[IRTalk] Global Ecosystems of Scholarship: The Chirality of Publishing Quality and the South African National Research Economy

[Ina Smith]

Tomaselli, Keyan. 2025. “Global Ecosystems of Scholarship: The Chirality of Publishing Quality and the South African National Research Economy”. Education As Change 29 (November):25 pages. https://doi.org/10.25159/1947-9417/19857.



The article warns scholars that South Africa’s DHET publication incentive scheme has deeply reshaped academic life by turning publications into “productivity units” worth about R130 000 per full article, creating strong pressures to publish for income and rankings rather than for scientific contribution, and encouraging practices such as salami-slicing, text recycling, excessive self-publishing by editors, and even “scholars-for-hire”. It argues that publishing quality and the national research economy are chiral: like left and right hands they are bound together but not interchangeable, so financial incentives must never be allowed to replace scientific standards, collegial peer review, and academic freedom. Scholars are urged to understand the wider global publishing ecosystems (legacy subscription journals, Plan S–driven APC open access, Latin American-style community infrastructures like AmeliCA/SciELO, library publishing, and China’s fast-growing system) and to see how the DHET lists and approved indexes narrow what “counts”, often sidelining equally legitimate outlets and non-university researchers. The paper stresses that open access is not cost-free-APCs and diamond OA are often ultimately paid from public funds, including DHET incentives that were intended for research capacity building - and calls for vigilance about predatory and quasi-predatory publishing, as well as for proper recognition and resourcing of editors and reviewers who carry the quality burden but are excluded from the incentive value chain. Overall, the key message to scholars is to resist becoming mere income-maximising “homo economicus”, to publish in ways that prioritise integrity, inclusivity, and real knowledge contribution, and to engage critically with institutional DHET policies, internal distribution of funds, and journal choices so that the financial and scientific “hands” of the system work together rather than undermining each other.

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