My people,
As much as we must cry out about these issues, the subject needs to be placed in perspective so we may more readily maximise its significance.
I am worried about such sweeping critiques-
'There's hardly any ASUU official that is not guilty of this racket, either.'
Okey Iheduru
The qs is- how do you know?
How factual is this-
'Many of the "professors" sent by the NUC to conduct "resource verification" (before new programs are approved) and accreditation exercises are among the worst culprits of this academic fraud. There's hardly any ASUU official that is not guilty of this racket, either
Okey Iheduru
I wonder how such sweeping knowledge was reached.
I am struck by this-
'As I have noted in earlier postings in this Forum, TET Fund (the Nigerian Tertiary Education Trust Fund) actually finances this racket by doling out funds to pay for "departmental journals", article publication fees, and myriad spurious publications initiated by thieving cliques and gangs that make the NURTW (National Union of Road Transport Workers, or "agbero" in my dictionary) in Oyo State look like saints.'
Okey Iheduru
I find it gratifying that Nigeria has an education fund that actively funds academic publications.
The qs is- how may these funds be best used in this regard?
How may the indigenous publications supported by this fund be developed to the highest international standards?
What is perhaps the leading journal in the study of African literature, Research in African Literatures, is described as started by Richard Bjornson with funding from the University of Texas.
Sylvester Okwunedo Ogbechie, created and ran Critical Interventions journal of Art History at his AACHRON online platform journal for years before it was taken over by Taylor and Francis.
Okwui Enwezor, with Chika Okeke Agulu and Olu Oguibe, created and ran Nka : Journal of Contemporary Art as a private initiative before it began to be published by Duke University.
Rajat Neogy created and ran the now legendary Transition journal for years on a shoestring budget before it passed to Soyinka's editorship after which it folded up for lack of funds, to be revived decades later by Skip Gates and published by Indiana University Press.
A current drive in the West is towards academics' control of journals, away from control by the big publishers, as demonstrated by the Wikipedia essay on "Academic Journal Publishing Reform", a move highlighted by the Elsevier boycott "The Cost of Knowledge" in which Timothy Gowers, Fields Medal winner [ Nobel Prize of mathematics] and professor at Oxford played a central role, an initiative that continues to reverberate.
A group of University of Cambridge academics have come together to create Open Book Publishers a publishing house by academics for academics and the general public that bypasses the exploitative qualities of big publisher journal and book publication.
This drive towards academic autonomy in publishing hearkens to when Western academic publications were managed by academics, as with Edmund Halley, with the academic patronage of the Royal Society, publishing Isaac Newton's epochal Principia Mathematica, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
In the light of these developments in decentralisation of academic publication away from a focus on high end brands controlled by publishing houses, how may scholars in Africa and other struggling continents adapt these initiatives?
Is the culture of 'do-it- yourself' academic publishing being decried in Nigeria something that should be done away with or refined?
Should these 'dept' journals not make themselves truly international by advertising globally and accepting submissions from the best globally?
I very much admire this-
'At the same time, we must acknowledge the valiant efforts of many Nigeria-based scholars who are getting published in world-class journals, in some cases, more than many of us in well-resourced overseas universities'
Okey Iheduru
but, where 'world class journals' invariably implies 'not in Africa' we need to ask qs about whose cognitive growth is being fed by the research being sent abroad, whose educational ecosystem is being fed by the sustenance of these journals, whose economy is being developed through these journals, whose students and staff are being trained and their prestige boosted through the cultivation of the skills required to manage these journals, whose ideational framing of discourse, whose theoretical structures are privileged through these journals, journals representing the same pool within which scholars in the countries where the journals are based are publishing, there being little or no need for scholars in the West to publish anywhere else, to the best of my knowledge
Are journals and academic publishers/publishing based in Africa not a desperate necessity if Africa is to achieve maturity in the world of organised knowledge?
The challenge is how to develop this to the highest standard.
thanks
toyin
On 2 October 2015 at 21:33, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@mail.ccsu.edu> wrote:
Predatory publishing was pioneered by the established institutions in the UK and elsewhere
who started to charge money for publishing about a decade ago, I believe.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department
CCSU. New Britain. CT 06050
africahistory.net
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on
Africa and the African Diaspora
________________________________
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Okey Iheduru [okeyiheduru@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2015 4:00 PM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 'Predatory' Publishing Up; Nigeria Has the Highest Ratio -- 1,580 Percent!!!
'Predatory' Publishing Up<http://insidehighered.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ed1d2ff123b6b83dd97022f88&id=b2cc9e3503&e=fd344a6e78>
Study suggests open-access journals with questionable peer-review and marketing processes now publish hundreds of thousands of articles a year, a huge jump in only a few years.
October 1, 2015
By
Carl Straumsheim<https://www.insidehighered.com/users/carl-straumsheim>
"The rise of open-access publishing, combined with pressure on academics to get published, has caused a spectacular increase in the number of articles spewed out by "predatory" journals, according to researchers at Finland's Hanken School of Economics. Such journals, of which there are thousands, charge authors hundreds of dollars in return for lackluster or nonexistent peer review and rapid publication...the journals dumped more than 420,000 articles into the market in 2014, up from 53,000 in 2010...Predatory publishers and journals are a byproduct of the open-access movement. In order to provide free access to readers, many journals have passed costs on to authors themselves, charging them an article-processing fee that can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars...Authors from Africa and Asia appear most willing to take the risk. They make up 76.7 percent of the authors of the articles captured in the study. Authors from India alone make up more than one-third, or 34.7 percent...India's and China's populations obviously skew the geographic breakdown. When it comes to the number of articles per capita, another country comes out on top: Nigeria. The researchers calculated each country's ratio of articles published in predatory journals to those indexed in Thomson Reuters's Web of Science. Nigeria had the highest ratio -- 1,580 percent -- followed by India (277 percent), Iran (70 percent) and the U.S. (7 percent)...Research published in predatory journals is polluting the entire scholarly publishing ecosystem."
Note: The National Universities Commission (NUC) of Nigeria and other such higher ed administration and quality control agencies in Africa ought to take note and evaluate their options.
Now, read the entire article and comments here:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/01/study-finds-huge-increase-articles-published-predatory-journals?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=6ee00e91a1-DNU20151001&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-6ee00e91a1-197542281
'Predatory' Publishing Up
October 1, 2015
By
Carl Straumsheim<https://www.insidehighered.com/users/carl-straumsheim>
--
Okey Iheduru, PhD
[http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/banners/readmyarticle/rrip.gif]
You can access some of my papers on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=2131462.
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