It is my honour to offer a keynote address marking this occasion of the launch of SciELO SA. I would like to say a few words regarding the significance and value of this initiative.
One of the primary miracles of the digital revolution in general and the internet in particular, is how they have ignited an explosion of information access. This gives hope to our collective aspirations for a knowledge-based economy, indeed it is a development of profound significance for civilisation. But to really appreciate the significance of SciELO SA, we have to go beyond these platitudes. As with the broader, multi-country SciELO initiative of which it is a part, SciELO SA is both a corrective measure, and a visionary scheme. How so?
Let me start with the corrective aspect. In light of the digital revolution, it is somewhat ironic that where the scientific community is concerned, the miracle is highly qualified. Scientific knowledge is captured and transmitted above all by means of scientific journals. Many if not most of the world’s cutting-edge scientific journals operate according to the ‘pay-to-read’ model. For these journals, the internet has become above all a new platform for conducting business. Yes, performing an internet search may well assist a researcher to identify, say, an interesting journal article of which she’d been unaware; but immediately she is aware of it, she is likely to be presented with a hefty price tag, often expressed in US Dollars, nogal.
Our esteemed Professor Gevers has framed the situation very nicely. He writes that academic journals comprise “a highly profitable industry with an unusual production model – authors produce the raw material for free, the same community of authors carries out labour-intensive but unpaid quality control, and the publishers laugh all the way to the bank.” While acknowledging that publishers do add value, there is little for the rest of us to laugh about. The situation raises questions of what we are prepared to pay, for what, and to whom.
But it is not so much about the money as about the principle, and about what is good for society. While acknowledging that conventional academic publishers have facilitated the creation and dissemination of knowledge beyond what would have been there in their absence, are we sure they are striking the right balance between facilitating and constraining?
Some of you are perhaps thinking that there is an analogy between the apparatus through which scientific articles are published, and the patent system. As in many other countries, patents are an important aspect of our system of innovation. In the absence of patent protection, the private sector in particular would be less inclined to conduct R&D in order to create new medicines or novel manufacturing techniques.
The analogy would be that whereas patents provide for the protection of knowledge that makes it commercially worthwhile to venture into expensive and risky R&D, copyright enforcement in tandem with a ‘pay-to-read’ policy, incentivises the generation and thereafter broader use of scientific research. But in reality the kinship is a distant one. Much of the academic literature that exists in the form of journal articles, is based on research which was in fact funded directly or indirectly via government support, on the premise that knowledge is a public good. How then does it happen that academic publishers are given the right to retail this knowledge, often to the same taxpayers who paid for its generation in the first place?
What is a publisher really? In function, they are a sort of information broker, interfacing between those who generate literature or knowledge, and those who wish to access it. This is a critical function, and not costless. But especially in the realm of academic publishing, it is questionable whether it should be operated as an enterprise. Why are these journals so expensive to subscribe to, and why are particular articles so expensive to download? One reason is because publishers have succeeded in making these articles scarce. This is not what we want. Rather, where access to academic and scientific knowledge is concerned, we want abundance.
One reason however that we are prepared to pay for articles published in prestigious international journals – however grudgingly – is because they prestigious. These journals are prestigious to some degree because they are recognised as such by exclusive journal indices such as the ISI index, which tend to have a bias in favour of American and European titles. In effect, a journal is regarded as prestigious because it is frequently cited, and it is frequently citied because it has been deemed prestigious; the term ‘self-referential’ comes to mind.
The idea of developing metrics that acknowledge and reward quality is welcome, as are other mechanisms for promoting excellence. But consciously or not, exclusivity seems to serve the commercial interests of certain journal publishers rather than the broader interests of the academic community or the public.
SciELO was initiated by Brazil some 20 years ago as a gentle but firm challenge to this situation. The essence of SciELO is to support open access journals by, in effect, making them even more accessible, while implementing quality control measures that are truly about quality rather than a means of creating exclusivity.
Tangibly, researchers at large experience SciELO as a well-managed internet portal through which a country’s qualifying open access scientific journals can be searched and accessed in one place, greatly facilitating access to the their contents. The visionary aspect comes in here. Which journals are included is determined by a behind-the-scenes quality control process involving ‘Peer Review Panels’ and so forth, which allow for recognition of excellence beyond what is on offer from the ISI and IBSS lists.
The effect is to correct for the bias in favour of US and Europe-based journals as well as for the limitations of the pay-to-read model, by means of elevating the status of a country’s journals that have gone the noble but difficult route of open access. This makes a country’s scientific literature more accessible to both its own people and the world, while promoting the principle that where possible, knowledge should be treated as a public good rather than a commodity.
South Africa joined the SciELO community four years ago, thanks to the initiative of the Academy of Science of South Africa, whom we applaud. Over the course of these last four years, the work has begun of assessing candidate South African journals for inclusion in the so-called ‘SciELO SA collection’. Today’s launch marks the certification of this collection by the SciELO Global Network. Among other things, this means that the Global Network has deemed that SciELO SA’s quality control processes meet the quality standards that the Network as a whole has set for itself.
This is a profoundly gratifying form of South-South cooperation, and we must acknowledge with thanks the role of the Global Network, and give special mention to the Government of Brazil for its initiative and leadership. SciELO is significant not just because of what it is, but in terms of who it is.
Thus far, the SciELO SA collection remains small. But a good seed has been planted, and I don’t use this metaphor carelessly. Organic growth is what seems to characterise the growth of the SciELO Global Network and its country members, and we expect the same to be true of the SA collection, both in size and significance. Something so useful and intelligently designed is bound to grow; our job as government is merely to nurture it.
SciELO does not resolve all of the challenges associated with promoting open access to scientific knowledge. The funding issue in particular remains a vexing one. For example, how are academic journals meant to sustain themselves without resorting to either pay-to-read or pay-to-publish? Hopefully, by enhancing the local and international visibility of our high quality open access journals, SciELO SA will make it easier for these journals to find and maintain adequate sponsorship support. But this remains a concern.
A less topical issue perhaps is how to strike a balance between promoting excellence through peer review mechanisms, and ensuring that these mechanisms do not have the effect of stifling different voices. After all, in so far as SciELO seeks to promote recognition of excellence even where ISI and IBSS are blind to it, the idea is to make sure our voices are heard. But in a different way, and recalling Kuhn’s classic work on the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, we know that the advancement of knowledge is not always by means of incremental additions.
On the contrary, many of the most significant discoveries meet stiff resistance from the very expert peers who are called upon to decide whether or not they deserve to be published. Quality control does not always mix well with creativity, and yet creativity is the essence of innovation! But this is what one might regard as an academic quibble, which is not meant to detract from the importance of the SciELO initiative.
I would like to close by thanking the Academy for its fine work, and by repeating my thanks to the Government of Brazil. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the significant role that has been played by one of our most important partners in this endeavour, namely the Department of Higher Education and Training. SciELO SA is a superb initiative, and let us all share in the pride of this accomplishment.
Thank you.
