Africa’s challenges in the OA movement: risks and possibilities
| Date | 12 August 2019 |
| Published date | 12 August 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-04-2018-0152 |
| Pages | 496-512 |
| Author | Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva,Kwabena Osei Kuffour Adjei,Christopher M. Owusu-Ansah,Radhamany Sooryamoorthy,Mulubrhan Balehegn |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
Africa’s challenges in the OA
movement: risks and possibilities
Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva
Retired/independent, Takamatsu, Japan
Kwabena Osei Kuffour Adjei
Department of Information Science/The University Library,
Kumasi Technical University, Kumasi, Ghana
Christopher M. Owusu-Ansah
NASKA II Library, University of Education, Winneba, Mampong, Ghana
Radhamany Sooryamoorthy
School of Social Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, and
Mulubrhan Balehegn
College of Dryland Agriculture and Natural Resources,
Mekelle University, Mekelle, Ethiopia
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to assess the status of the open access (OA) movement on the African
continent, and if there is any financial or moral exploitation by dominant “foreign”world powers. OA
provided the African intellectual community with a tool to prove its academic prowess and an opportunity to
display cultural and intellectual independence. OA publishing is prone to abuse, and some in Africa have
sought to exploit the OA boom to profit from non-academic activity rather than use this tool to glorifyAfrica’s
image and diversity on the global intellectual stage. These issues are explored in detail in the paper.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors broadly assessed literature that is related to the growth
and challenges associated with OA, including the rise of OA mega journals, in Africa.
Findings –African OA journals and publishers have to compete with established non-African OA entities. Some
are considered “predatory”, but this Jeffrey Beall-based classification may be erroneous. Publishing values that
African OA publishers and journals aspire to should not equal those published by non-African publishing entities.
Africa should seek solutions to the challenges on that continent via Africa-based OA platforms. The budding
African OA movement is applauded, but it must be held as accountable as any other OA journal or publisher.
Originality/value –African scholars need to reassess the “published in Africa”OA image.
Keywords Higher education, Academics, Exploitation, Open access, Predatory open access journals,
African intellect
Paper type Viewpoint
Challenges to knowledge production and publishing in Africa
Africa is seeing a steady growth in academic intellectand prowess, although it faces decades
of post-colonial, politicaland socioeconomic challenges,including structuralflaws, imbalanced
efficiencies,administrative bureaucracies and lack of independence(or continued dependence)
(Sawyerr, 2004; Teferra and Altbachl, 2004; Perraton, 2007; Kanyengo, 2009; Koch and
Weingart, 2016;Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Zondi,2016). Among the top 100 countriesglobally, the
entire African continent produces approximately 2 per cent of research output according to
Scimago Journal and Country Rank[1]. A limitation to this statistic is that the Scimago Lab
excludes manylocal African journals that arenot listed on the Scopus® database.As a result,
not a single African university appears among the top 100 Times Higher Education World
University rankings, with established criteria[2], and developed together with Elsevier since
2014[3], with the top African university being the University of Cape Town, in South Africa,
ranked at number 171and the University of the Witwatersrand,also in South Africa, ranked
at number 299[4]. In the same ranking, a total of seven universities from South Africa, two
Online Information Review
Vol. 43 No. 4, 2019
pp. 496-512
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-04-2018-0152
Received 21 June 2018
Revised 11 September 2018
Accepted 26 December 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
496
OIR
43,4
from Egypt and one from Uganda appear in the top 1,000 universities, suggesting an
imbalancewithin the African continent.A new set of rankings is being implemented to induce
inter-institutional competition[5]. In the field of development studies, a tiny proportion of
authors in top-ranking journals was located in developing nations, including that of African
descent, whetherresident or abroad, mirroring an equallysmall percentage of editors in these
countries,including from Africa (Cummingsand Hoebink, 2017). The braindrain that tends to
accompany political instabilityon the African continent (Mills et al., 2011)does not help these
statistics. However, in some instances such as in South Africa, returning migrants with skills
obtained from other countries result in a brain gain[6].
Within this perspective of a continent struggling to compete with traditionally “foreign”
or non-African publishing prowess, we examine what the OA movement represents to
Africa and African academics, what pitfalls they should be aware of, and offer some
practical perspectives of what could be done to improve their standing on the global stage as
an independent cultural academic identity.
Cultural and financial driving forces behind open access in Africa
Africa has a rich and diverse cultural, intellectual, humanistic and religious base. Africa is also
the continent that was most exploited by colonial powers for centuries. Africa continues to be
exploited, primarily for its natural resources by local, Western and Eastern powers ( Murombo,
2013). Africans have always fought against racial and intellectual discrimination, and their right
to independent self-determination for themselves and their continent (Balasubramanyam, 2015).
These powerful and sometimes contradictory positions, as well as constant tribal or ethnic
conflicts, have led to many geo-political conflicts across the continent. This has left, very broadly
and in many respects, a continent with a sense of disenfranchisement, intellectually and
otherwise, leaving efforts at achieving viable knowledge production exclusively in the hands of
higher education (Cloete et al., 2015). This effort includes the establishment of university presses
(Muller et al., 2017; van Schalkwyk and Luescher, 2017), Africa’s potential Renaissance, with
about 52 in total in some form of revived development[7]. In the internet age and within a
scientific context, many African scientists feel a lack of awareness as a direct result of the lack of
access to knowledge and funding (Kimengsi et al., 2016), and a constant battle to freely access
open educational resources (Hodgkinson-Williams and Arinto, 2017). The use of information and
communications technologies is one way to cover the gap with international markets and
increase Africa’s competitiveness[8].
Lack of funding is an important limitation that results in low research output, and there
is a disproportionate spread of funding opportunities in Africa. For instance, South Africa
as a country with the highest funding in Africa is still one of the least funded among
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries[9] and has the lowest
per capita R&D spending of all G20 countries[10].
The OA movement and boom in Africa
Since the advent of the OA movement, Africa was presented with a unique gift, as well as a
unique challenge. Africa was given an unparalleled opportunity to showcase its intellectual
prowess at a level that had, traditionally (Western-based), been primarily dominated by
leading US and European intellectual centres. Finally, the prerequisite to development,
namely access to knowledge, could be realistically met. Not only would the OA movement
allow Africa to empower itself intellectually, it would give African academics and scientists
a tool to prove, or fortify, its intellectual worth. However, a powerful tool was perhaps given
to a continent where the majority of players and the digital publishing infrastructure was
not fully prepared to take the best academic advantage of this tool (Smart and Murray,
2014), the so-called “digital divide”(Nwagwu and Ahmed, 2009).
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Africa’s
challenges in
the OA
movement
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