Browsing by Author "Swan, Alma"

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    Open Access
    Costs and Benefits of Open Access: A Guide for Managers in Southern African Higher Education
    (2014-02) Swan, Alma; Willmers, Michelle; King, Thomas
    In most institutions, researchers will typically enter into a wide range of publishing relationships with commercial and other publishing entities, depending on disciplinary dynamics, considerations around journal reach and impact, likelihood of acceptance, cost of publication, and other factors. It is important that researchers feel empowered to make independent decisions on what and where to publish, but institutional support is required to manage payment and other logistical issues entailed in the publishing process. Institutional support is also needed in the form of one or more "champions" to take a decisive lead on delivering change.
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    Open Access
    Opening Access to Southern African Research: Recommendations for University Managers
    (2014-02) Swan, Alma; Willmers, Michelle; King, Thomas
    Open access to research is no longer a fanciful notion promoted by a small group of advocates: it has become a mainstream concept embraced by governments, funders, institutions and researchers. It is an enabler of knowledge societies. UNESCO and the World Bank have endorsed the potential benefits of open access to the whole world. Open access has been shown to increase the impact of research on other sectors, notably the small business, education and health sectors. It improves effciencies in the research process wherever it is undertaken – in academia, in industry and commerce, in the cultural heritage sector and by independent researchers. Research moves more quickly and more effciently if there are no barriers to locating and accessing information. Open access also saves money and this, coupled with effciency gains, means that the future system of scholarly communication will be cheaper and better, with payoffs for producers of research and for those who can – given free access – use it.
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    Research Publishing Models: A Guide for University Managers
    (2014-02) Swan, Alma; Willmers, Michelle; King, Thomas
    How does an institution begin to engage with new forms of scholarly communication and begin the task of capturing – and therefore leveraging – its knowledge output? Scholarly communication requires institution-wide engagement by a range of stakeholders, in ways that are largely contingent on historical and contextual factors within the institution. !erefore, while there are extensive publicly available guides on scholarly communication, institutions need to articulate strategies based on their objectives, capacity, infrastructure and other factors. An institutional policy can provide a scaffolding to guide implementation, inform governance, identify revenue streams for capacity development, and make explicit the contributions of various stakeholders. An open access policy typically forms the overarching structure for engagement, complemented by other policies such as repository and intellectual property policies. Librarians are ideally placed to facilitate knowledge access across an institution, and to play an active role in disseminating and facilitating the re-use of knowledge.