Africa: scholarly publishing study

Eve Gray, University of Cape Town, South Africa, has prepared a report on the status of research publications in the country, and made recommendations for a policy review. The study formed part of the Open Society Institute International Policy Fellowship, Programme 2006-7. The full report can be found at: http://www.policy.hu/gray/IPF_Policy_paper_final.pdf

She describes the present situation that leads to African knowledge being seriously marginalized and poorly represented in the global scholarly output. She makes a number of recommendations that could be appropriate for other African countries and concludes that Open Access and collaborative approaches could bring substantially increased impact for African research, with marked cost-benefit advantages.