Door 'slammed on open access' to academic work

South African universities and government agencies have banded together against international academic publisher Elsevier’s new hosting and sharing regime, which they argue “curtails scientific progress and places unnecessary constraints on delivering the benefits of research back to the public”, writes Sarah Wild for the Mail & Guardian.

They join thousands of other institutions around the world – including Oxford and Yale universities – in signing the Confederation of Open Access Repositories’ petition against the new regulations that extend republication embargoes for up to three years.

It is expensive for South African libraries and non-academics to get access to knowledge that is generated by South African tax money if they have been published in international journals, with library bills for academic journals often running into millions of rands. It is difficult to quantify how much South Africa’s universities and institutions pay to publish research, and to get access to research by local and international colleagues.
Full report on the Mail & Guardian site