Published September 1, 2023 | Version v1
Poster Open

A strategy developed as a means to support open scholarship at a university in a low-income country in the global south

  • 1. University of Cape Town

Description

Open scholarship supports a social justice agenda, particularly through the democratisation of knowledge (by removing knowledge access barriers ) for marginalised communities. However, most universities in the global south have either little or no funding to support open access, open data sharing and creation of open educational resources (OERs). The University of Cape Town (UCT), a research-intensive university in Africa (in the global south), expressed a commitment, in its mission statement, to advance and disseminate knowledge to address the key challenges facing society  (that is, in South Africa, on the African continent and at global level). This calls for engagement in open scholarship (open access, open data sharing and OERS) as a social justice agenda through promoting re-use of knowledge for human development. A study finalised in 2022 at UCT revealed that academics and researchers that participated in the study minimally participating in open scholarship due to diverse reasons including lack of funding, lack of awareness of the availability of infrastructure, lack of awareness of the existence of open scholarship policies and other factors. The study also revealed that the promotion system at the university value metrics such as journal impact factor, which supports a closed publishing culture over openness of scholarship, whereas communities in South Africa and in other African countries experience complexities of marginalisation including income imbalances due to historical political experiences of apartheid and colonialism. Openness of scholarship has a significant role to support the transformation and decolonisation of education in the post-apartheid and post-colonial era. The findings of the study supported the development of a strategy to support open scholarship utilising resources available at UCT. Therefore, this strategy will be shared in a poster format, and factors that contributed to the development of the strategy will be shared during poster presentation.

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