The impact of DHET subsidies on the state of scholarly publishing

What is the state of scholarly publishing in South Africa in light of the journal publishing requirements of many universities prior to the conferring of a Doctoral or a Master’s degree? Previous research statistics illustrated that higher education institutions produced an inordinate amount of journal articles as opposed to scholarly books and book chapters. What are the repercussions of the recent university policies on the publication of journal articles as prerequisites for graduation? What is the impact of the new policy on the subsidy for books and book chapters?

The role of research management in enabling and fostering scholarly publishing

What are the linkages between research management in South African universities and their contributions to scholarly publishing? Are research management offices fuelling the cult of subsidy generation over the production of quality outputs?

The state of peer review in scholarly journal publishing

What are some of the constraints faced by journal publishers and editors as far as the peer review process is concerned? Do we have enough peer reviewers for the amount of articles generated and submitted? What are journal editors’ experiences? What are researchers’ experiences of turn-around times as far as the publishing of journal articles is concerned?

The impact factors in journal publishing

Who decides whether a journal has a high impact factor or not? Why are certain journals, especially from the North, deemed as high impact factor journals long before even anyone publishes in them and why are most journals from the South, necessarily seen as low impact journals? What does this mean for the credibility of the science since these are determinants in the awarding of research grants, scholarly rankings and promotions?

The contribution of post-graduate studies on the emergence of a new cohort of researchers and their contribution to scholarly publishing

Are post-graduate students making headway in scholarly publishing? With the expectation that post-graduate students should publish prior to their graduation, what are some of the salient challenges that they face in this regard? Should supervisors be taking credit for their students’ work as co-authors? What are the ethics around co-authorship and what procedures are in place to ascertain whether post-graduate students are being adequately mentored in as far as research publishing is concerned?

The interface between ideas, money and the proliferation of predatory journals

The pressure to publish, as encapsulated in the motif ‘publish or perish’ has a harmful impact on the quality and efficacy of scholarly journals. It is argued in some quarters that the incentives offered by the DHET for the publishing of journal articles have unleashed a nefarious industry of predatory journals as well as unscrupulous practices by many academics, wherein the quality of what is published is superseded by the quantities involved. It is further argued that this has created an environment where profit has become so pervasive that rejections are viewed negatively due to their direct impact on the livelihoods of some.

What do university ranking systems mean?

In the recent past, there has been a proliferation of the publication of university rankings. Lo and behold, South African universities are publishing their rankings in various indices and the question remains, to what end? Is this meant to attract students and faculty? Or funding? Who determines the ranking, based on what criteria? What purpose do these rankings serve and what impact do they have on the scholarly outputs from such universities?

Is the university library still the mainstay of scholarly communication?

University libraries have for many years been the mainstay of scholarly publishing as they have been the leading purchasers of scholarly books. However, with the ever increasing costs of subscriptions to scholarly journals, it is argued that the university library is being squeezed as far as the purchasing of scholarly books is concerned. Moreover, with the advent of open access publishing and the fact that researchers can access journals virtually from anywhere in the world, what does the future portend for the university library?

Decolonising scholarly publishing

The South African university has been in a state of a ‘nervous condition’ since the advent of the #FeesMustFall movement. Since then, calls for the decolonisation of the curriculum have abounded. Surprisingly, however, there has not been a concomitant call for the decolonisation of the knowledge production industry. Therefore, a pertinent question arises as to how can scholarly publishing be decolonised? Who is getting published? By whom? What are their ideological inclinations? Are scholarly publishers innocent interlocutors in scholarly communications?

Disruptive innovation and the future of scholarly publishing

With the advent of a plethora of innovative and disruptive technologies in the scholarly publishing milieu, what does the future hold for scholarly publishing and communication? Whither the scholarly monograph? How will the bookselling value chain fare in the age of electronic distribution?

Reading, writing and publishing in African languages

If we are to decolonise the African university in general and the South African university in particular, why then are we not reading, writing and publishing in African languages? Why is the struggle for the decolonisation of the universities being waged using the language of the coloniser? Why are discourses on decolonising the university as well as the curriculum actually propounded in the language of the coloniser? What are the prospects of ever publishing scholarship in African languages? If there are impediments, how could these be practically overcome?