Abstract
The presentation reviews the impact of open access (OA) and how research institutes and
universities have in many ways been agents of significant knowledge production in South Africa.
As one of the institutional repository (IR) managers in South Africa, the researcher views the
axis of information, communication and technology (ICTs), OA and IRs as enablers for local
scholarly communication and knowledge production that should all be embraced by universities
and research institutions in South Africa, and the rest of the African continent. The learning,
research and teaching environment at South Africa universities and research institutions due to
the availability of the Internet has changed for the better. Therefore harnessing research
information related to aspects of cultural, political, socio-economic and scientific knowledge
should be a priority for academia and libraries. The OA model is not just applicable to scholarly
communication and publishing but has opened avenues for all to publish and be visible thereby
unlocking some barriers that have been blocking the exchange and dissemination of original
new and old evidence particularly, journal articles, conference proceedings, theses and
dissertations, as well as immerging new researchers in South Africa and the African academia.
According to the Thompson Reuters report (2010), [Africa’s contribution to the global body of
scientific research is very small and does little to benefit its own populations. On the other hand
the African Diaspora provides powerful intellectual input to the research achievements of other
countries but returns less benefit to their countries of birth. That is at least in part because of a
chronic lack of investment in facilities for research and teaching, a deficit that must be remedied]
- Global Research Report Africa (2010). This research looks at the various stages of
development of open access implementation at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), University
of South Africa (UNISA), University of Pretoria (UP), University of Stellenbosch (SUN) and
Centre for Science and Industrial Research Council (CSIR), early adopters of D-Space. IR
Managers from this consortium formed a community of practice (CoP) from which this study was
investigated. The case study reviews the milestones achieved with regards to institutional IR
policies and OA readiness in South Africa in general. Though a number of questions and
challenges still remain, the research attempted to uncover most practical problems impeding IR
functions and services at these institutions mentioned and also provide solutions to
disseminating research outputs from South African scholars. Some include the IR framework
policy, procedures and copyright vs. self-archiving or institutional archiving at this stage of
development of OA repositories in South Africa. Nevertheless the CoP, availability of ICTs,
other peripherals to digitize retrospective and born digital research outputs, i.e. papers, reports,
book chapters, theses and dissertations as well as support given by institutions will foster further
collaboration and better results. Importantly IR managers are now able to measure and report
on the visibility and usage of the visible research output in IRs to stakeholders. In the long term
local knowledge in the sciences and humanities residing in universities, research institutes and
other domains in Africa, precisely located in South Africa would dramatically be accessible and
visible online due to OA. Institutions can therefore share knowledge and eliminate exiting
barriers and make academic and scientific research outputs visible to the rest of the world.