Growing research by going open?Possibilities and problems for strengthening capacity in African universities

Jonathan Harle, Programmes Manager (Research Capacity)

Open Access Africa 2012

University of Cape Town, 4-5 November

The ACU

The first international inter-university network in the world - 1913

538 members. We launch our centenary celebrations this week in Jamaica.

114 in Africa, 271 in Asia, 4 in the Caribbean. Membership has titled ‘South’ since 1967

long-term, complexinvolves shifts in power

influenced by cultural values and political processes

context-specific, dynamic

capacity to reproduce capacity

knowledge and skills

beyond a single grant or project

beyond a technical and value-neutral transfer of

skills

provokes changes in systems and the wider environment

A country’s ability to produce, debate and use research knowledge and products relevant to their needs, such as new technologies (SIDA)

“”

enhancing the abilities of individuals, organisations and systems to undertake and disseminate high quality research efficiently and effectively (DFID)

“”

a process

building trust

behaviours and attitudes

Cons

Enabling environmentThe rules of the game, incentives, political context, national, regional &

international policy

OrganisationalCapacity of departments and units within universities & research institutes – to fund and sustain themselves, to do research, to train and develop, to engage

with wider society

IndividualDeveloping individual researchers & professional staff – training, scholarships,

fellowships, mentoring – to do and manage research, to publish, to communicate, to engage, to influence

consortia & networks

)

Kaplan 1999 - Community Development Resource Association, South Africa (from Datta, Shaxson, Pellini 2012 ‘Capacity, complexity and consulting: Lessons from managing capacity development projects’ ODI http://www.odi.org.uk/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/7601.pdf)

VisionStrategy

Culture

Structure

Skills

Material resources

Context & conceptual framework

Different organisations, different mandates, different emphases

Can’t just be an add on – must be explicit and prioritised

Learning by doing

Research environments

Many initiatives

Changing attitudes, behaviours, approachesNo single model,

mechanism or approach

not purely technical or rational, and definitely not linear

Obligatory Steve Song map

This is seriously hindering their work

c. 40 kb/s

(Alan Jackson, Aptivate)

But what gets to the user?

Download speedsDecember 2011, journal article from UK-based publisher: 55 seconds at the University of Nairobi

2-4 minutes at two campuses of the University of Malawi in Lilongwe

…but even with several attempts a user in Uganda (outside of Kampala) was unable to download the article at all.

The academic core

Doctoral deficits

Ghana

Moz

ambiq

ue

Ugand

a

U Gha

na

U Dar

es

Salaam

U Nair

obi

Mak

erer

e

Botsw

ana

Eduar

do M

ondla

ne

Kenya

pub

lic

Kenya

priv

ate

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

28%

15%12%

47%50%

71%

32%

20% 19%

39%

21%

Doctorates amongst academic staff

Figures from Tettey (2010) and Cloete et al (2011)

PhD production

U Ghana U Dar es Salaam

U Nairobi Makerere Botswana

-20.0%

-10.0%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

Doctoral growth 2001-2007

U Ghana U Dar es Salaam

U Nairobi Makerere Botswana0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

20 20

32

23

4

Number of PhDs produced 2007

Figures from Cloete et al (2011)

Full-text journals & information resources:

PERii: 23,000 AGORA: 1,900OARE: 2,990

HINARI: 8,000

73%

27%

323 journals

117 journals

2011: average availability of the top 440 ISI ranked journals (top 20 journals, 22 subjects) in 11 universities – Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Availability has improved significantly...

appreciate the ISI isn’t a good measure of ‘top’ titles…

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

AAverage availability across all subjects

72%

28%

Actually available = 270 titles

Malawi 71% 128 of 180

Nairobi 69% 73 of 106

Rwanda 83% 53 of 64

Dar 70% 16 of 23

‘Unavailable titles’ actually available

Diverging or converging?

(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) http://www.flickr.com/photos/joethorn/

• Fewer subscriptions– for more content• More straightforward to manage - fewer paywalls, IP

ranges and passwords• Greater visibility of their own research – institutional &

disciplinary repositories• Showing what universities do & contributions to

development• Help to build case for investment • New ways of tracking, measuring and understanding

reach & impact – altmetrics • CC-BY = re-use = potential to improve teaching

materials

For universities Possibilities…

• University leaders don’t yet fully appreciate what open means

• Wary of digital and online publishing – belief that not high quality, that ‘free’ material is inferior

• Open / online articles not accepted in promotions – policy change, confidence building

• Online infrastructure – need to really invest in ICT facilities, bandwidth, local networks, manage bandwidth

For universities Challenges…

• Much more available – drawing on the latest research to design, undertake & publish own work

• Less cut off from international peers – greater potential for collaboration

• Quality research with up to date references more likely to get through peer review

• Able to update teaching materials

As readers

(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisjl/

Possibilities…

• In a mixed world, some is open, some isn’t. Confusion

• Searching, discovering, navigating – still a huge challenge whether open or not

• Confidence in the system – judging quality, understanding peer review

As readers

(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisjl/

Challenges…

As authors

• Currently many struggle to publish• Many reasons, but partly unfamiliarity

with journals – OA would address this• More opportunity to be published• Greater visibility for their work – within

and outside Africa• In journals & in repositories

 (CC BY 2.0) http://www.flickr.com/photos/anonymouscollective/

Possibilities…

As authors

• What’s a reputable journal? Understanding quality in an OA world. Need support here.

• Online? Free? Open access? International? Local? Reviewed?

• People will ‘take’ their work – the internet’s not a safe place. Especially with data.

• Can’t afford to publish – many authors think it costs to publish as it is

• ‘Online journals’ don’t count for promotion• What about African journals?

 (CC BY 2.0) http://www.flickr.com/photos/anonymouscollective/

Challenges…

(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) http://www.flickr.com/photos/graceinhim/

Tanzania 2007 71,000 downloads from PERiiAround 50,000 students and 2,100 academics

So that’s just over 1 download per student/academic, per year

University of Nairobi, 2009 20 students shared access to each

computerAt Chancellor College, University of

Malawi it was 30

negative attitudes towards research“ ”

unwelcoming environment

“”intellectual

meltdown“ ”intellectually

lost“ ”

stay connected – with peers, nationally, regionally, internationally

get published

define a research agenda

seed funding to get started

learn how to supervise

supportive institutional context

mentoring and support from experienced researchers

Most of our social scientists are not institution based... they are there for hire

“

”

Quoted in Danny Wight’s article of the same title, Social Science & Medicine, 2008; 66:110-6.

800 academics from 12 southern African countries

62% engaged in consultancy work

(CREST survey)

Consultants presume that research is all about finding answers to problems defined by a client. They think of research as finding answers, not as formulating a problem

“

”Mahmoud Mamdani, The Importance of Research in a University’, keynote at Makerere University Research

Conference, 9 April 2011

The lack of knowledge production is not a simple lack of capacity and resources, but a complex set of capacities and contradictory rewards within a resource-scarce situation

“

”Cloete et al, 2011, Universities and Economic

Development in Africa