The state of the nation 2011 – government policy and open access in South Africa »

"2010 has been dominated, from my perspective, by a negative force, the pending implementation, during 2011, of the IPR Act for Publicly Funded Research of 2008. While I would argue that the default position these days on publicly funded research is that it should, as far as possible, be publicly and freely available, this piece of legislation, a kind of Bayh-Dole Act on steroids, appears to regard the default as IP protection, with commercialisation through patenting as the most desired outcome....However, South Africa is fortunately very good at paradox – perhaps even oxymoron. I was asked in the last few weeks to advise for an international project on the legislative and policy environment for Open Access in South Africa and came to the surprised conclusion that we are probably ahead of the game in terms of legislation and policy for open access at government level. Here are some of the reasons why. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) – the very same department that is introducing the IPR Act – supports a strategic initiative managed through the Academy of Science of South Africa, implementing ASSAf’s recommendations from its Report on a Strategic Approach to Research Publishing in South Africa. This programme, which is receiving financial support from the DST, aims to upgrade South African scholarly journals using anopen access model...."