This weekend, from 14-17 June the Cape Town Book Fair takes over the Cape Town International Convention Centre, so this blog is about a new book, Stealing Empire, by Adam Haupt, published by the HSRC Press. Last year  close on 50,000 visitors attended, giving the lie to the idea that South Africans don't read and are not attracted to books. As Dave Chislett said today in his new blog - the Chiz- on The Times newspaper's blog site, the problem is not that people don't read - witness the high circulation of popular newspapers -  but rather that publishers do not publish for them, nor bookshops target readers beyond the safe urban middle class. 

In celebration of the Book Fair, today I am therefore pointing to a book by a UCT colleague and partner in the PALM project, Adam Haupt, that does not target the popular readership Dave is talking about, but explores some of the issues of global media dominance that is part of the proplem. Published by the HSRC Press, this is a scholarly title, but provides an incisive and lively account of the ways in which global coroporate media interests dominate and appropriate 'aspects of youth, race, gender, cultural expression and technology for their own enrichment - much to the detriment of all society.' However the real appeal of the book is not only the study of how this appropriation works, but also of how, in a country like South Africa countercultures like that of the hip-hop activists in the Cape Flats of Cape Town in turn use new media and IP subversion to appropriate their own space. The book explores the MP3 revolution and Napster and digital sampling in hip-hop and explores alternatives to proprietary approaches to the production of culture and knowledge. This is a theorised account of dominant culture and subversion, drawing largely on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's concept of Empire. This use of theory, said UCT deputy-Vice-Chancellor at the launch a few weeks ago, is in itself an act of appropriation and subversion. We in the developing world, Martin argued, are not supposed to theorise; rather, we are required to provide the raw materials for the theorists of the North. 

The extra treat is that you can listen to a podcast on the book that includes discussion of the book and material from what was a very lively launch. The book is published by the HSRC Press, which launched the book at the Book Lounge in Cape Town, with perfromances from Burni,of the Cape Town feminist hip-hop group, Godessa and Caco the Noble Savage, a hip-hop activist with a wonderfully ironic take on the impact of globalisation that is the subject of the book. Being able to listen to the artists that Adam is talking about provides an added dimenstion to the reading of the book -a must-read accompanied by a must-listen. 

Given that this is an HSRC Press book, it is available full text online for free download. Print copies are available for sale in South Africa and in many other countries through print-on-demand distribution arrangements. So enjoy the Book Fair, but read Adam's book, too to get a critical perspectiveof the forces at play

Adam will be speaking in a panel at the Book Fair on Saturday afternoon - “Holding us together or pulling us apart?” The role of the South African Media in the creation and mutation of identities." 

Icame back from a meeting of the Academyof Science (ASSAF) Committee on Scholarly Publishing in SouthAfrica (CSPiSA) last week feeling bouyed up and looking forward to aperiod of rapid developments in Open Access scholarly publishing inSouth Africa. We were told that the Department of Science and Technology(DST) has now dedicated a substantial three-year budget to fundthe implementation of ASSAF's recommendations for the development ofscholarly publication in South Africa. This is important stuff – aforward-looking government department investing in a major way in thedevelopment of scholarly publication, linking this to the country'sstrategic science and technology growth objectives and offeringsupport for what is in many ways a visionary Open Access programmethat is expected to deliver considerable progress in the next threeyears.

TheASSAF Report on Scholarly Publishing in SA wasan important milestone in the development of a coherent and effectivescholarly publishing environment in SA. As reported in earlierblogs, the Report was commissioned by the DST and produced what wasprobably the most coherent account of the state of scholarlyjournal publishing in South Africa, concluding with a set of 10recommendations which included strong support for the development ofa 'gold route' Open Access approach to journal publishing in SouthAfrica.

Thecentral vision of the report is for quality-controlled and governmentsupported publication of open access journals of a sufficient qualityto deliver local impact and international recognition. Qualitycontrol is to be through a peer review process carried out across thedifferent discuplines in collaboration with the National JournalEditors' Forum. Financial support for open access journalpublication, it proposed, would be by way of the dedication of asmall percentage of the revenue paid to journals through theDepartmentof Education (DoE) publication grant system, for the purpose ofpaying per-article author charges through the institution where theauthor is based.

Backingthis up is a recommendation for the creation of a national technicaland promotional platform for hosting and profiling the best SouthAfrican journals, possibly along the lines of SciELO in LatinAmerica. It is envisaged that the national platform would hostselected journals that would profile the best of South Africanresearch.

Itseems that the DST's motivation in offering this support is linked toits 10-yearplan for human capital development,which proposes a radical growth in the level of postgraduate degrees,publications and innovation levels in higher education. The ASSAfscholarly publication programme is thus seen as a key to the processof raising the bar for the quality and output of research in thecountry and leveraging upwards the profile of the country in theinternational research rankings, while at the same time improving thepositive impact of research on economic growth and socialdevelopment.

OpenAccess has been recommended not only in response to the need forincreased accessibility but also for higher levels of internationalvisibility and citation counts to profile South African research inthe conventional international rankings. While the focus of thisprogramme is fairly conventional, focusing primarily on peer reviewedscholarly journals that could perform well in the internationalcitation rankings, this is a major step forward simply because itputs publication of South African research in South Africa in thespotlight and, through links with the African Academies of Science, connects this to a broader effort to raise publication levels on thecontinent. (The creation of an African citation index is one of therecommendations in the ASSAf Report on Scholarly Publishing in SouthAfrica.) And, even more important, this intervention at lastrecognises that scholarly publishers need support if South Africaresearch is to be properly disseminated.

We understand thatthe DST accepts that this model may require long term subsidisationfor Open Access journal support and this support is perceived as partof a national service project to build capacity and serve everyscholar. To me, as a publisher, this is of central importance. In theOpeningScholarshipproject at the Universityof Cape Town, for example, we have discovered that theuniversity tracks the authorship of articles (with the purpose ofsecuring the grants that the DoE pays for publication in accreditedjournals), but that there is no tracking of publication – who isediting or publishing what and where. Publication efforts –editing, peer reviewing and producing scholarly and otherpublications – are therefore invisible and, not surprisingly Ithink, under-supported. This is surely detrimental to theuniversity, as this is an opportunity lost to profile theconsiderable contribution that this leading research university makesto scholarship and development initiatives in the region.

CSPiSA'sdelivery of the activities that have been prioritised should startvery soon now: the rolling peer review of journals across differentsubject area will be carried out in collaboration with theJournal Editors' Forum(see myblog on theinaugural meeting of the Forum last year). The idea is that this willnot only be a quality evaluation process but will be designed toprovide the potential for the development of the knowledge and skillsthat could lead to quality improvement. Agreement on the compositionof the review panels is being sought and the first subject areas tobe reviewed should start rolling out soon.

Afurther intervention being undertaken over the next six months, thistime with DoE support, is the production of a Report on a StrategicApproach to Scholarly Book Publishing by a selected panel of experts,following a fact-finding investigation by CREST at the University ofStellenbosch. Provisional findings should be available forpresentation at the National Scholarly Journal Editors' Forum in Julyand it is hoped that the final report should be ready for release in November. Another important milestone, this, as book publication is seriously under-supported and under-valued in South African policy, in spite of the remarkable success of the open access social science research council publisher, the HSRC Press.

Let's see where we are this time next year. Much further down the road, I suspect.  

The University of Cape Town –which is one of South Africa's leading research universities - lastweek became one of the few major universities worldwide to sign theCape Town Declarationon Open Education (previously blogged here and here). The Declaration was signed by  Deputy Vice-Chancellor Martin Hall, at a function in the Senate Room, hostedby the D-VC's office, the Centre forHiger Education Development and the Centrefor Educational Technology and supported by the Shuttleworth Foundation. The motivation for the event camefrom the OpeningScholarshipproject, both because Cheryl Hodgekinson-Williams and I wereparticipants in the inaugural workshop for the drafting of theDeclaration and because it is becoming clear as theOpeningScholarship project nears the end of its first phase thatthere is undoubtedly a role to be played by opening educationresources at UCT. The function was a great success, judging from thecomments of UCT blogger RetroidRaving:

 I just had to comment onthis function: I had ignored what I thought was a boilerplateinvitation, only to be told sternly that they really did want to seeme there...so I went, and I was glad I did.

Prawns.  Seriousthree-corner jobs and hot sauce.  Fruit kebabs.  Sataychicken.  A more-than-passable Merlot/Cab blend....

Oh, and folk from theShuttleworth Foundation, a public signing of the Declaration- and some very interesting conversation with folk that I onlyever meet at occasions like this....

I was very glad to discoverthat the penetration of computer technology in to education at UCThas come a long way since the old M(M)EG days, of which Martin Hallreminded us - and that WebCT, which I found so clunky I never gotinto it, despite trying hard - is completely superseded by Vula.

The reference here to Vula(the UCT version of Sakai)is apposite: in his speech, Martin Hall tracked the impetus for UCT'ssigning  of the Declaration back to  the decision made afew years ago to establish the Centre for Educational Technology as aunit within the Centre for Higher Education Development - thusidentifying it as part of the university's development initiative -and the decision to invest in becoming the first SAKAI partneroutside the USA.

The link between Sakai and OERs was endorsed afew weeks ago at UCT by President Mary Sue Coleman of MichiganUniversity when a Michigan delegation visited UCT to renew thepartnership agreement between the two institutions. President Colemanannouncedthe launch of a joint programme to develop open educationresources in the Faculty of Medicine at UCT: 

Our final area of growing partnershipis knowledge sharing. Of course, everything we have discussed withuniversity leaders this week involves the exchange of ideas andconcepts. This specific initiative combines the dissemination ofknowledge with the immediacy and accessibility of globalcommunication. 

Medical education and research is socritical in today’s world, and we want to collaborate with SouthAfrican institutions to develop and provide open Internet access toeducational materials in medicine, public health and the healthsciences.The soul ofscholarship is research. From the current to the ancient,universities must make all information accessible to faculty,students, and the public.

A point of pridefor us is the creation of Sakai, the first global consortium ofhigher education institutions using the concepts and technologies ofOpen Educational Resources. Open Educational Resources encompass arange of information – such as textbooks, course materials,software and more – that can be accessed and re-used at no charge,and already, more than 150 universities around the world draw uponSakai’s resources. 

We want to createthe same level of exchange between the University of Michigan’shealth sciences schools – medicine, nursing, public health anddentistry – and medical students and faculty throughout Africa, sothey can access materials to supplement their medical educations. 

Speaking atthe signing of the Declaration, Martin Hall said that the freedoms of the internet mustbe protected, or else knowledge will become a heavily-pricedcommodity. 'Universities are not Mickey Mouse', he said, expanding onthe role of big corporates in the extension of copyright protection.'The commercialisation of intellectual property presents difficultchallenges for a university', he argued. 'Universities thrive onmaking knowledge freely available and the Cape Town Open EducationDeclaration establishes important principles for ensuring that thishappens.'

 The function was a useful moment to step back and take stockof how far open approaches are taking hold at UCT. A gratifyingnumber of senior academics and administrators expressed support;attendance from the academic staff included a number of new faces,rather than only the usual suspects; and most gratifying, there wasenthusiastic support from the students. SHAWCO,the long-established student-run NGO, that offers health,educational  and welfare services, signed as an organisation andSHAWCO leaders want to engage further with the potential offered bythe Declaration. 

Given thisimpetus, it will be interesting to see where open education will beat UCT in another year's time.  

Looking back, I see that the last time I posted a blog was in November 2007. It is now April 2008. This should not be read as a sign that things here have ground to a halt. On the contrary, a hectic round of overwork has overtaken our lives, a treadmill of projects, meetings, workshops, and conferences. I hope that this means that South Africa is moving forward in opening scholarly communications. However, South Africa is never straightforward, so in reviewing what has been happening while I have had my head down all these months, I do not expect to report unremitting sunshine - there have been some showers, although overall the signs are good.

This overview of the projects that are in progress right now is the first instalment of a review of the way the year is looking - with quite a few items that I will need to pick up in more detail in upcoming blogs.

Collaborative Projects

In November 2006, in Bangalore, some of us - funders and consultants - got together to propose some collaboration in trying to map across one another to create greater coherence achieving our mutual goals of  more open and effective research communications in Africa. This was discussed again in a meeting at iCommons in Dubrovnik in June 2006 and we are now beginning to see the results. One major benefit that has emerged is that the projects that are now being implemented, because they are built on open access principles, can share each others' research findings and resources, reducing duplication and increasing impact. The projects also recognise that achieving policy change is a multi-pronged process, working at all levels of the university system, from individual lecturers (often young and lively innovators at the junior end of the hierarchy) to senior administrators and government policy-makers.  Leveraging the impact of several projects to achieve this makes a lot of sense.  

The projects I am now involved in, that are part of this collaboration,  include:

• OpeningScholarship, a UCT-based project, funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation, is using a case study approach to explore the potential of ICT use and social networking to transform scholarly communication between scholars, lecturers and students, and the university and the community.
• PALM Africa (Publishing and Alternative Licensing in Africa), funded by the IDRC, is exploring what the  the application of flexible licensing regimes - including the newly-introduced CC+ and ACAP - can do to facilitate increased access to knowledge in South Africa and Uganda through the use of new business models combining open access and sustainable commercial models.
• A2K Southern Africa, another IDRC project, is investigating research publication and open access in universities in the Southern African Regional Universities Association.
• The Shuttleworth Foundation and the OSI are supporting the Publishing Matrix project which is using an innovative, wiki-based approach to map the South African publishing industry along the whole value chain in such a way as to identify where open access publishing models could have most impact.  

Some interesting results are already emerging. The sharing of resources is speeding up the process of getting projects off the ground. Researchers are given instant access to background reports, bibliographies and readings and can review each others' tagged readings in del-icio-us. The advantages become obvious as I head off this evening for a planning workshop for the researchers carrying out the A2KSA investigations  with a range of briefing materials and readings instantly to hand.

Even more interestingly, having Frances Pinter of the PALM project explain to South African publishers and NGOs that flexible licensing models had the potential to defuse the stand-off between open access advocates and commercial publishers, and members of the OpeningScholarship team at the same meeting explaining how the use of new learning environments was changing the way teaching and learning was happening, led to some unexpected enthusiasm for the potential of new business models. Then Juta, the largest of the South African academic textbook publishers, asked for a day-long workshop at UCT with the OpeningScholarship and PALM teams to study these issues.  I have little doubt that listening to some of the innovative approaches that are being taken by young lecturers at UCT opened the publishers’ minds to the need to push further their forward thinking about the ways in which their businesses might change in the near future. A similar discussion is to be held with OUP South Africa in the next week.

Open Source and Open Access connect

We have found useful spaces in Vula - the UCT version of the Sakai learning management environment - to maintain project communications and track progress in our projects, using its social networking tools (something we perhaps learned from students who identified this potential for student societies).  Funders and guests from other projects can eavesdrop, creating greater coherence within and across project teams and giving donors a real sense of participation in the projects they are funding.

Vula, by the way has been hugely successful at UCT and there has been a steady and very substantial growth in the number of courses online  - reaching over 800 already this year (from under 200 in 2006) – and enthusiastic endorsement by students of the usefulness of the learning environment. I have little doubt that the flexibility of an open source system leads in turn to the potential for more openness in the use of teaching materials -  but more of that in a separate blog.

Open Education celebration

Right now, to celebrate UCT’s  commitment to Open Education, we are heading down the hill to the Senate Room, where there is to be an official signing of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, making UCT, I think, one of the first major universities to sign as an institution. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Martin Hall will sign for the university and around 50 guests, from senior academics and administrators to students will, we hope, sign individually, before raising a glass of good South African wine to the potential for opening the gates of learning.   

The UCT campus is slowly coming to life as the summer season winds to a close and children head reluctantly back to school. To wake us up properly, the Cape Town Declaration on Open Education was officially launched today, appropriately at the start of the new school year. 

The Cape Town Declaration was drafted by a meeting convened in Cape Town in September, bringing together a group of comitted people from across the world at the offices of the Shuttleworth Foundation which convened the gathering along with the Open Society Institute. (For more on the process of drafting the Declaration, see my September blog).

To read and sign the Declaration, go to http://www.capetowndeclaration.org

Of particular relevance to us in the developing world is the fact that the Declaration articulates the development of open education resources as a matter of particpation and not just of access, describing open education as a democratic collaborative environment with global particpation. The opening passage reads:

We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.  

The Declaration also stresses that Open Education is not a matter of content alone, but that this openness needs to encompass the collaborative potential offered by technology and should also include and understand the processes of education:

However, open education is not limited to just open educational resources. It also draws upon open technologies that facilitate collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices that empower educators to benefit from the best ideas of their colleagues. It may also grow to include new approaches to assessment, accreditation and collaborative learning. Understanding and embracing innovations like these is critical to the long term vision of this movement.

This is explicitly acknoweldged in the Press Release:

"Open sourcing education doesn't just make learning more accessible, it makes it more collaborative, flexible and locally relevant," said Linux Entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, who also recorded a video press briefing (http://capetowndeclaration.blip.tv/ ).  "Linux is succeeding exactly because of this sort of adaptability.  The same kind of success is possible for open education."

Open education is of particular relevance in developing and emerging economies, creating the potential for affordable textbooks and learning materials. It opens the door to small scale, local content producers likely to create more diverse offerings than large multinational publishing houses.

"Cultural diversity and local knowledge are a critical part of open education," said Eve Gray of the Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town. "Countries like South Africa need to start producing and sharing educational materials built on their own diverse cultural heritage. Open education promises to make this kind of diverse publishing possible."

 The Declaration has already been translated into over a dozen languages and the growing list of signatories includes:  Jimmy Wales; Mark Shuttleworth; Peter Gabriel, musician and founder of Real World Studios; Sir John Daniel, President of Commonwealth of Learning; Thomas Alexander, former Director for Education at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; Paul N. Courant, University Librarian and former Provost, University of Michigan; Lawrence Lessig, founder and CEO of Creative Commons; Andrey Kortunov, President of the New Eurasia Foundation; and Yehuda Elkana, Rector of the Central European University. Organizations endorsing the Declaration include: Wikimedia Foundation; Public Library of Science; Commonwealth of Learning; Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition; Canonical Ltd.; Centre for Open and Sustainable Learning; Open Society Institute; and Shuttleworth Foundation.