pay to publish, said Bawa.



Under the pay-to-publish model, journals levy APCs which are generally paid on behalf of the particular author by the funder or institution supporting the research. In return, these publications make the articles freely available to readers. The new model replaces the old reader-pays model of subscribing to journals in order to access content.



However, the success of the approach being promoted by USAf depends to a large extent on developments in Europe, China, India, Japan, Brazil and California where unified efforts have forced the large publishing houses to strike transformative and pay-to-publish deals.



In this regard, South Africa, which accounts for only about 1% of published global research, is riding on the coat-tails of agreements concluded elsewhere.



“We need to work as a global community of scholars, as a global system, to put pressure on these publishers,” said Bawa, noting that it would be “very difficult” for the big publishers to revert to earlier kinds of deals having now agreed transformative agreements with a number of national higher education systems.



Unity of purpose



The success of the proposed approach also depends on the unity of purpose among institutions within the domestic research system.



A central pooling of all resources spent on subscriptions is required to push the main academic publishing houses into accepting new transformative agreements and to pay for these deals.



The costs of the new approach will also be disproportionately borne by the historically advantaged, research-intensive universities. “The model that we are proposing really depends upon us thinking of all knowledge producers as belonging to a common system,” said Bawa.



But the model has its risks, as Bawa acknowledged. Although there is an agreement among vice-chancellors that they will not withdraw funds they are currently spending on subscriptions, without that central pool, “it would be impossible to forge a set of agreements with the publishers”.



However, at the same time, research universities would soon be paying as much, if not more, for publishing their research if they opted out of the national approach and went it alone, Bawa said.



Pragmatic solution



More broadly, the decision to adopt an OA 2020 model is, Bawa noted, borne of necessity and represents a pragmatic solution that offers open access while enabling researchers to continue to try and publish in the high-impact-factor journals they tend to favour. Authors should be in a position to choose the journals in which they prefer to publish, he said.



As alternative models for open access publishing become increasingly practicable and popular, the relatively expensive commercial model promoted by Plan S may in fact fall away.



These alternatives include the production of more “diamond” open-access journals (free-to-read and free-to-publish) that become increasingly relevant and improve in quality over time; the establishment of more not-for-profit academic publishing houses; and the development and promotion of “green” open access, that is, depositing of articles in publicly available repositories.

However, a new model for open access publishing based on such steps “will not happen overnight”, said Bawa. A particular obstacle is the extent to which researchers’ academic identities are shaped by their sense of belonging to a discipline and their desire to communicate with each other in international journals that serve their fields of study.



In addition, Bawa was philosophical about the possible negative impact of a pay-to-publish approach on smaller, in-house peer-reviewed journals produced by university presses or scholarly societies.



“One of the questions we need to ask ourselves as a national system is: to what extent are we supporting a whole myriad of journals with a subscription model where the quality and integrity of those journals are not necessarily at the best level?



“So, for example, we have journals that currently reside in institutions where the bulk of the publishing comes from those institutions. And that seems to me to be really problematic.”



Meanwhile, at national level, discussions to convert the existing subscription-based deals into transformative agreements are at an early stage. “We have talked with Taylor & Francis, Elsevier and Springer Nature, but our contracts with them have not yet come up, so we are preparing to renegotiate those deals.”



SANLiC is taking a lead role in the talks to promote and negotiate the transformative agreements, which include read-and-publish and publish-and-read deals, with the major commercial publishers.



However, it is also acknowledged that, as a national project, a new governance structure is likely which will involve representatives from the government, universities, and science councils including ASSAf, as well as institutions such as SANLiC. This governance structure will be responsible for oversight. Higher education leaders in South Africa are looking to move to a European model for open access (OA) publishing of scholarly articles as soon as possible, according to the body that coordinates the country’s public universities.Under the plan, an estimated ZAR500 to ZAR600 million, which is currently being spent on journal subscriptions, would be funneled into new “transformative” agreements with the big five academic publishers – Reed-Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer and Sage – as the country’s universities move to a pay-to-publish model for funding the dissemination of research.However, the plan would be fatally undermined if any of the country’s leading research universities, which would contribute the lion’s share to a common pot for funding the new transformative agreements, were to withdraw their support.“If those universities pull out and decide to go it alone, that would simply kill the project,” said Universities South Africa (USAf) Chief Executive Ahmed Bawa, who is leading the national drive to transform the funding basis for academic publishing.The plan to move to the new model has been slammed as unduly expensive by some experts. At a meeting held at the end of last year by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), critics said only those with deep pockets would be able to pay the article processing charges (APCs) levied by many of the most widely read journals under the proposed new framework.Bawa dismissed the claims, emphasising the open-access benefits of the proposed model which follows in the footsteps of the Plan S framework launched last year by the European Union with the goal of making scholarly reports freely available.He stressed that the new framework, which would require authors rather than readers to pay for publication, would not come at any additional cost either to the national research project or to the individual researchers.“What we are saying to the publishers is: ‘Please, don’t ask us for more money. What we are prepared to pay is what we are currently paying for subscriptions and we will negotiate on that basis – and anything on top of that is out of the question.’“And once the transformative agreements come to an end, we will be negotiating downwards,” said Bawa.All the existing contracts with the big-five publishers come up for renegotiation within the next two years. The goal will be to replace these with the transformative agreements which in turn will give way, after a teething period of about three years, to even cheaper pay-to-publish deals, said Bawa.The new plan was hatched, according to Bawa, at a discussion held among the country’s 26 vice-chancellors who belong to USAf’s board.It was agreed at the meeting that the current model for academic publishing was unsustainable, in part because of its mounting cost, which had risen significantly as the value of the rand had dropped.It was also felt that deep inequities within the higher education system, in which some universities enjoyed sufficient access to published research while others had relatively little, should be addressed.“The idea was to develop a system that would ensure equal access among all the universities,” said Bawa.In addition, there was consensus on the importance of open access. The potential benefits of openness to scientific integrity and innovation in the public interest, as well as to the democratisation of the research cycle and regional development, have been widely acknowledged, including by the United Nations.In South Africa, the Department of Science and Innovation also promotes this view. “The department has adopted an open science approach that indicates with vigour that publicly funded research should find its way to public domains and not be located behind a paywall,” said Bawa.Accordingly, after considering a number of alternative ways of ensuring open access – including a national site licence for journals, which proved prohibitively expensive – the universities; science councils including ASSAf; National Research Foundation; and relevant government departments reached the view that the Plan S framework represented a feasible model for South Africa.Plan S, due to come into effect in 2021, was forged by a number of major international research funders, including from the philanthropic and international governance sectors, which came together with national research councils and the EU to create pressure to dismantle the paywalls erected by the main academic publishing houses.The funders behind Plan S also work closely with OA 2020, a global alliance forged by researchers to accelerate the transition to open access.In this regard, USAf is proposing a researcher-driven model in the vein of OA 2020, rather than Plan S, which has not yet been approved by research funders in South Africa.The USAf board has established a task team to implement this model, which, in turn, has appointed an interim negotiating group which includes Director of the South Africa National Library and Information Consortium (SANLiC) Glenn Turan, two university deputy vice chancellors, the chief financial officer of a leading university, and one external business person.The plan is to negotiate transformative agreements with the main academic publishers on a national basis, once the current contracts with these large journal houses expire. According to Bawa, the fundamental principles underpinning these talks will be that:• Once payment for publication has been made, the research will be available for anyone, anywhere to read, including if the material has been published in a high-impact-factor journal;• Copyright over the published text resides with the author and must be acknowledged under a creative commons licence by anyone else referencing the material; and• The new publishing arrangements will cost no more than the previous subscription-based deals.In addition, although the new system would place the onus for funding academic publishing on authors rather than readers, a national approach would mean no requirement on individual researchers to find the money to pay to publish, said Bawa.Under the pay-to-publish model, journals levy APCs which are generally paid on behalf of the particular author by the funder or institution supporting the research. In return, these publications make the articles freely available to readers. The new model replaces the old reader-pays model of subscribing to journals in order to access content.However, the success of the approach being promoted by USAf depends to a large extent on developments in Europe, China, India, Japan, Brazil and California where unified efforts have forced the large publishing houses to strike transformative and pay-to-publish deals.In this regard, South Africa, which accounts for only about 1% of published global research, is riding on the coat-tails of agreements concluded elsewhere.“We need to work as a global community of scholars, as a global system, to put pressure on these publishers,” said Bawa, noting that it would be “very difficult” for the big publishers to revert to earlier kinds of deals having now agreed transformative agreements with a number of national higher education systems.The success of the proposed approach also depends on the unity of purpose among institutions within the domestic research system.A central pooling of all resources spent on subscriptions is required to push the main academic publishing houses into accepting new transformative agreements and to pay for these deals.The costs of the new approach will also be disproportionately borne by the historically advantaged, research-intensive universities. “The model that we are proposing really depends upon us thinking of all knowledge producers as belonging to a common system,” said Bawa.But the model has its risks, as Bawa acknowledged. Although there is an agreement among vice-chancellors that they will not withdraw funds they are currently spending on subscriptions, without that central pool, “it would be impossible to forge a set of agreements with the publishers”.However, at the same time, research universities would soon be paying as much, if not more, for publishing their research if they opted out of the national approach and went it alone, Bawa said.More broadly, the decision to adopt an OA 2020 model is, Bawa noted, borne of necessity and represents a pragmatic solution that offers open access while enabling researchers to continue to try and publish in the high-impact-factor journals they tend to favour. Authors should be in a position to choose the journals in which they prefer to publish, he said.As alternative models for open access publishing become increasingly practicable and popular, the relatively expensive commercial model promoted by Plan S may in fact fall away.These alternatives include the production of more “diamond” open-access journals (free-to-read and free-to-publish) that become increasingly relevant and improve in quality over time; the establishment of more not-for-profit academic publishing houses; and the development and promotion of “green” open access, that is, depositing of articles in publicly available repositories.However, a new model for open access publishing based on such steps “will not happen overnight”, said Bawa. A particular obstacle is the extent to which researchers’ academic identities are shaped by their sense of belonging to a discipline and their desire to communicate with each other in international journals that serve their fields of study.In addition, Bawa was philosophical about the possible negative impact of a pay-to-publish approach on smaller, in-house peer-reviewed journals produced by university presses or scholarly societies.“One of the questions we need to ask ourselves as a national system is: to what extent are we supporting a whole myriad of journals with a subscription model where the quality and integrity of those journals are not necessarily at the best level?“So, for example, we have journals that currently reside in institutions where the bulk of the publishing comes from those institutions. And that seems to me to be really problematic.”Meanwhile, at national level, discussions to convert the existing subscription-based deals into transformative agreements are at an early stage. “We have talked with Taylor & Francis, Elsevier and Springer Nature, but our contracts with them have not yet come up, so we are preparing to renegotiate those deals.”SANLiC is taking a lead role in the talks to promote and negotiate the transformative agreements, which include read-and-publish and publish-and-read deals, with the major commercial publishers.However, it is also acknowledged that, as a national project, a new governance structure is likely which will involve representatives from the government, universities, and science councils including ASSAf, as well as institutions such as SANLiC. This governance structure will be responsible for oversight. Follow University World News on Facebook



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