Scholarly Communication at the University of Botswana Case Study Report
abernard102@gmail.com 2014-05-16
Summary:
"Use the link to read the full text report. An excerpt from the introduction reads as follows: "African scholarly research is relatively invisible for three primary reasons: 1. While research production on the continent is growing in absolute terms, it is falling in comparative terms (especially as other Southern countries such as China ramp up research production), reducing its relative visibility. 2. Traditional metrics of visibility (especially the ISI/WoS Impact Factor) which measure only formal scholar-to-scholar outputs (journal articles and books) fail to make legible a vast amount of African scholarly production, thus underestimating the amount of research activity on the continent. 3. Many African universities do not take a strategic approach to scholarly communication, nor utilise appropriate ICTs and Web 2.0 technologies to broaden the reach of their scholars’ work or curate it for future generations, thus inadvertently minimising the impact and visibility of African research.
Visibility in this context amounts to more than just 'accessibility' – it means digital accessibility. It means that a scholarly object is profiled in such a way that makes it easily findable by search engines or databases through a relevant search string. Thus, it requires a communications strategy, one of the ingredients missing in many African universities’ and scholars’ approach to research dissemination. A key way to enhance Africa’s research visibility, reach and effectiveness is by
communicating it according to open access principles. Making all African research outputs clearly profiled, curated and made freely available to the public would give African research a higher likelihood of not only shaping academic discourse because it would be more visible to scholars, but of getting into the hands of government, industry and civil society personnel who can leverage it for development. This approach is already taking root in the global North ..."