Academy of Science South Africa 2005/6 Annual Report

ASSAfProgramme 2Africa’s premier multidisciplinary researchjournal, now in its second centuryProf Wieland GeversASSAf Executive Officer and Convener of steeringcommittee for strategic management of researchjournalsof ISI-listed journals published in South Africa, and on publications in the ISI databases emanatingfrom authors with South African addresses. The analysis points to a clear need for support of selectedlocal journals to improve and entrench their position in the ISI system, and the existence of possibleopportunities for locally published journals in a number of new areas that must, however, be carefullycontextualised in terms of their potential appeal to international authors as well as to South Africanscholars willing to transfer their papers to high-quality local journals.A third chapter, providing a comprehensive analysis of research publications in South Africanresearch journal emanating from authors with South African addresses since 1990, respectivelypublished in journals listed in the three authoritative, multi-sector databases of Thomson ISI(recently all granted automatic accreditation, for purposes of subsidy as a research output, bythe DoE), in South African journals granted accreditation by the DoE as a supplementary listingagainst published criteria. This analysis presents a general picture of South African journals asbeing differentiated into several categories. There is a small cluster of South African journals (bothISI and non-ISI, mostly in the natural and health sciences but also in some of the social science andhumanities) that have “acceptable” impact factors, record moderate to high citations from non-SouthAfrican authors and generally present an “international” profile. At the other extreme, there is asubstantive cluster (perhaps affecting as many as half of all South African journals) that does nothave any international visibility in that articles in these journals are not cited outside South Africa,and the production of content is dominated by one or two institutions and in some cases by the sameinstitution (or department) that publishes the journal.A fourth chapter, reporting and analysing a recent, full-scale survey of editors’ opinions and relatedinformation conducted by ASSAf of the editors of all ISI-listed and other DoE-accredited journalspublished in South Africa, based on a questionnaire sent to the editors of all journals accredited bythe Department of Education. The intention was to obtain relevant opinions and related informationfrom this sector, focusing on draft criteria for the accreditation of South African research journals20 Promoting Excellence in Science for Society