Around 65 delegates met in a mild and sunny Leiden in early September, as guests of the African Studies Centre of the University of Leiden, to discuss the the North-South divide and scholarly communication in Africa in the digital era.This was a follow-up to an initial conference on the topic in Dakar two years ago. The differences between the two conferences were telling: while the 2004 event consisted largely of informative and explanatory papers, laying the ground for an understanding of the terrain, this time there was a much more confident interrogation of the assumptions that underlie international scholarly communications systems and the power relations at play in the scholarly community. The papers were of a very high standard and the conference teased out many key issues facing African scholarly publishing, bringing delegates up short against of the major challenges that face the continent, yet not descending into the abyss of Afro-pessimism that so often characterises meetings of this kind.

Appropriately, given the venue, collaboration and partnership were very much on the agenda. As Adebayo Olukoshi said in his opening speech, global knowledge dissemination is characterised by asymmetries from previous systems of knowledge production. The conference was designed to address these asymmetries, he said, with the aim of developing strategies for using CODESRIA's CODICE documentation centre to help leapfrog institutional practice across the continent. In this context, CODICE is seen as a pioneer centre on the African continent for the development of digital media and online resources in the social sciences. The main lines of discussions that emerged at the conference were cogently summarised in this opening speech - the inequalities inherent in the scholarly system and the marginalisation of African knowledge in that system; the problematic yet ultimately liberatory role of technology; the need for leapfrogging disadvantage; and the vital importance of collaboration and resource sharing.

Open Access publication seemed to have ready acceptance across the board as the most enabling dissemination model for African scholarship, offering greater citation impact, greater efficiency and, most important, more democratic access to knowledge. Given that a number of speakers identified distribution problems as the major barrier to research dissemination, the potential for Open Access digital distribution was doubly attractive, leading to an increase in impact factor of between 56% and 227%, according to Marlon Domingues of the ASC.

The conference agreed that Codesria should propose the creation of an African citation index as a way of addressing the inequalitites that characterise the marginalisation of African publication.

At the iCommons Summit in Rio in late June, copyright scholar James Boyle, author of some remarkably incisive critiques of copyright conventions, put it in a nutshell - “We have a scientific publishing system', he said, 'that is massively dysfunctional and really, really broken.' If that is the case in the USA, how much more so in South Africa, where scholarly publishing of any description struggles to survive in what is a really, really marginal market? We need to ask ourselves, therefore, whether we are capable of taking up the challenge put out by our Brazilian hosts at the conference, to take a leap from the 19^th century to the 21^st, thinking of ourselves in the developing world as capable of being in the front line of new approaches. Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian Minister of Culture, said in his opening address: “The player who today loses can become the winner. Everything changes, all the time. And only those who understand change can conquer victory, or yet, victories, which are always partial. '

So what are the new developments that emerged at the Summit, at least in relation to scholarly publishing? It is now well established that Open Access publishing increases citation rates, sometimes dramatically, particularly in developing countries. For example, Subbiah Arunachalam said that going OA had radically increased the impact and reach of a number of Indian journals, with the Journal of Public Medicine now getting over 1 million hits a year. OA, he said, is a way of getting local and relevant knowledge disseminated, too, as it can also dissipate local boundaries.

But now Open Access journal publishing is moving into version 2.0 at the Public Library of Science (PLOS). PLOS ONE has a number of radical new features, built,around an understanding of the potential that can be unleashed if one takes full advantage of what the networked environment can offer. It will be launched later this year, as an inclusive peer reviewed publication that blurs the boundaries between the different scientific fields. Rather than regarding a journal article as being 'some form of absolute truth', PLOS One will be set up for ongoing debate and discussion and will also allow for interactive development of online papers, building on conclusions and strengthening data. Most strikingly, it will allow for publication within weeks of acceptance, with open and continuous peer review happening in the open, after publication.

There is enormous discussion going on around journals and scholarly publishing and there might well be batter alternatives to the way we do things. With the Academy of Science's major review of journal publishing in South Africa newly published, is it not time to open up the discussion here?