The UKZN OA draft policy

OA policies can potentially assist universities make institutional commitment to OA scholarly publications through IRs. As explained by Chilimo (2015:29 cited Suber 2012), OA policies are strategies universities implement as a way of encouraging or mandating academics to self- archive their scholarly work into repositories. To a greater extent, university IP policies have afforded libraries an opportunity to practice and promote OA by uploading theses and dissertations, which are often archived by libraries. Uploading of theses and dissertations is easier for libraries because the university holds the copyright and each student is required to submit a copy of their thesis before they can graduate. In the case of UKZN, the findings in section 5.4.9 were that, it is mandatory to submit completed thesis and dissertations in line with the university’s IP policy. Similarly, University of Stellenbosch, states in its IP policy that it:

“…holds the copyright of the assignment/thesis/dissertation and may publish the assignment/thesis/dissertation as it deems fit, including in paper or electronic format” (Stellenbosch University: Policy in respect of the commercial exploitation of intellectual property 2010:15).

UP also holds copyright to theses and dissertations (University of Pretoria: Intellectual Property Policy 2011: 15), and so do other universities in South Africa and outside. The effectiveness of mandatory submission can be witnessed by the number of thesis and dissertations universities have managed to upload to their repositories globally.

With regards to submission of other content types, a number of studies have shown that OA has made significant progress in institutions where mandating policies have been issued (Kumar, Chandra and Parthasarathi 2016; Zhong and Jiang 2016; Johnson et al. 2017). Findings of this study revealed that at UKZN, no policy was in place hence very little has been uploaded compared to what has been published. Results in section 5.4.10 revealed that a draft policy had been developed and was awaiting approval. A study by Mashroofa and Seneviratne (2016), examining Sri Lanka’s OA publishing in IRs recommended that institutions needed to formulate policies and make self-archiving mandatory to ensure maximum openness to

157 scholarly content. The authors stressed that, it is important that universities wishing to invest in IRs develop OA policies (Mashroofa and Seneviratne 2016:187). Marsh (2015:172 cited Zhang 2013) emphasised policy development in China as a way of promoting OA, adding that its absence denotes lack of institutional support, and as a result, negatively impacts on the development of repositories. Ghosh (2011:19) challenged librarians to develop policies so that they are able to maintain sustainable repositories for their university communities.

Significant progress on OA has been recorded in countries where universities have taken policies seriously. While South Africa is the leading country in the region in terms of OA adoption, very little progress has been recorded in terms of policy implementation, meaning that more could be achieved if universities adopted OA policies. OpenDOAR (South Africa 2018) statistics showed that 26 universities have repositories and only eight universities have adopted OA policies (ROARMAP: South Africa 2018). On the contrary, UK, which was leading in Europe has 280 institutional repositories (OpenDOAR: Browse by country and region 2018), and 120 institutions have adopted OA policies (ROARMAP: Europe 2018). Further progress is being initiated in the European Union (EU) to advance a mandate for:

“immediate open access as the default by 2020, using the various models possible and in a cost-effective way, without embargoes or with as short as possible embargoes, and without financial and legal barriers, taking into account the diversity in research systems and disciplines.” (SPARC: EU Statement on Making All Research Open by 2020 2018).

The legal requirement under Horizon 2020 is that “each beneficiary must ensure open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications… the dominant type of scientific publication is the journal article” (European Commission: Open access and data management 2018). Six universities in South Africa: University of Stellenbosch, UCT, UFS, UP, UJ and UNISA have policies aligned to H2020 vision while UK has over a 100 of them (ROARMAP: Policy alignment to the H2020 2018). In these scenarios, the level of commitment to OA is evident, and success, to a greater extent, is aligned to the implementation of firm mandates.

However, as institutions and academics in South Africa begin to notice and enjoy the benefits of OA publishing, the likelihood that they would want to access more scholarly content on OA will rise. A positive development is that research intensive-institutions like UKZN are driving

158 towards the right direction of developing OA policies that will assist in the recruitment of other scholarly content types other than theses and dissertations.

Findings revealed what the library achieved by setting up and maintaining the repository. On the other hand, results also showed some positive features on academics that translate to progress that benefits the development of the IR. First, the fact that most academics were aware of the existence of the university’s IR implies that the library had made progress in bringing awareness to the university community about OA. Results revealed that, generally, a majority of academics had a positive attitude towards IR; they believed it was important. This was revealed by the majority’s willingness to receive training, share their research output, as well as recommend the repository to students and colleagues. Though not initiated by the presence of the IR, findings of the study revealed that a majority of academics had internet skills to access and disseminate information. Self-archiving would not be difficult for them because they were already familiar with online access to scholarly communication. In addition, a majority of them consented to having valuable scholarly work that was not published anywhere, but could be uploaded to the IR. Besides, all of them were eligible authors who had the capacity to produce scholarly literature.