Global Ecosystems of Scholarship

The Chirality of Publishing Quality and the South African National Research Economy

Abstract

Scholarly debate on South Africa’s unique research publication value chain focuses mainly on the Department of Higher Education’s incentive scheme, which financially rewards universities for accredited publications. However, this arrangement has sparked contradictions that have prompted a system review. Over the past decade, the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology, under contract with the Department of Higher Education and Training, has been monitoring publication outputs, practices, authorship patterns and metrics in South African and global research environments. This has culminated in the Publication Quality Framework Project. This article uses the concept of chirality to discuss the correlation between research quality and the publishing economy based on the Department of Higher Education and Training. It presents publishing quality and the South African national research economy as chiral concepts, based on the rationale that they are mirror copies of the same infrastructure: the country’s academic industry. They look similar when we observe them functionally: They are connected in the education policy governing higher education management and practices, which cannot do without, on one hand, research publications, and on the other, a proper accounting system for the resulting Department of Higher Education and Training incentive economy.