New publishing model pins hopes on ‘unity of purpose’

"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...."