Democratising Access to Knowledge

CODESRIA AFRICAN OPEN ACCESS PROJECT

Williams E. Nwagwu, PhDHead, Information and Documentation

Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA)Dakar, Senegal

Department of Information Studies

University of South Africa

Africa Regional Centre for Information Science

University of Ibadan, Nigeria Eldis 20th Anniversary Workshop, University of

Sussex, Brighton, UK15 September 2016

IntroductionCODESRIA in brief Facilitate, support and promote production and dissemination of Africa-centred

Africa-focused knowledge Adopt innovative strategies to market the knowledge produced in Africa Create a stimulated, vibrant and connected African social science community

“Despite its vast natural and human resources… this continent gets the rawest real…represented in the production and consumption of knowledge. So why the raw deal for Africa … ?” (Wa Thiongo 2005).

Era of national science - setting up of nation states in preference of colonial rule

Focus on technology, economic growth, etc – Defragmentation of Africa Growth of inequality in knowledge exchanges between Africa and the

developed world Onset of serial crises/lack of relevant social science texts; growth in

institutions, mass adoption of higher education  

Strategies • Conferences• Research grants: thematic, national,

multinational and comparative research networks

• Workshops/Seminars/symposia • Support for theses and dissertation

development• Exchange programs/diaspora

CODESRIA and Knowledge Production and Dissemination in Africa

Textbooks distributed free of charge to universities and research institutes

12 journals all available through the electronic media since 2008

Policy dialogues at different levelsHistorically CODESRIA has practices a pseudo form of open access.

Access to Knowledge – which/what knowledge? by who? and to where? Back to the theme ---

Local knowledge is necessary for appropriate development (Amin 1987, Olukoshi 2014, Sall 2015)

“Due to a number of situations that are unfavorable to the production of knowledge in developing countries, its practice is still disembodied, conducted from outside, and disconnected from use in public policy” (ADF 2016).

Data generation, analysis , interpretation and application MUST

be executed at home using home sensitive instruments an d

methodologies

How do we explain the GDP revisions of Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria macroeconomic indicators.

Appropriate Development is purely ecological – connected to local realities and geared toward public policy making.

See: Devarajan, S (2011). Africa's Statistical Tragedy World Bank (

http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/africa-s-statistical-tragedy). Jerven M (2015). Poor Numbers - How We Are Misled by African

Development Statistics and What to Do about It (https://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/a_ids-poornumbers.pdf)

“Beegle, Kathleen; Christiaensen, Luc; Dabalen, Andrew; Gaddis, Isis. 2016. Poverty in a Rising Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/22575 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”

Utility vs Visibility: This knowledge must be defined and

produced locally The primary essence of this knowledge

must be to inform, enlighten and educate Not production of research papers, not

competition in the number of papers produced, not targeted at promotion and tenure, etc. (Nwagwu 2006, 2016).

Publish abroad or perish at home: Circulated where they are needed (Garfield

1977)

Open Access, Open Africa- Open Access is an Africa-friendly publishing philosophy, an

opportunity for addressing the domestication of African knowledge;

- Research papers published in scientific journals with at least one African author more than quadrupled from about 12,500 to over 52,000 with the share of the world’s articles with African authors almost doubling from 1.2% to around 2.3% (World Bank 2013).

- Africa doubles research output over past decade, moves towards a knowledge-based economy (Schemm 2013)

- What does this statistics tell us?

Open Access in Africa is uneven and defragmented

Only 19 (2.47%) open access policies, of the global 779 (alignment with Horizon 2020 OAP)

Only one policy by research organisation, 18 by funder

141 (4.4%) repositories out of global 3215

123 (8.4%) out of 2715 by research organisations

(ROARMAP 2016;OPENDOAR 2016).

Features of OA in Africa; New Enclosures

CODESRIA is concerned with three main factors

Science policies in the region APCs Role of Technology Human resources

Science Policies Weak regional/national/institutional science

policies, absence of research councils, E.g Publishing abroad trashes local journals

Absence of open access policies

Article Processing Charges (APC) Only four countries in Africa pay APC Scholars in the other countries bear the APC (Xia 2015, Nwagwu

2015) APC is higher than scholars monthly pay (see:Solomon and Björk

2012) Research funding is not available at home Research funding is very slim from abroad (Nordling 2012, 2013) Stoking fake publishing- Damaging image of science in Africa (Truth 2012)- Spurring racism in science (Nwagwu 2015)

The Changing Role Technology OA is a technology sprout Rapidity of sprout of new technologies New technology business models Aggregate cost high

Human resources Brain drain Remuneration patterns Skill

CODESRIA OA ProjectCODESRIA is currently addressing the first enclosure:

a. Conference on electronic publishing - March 29-April 1 2016: Consensus building leading to b. The Dakar Declaration on OA 2016 jointly sponsored by CODESRIA/UNESCO/CLACSO c. Strategies for marketing and implementing The Declarationd. Working Groups/Steering Committees on Open Publishing in Africa e. Cross stakeholder linkages, interactions, liaisons, collaboration opportunities

The Strategies…

i. Building consensus among university administrators and operators, research councils and professional bodies, regional bodies

ii. CODESRIA African Regional Repository (CoARR)

iii. CODESRIA Open Education Platform (CoOEP)

iii. Codesria African Open Access Journals – hosting and providing professional publishing services to OA

Publishers in the South

Challenges

1. Funding for OA ProjectsThe current human flow has rerouted funders interests to address new and emerging refugee communities 2. Human resources at all levels continue to pose serious challenges

The way forward

Training

Technical assistance

Concluding Remarks

i. Africa’s needs to take control of its participation in open access publishingii. Africa needs to build open access infrastructureiii. These expectation require concerted efforts and collaboration across boundaries and stakeholders