Scholarly Communication at the University of Namibia: Case study report

Abstract

African scholarly research is relatively invisible for three primary reasons: \n1. 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. \n2. Traditional metrics of visibility (especially the ISI/WoS Impact Factor) which \nmeasure only formal scholar-to-scholar outputs (journal articles and books) fail to \nmake legible a vast amount of African scholarly production, thus underestimating \nthe amount of research activity on the continent. \n3. Many African universities do not take a strategic approach to scholarly \ncommunication, nor utilise appropriate ICTs and Web 2.0 technologies to broaden \nthe reach of their scholars’ work or curate it for future generations, thus \ninadvertently minimising the impact and visibility of African research. \nVisibility in this context amounts to more than just “accessibility” – it means digital \naccessibility. 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. \nA key way to enhance Africa’s research visibility, reach and effectiveness is by \ncommunicating it according to open access principles. Making all African research \noutputs clearly profiled, curated and made freely available to the public would give \nAfrican 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. In the past few years, major funding bodies in the EU, the UK and the USA have legislated open access mandates, requiring that all research funded by them must be made open access. This will raise the visibility of those regions’ research while (comparatively) lowering the visibility of Africa’s research, which is not produced under a similar mandate. However, most of the technologies required for engaging in open access communication are either already available at African institutions, freely available on the internet, or relatively inexpensive to purchase. Most also have access to the same free Web 2.0 technologies that allow individual scholars to enhance their scholarly profiles and collaborative opportunities. But these have not been incorporated into a strategic plan concerning scholarly communication, nor have enough African universities dealt with the skills and capacity challenges that new scholarly communication imperatives demand.

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