South Africa and Africa need to review the progress made to transform the content of knowledge production as well as the identity of the knowledge producers.
The continuing subtle alienation of some — especially females and Africans — in scientific knowledge production needs urgent attention.
Michael Cherry in the Mail & Guardian’s Higher Learning supplement wrote about the discomforts with the system of rating researchers because greater emphasis is being placed on the natural sciences. Cherry showed how this system was open to bias.
But perhaps problems of natural scientists are better understood. While social scientists’ problems are compounded because discourse bias and censorship create havoc at the level of what gets accepted as knowledge worthy of publishing.
This matter is not easily confronted because of the modesty the South African academe has developed against the topic of racial discrimination and redress, especially as it pertains to the academe itself.
There are two ways to look at this problem — quantitatively and qualitatively. Looking at statistics to assess the rate of transformation in publication outputs gives some insight into who is publishing.
Qualitative examination is more difficult as it is harder to take stock of discourses allowed (and those refused) to influence what gets accepted as scientific. Therefore, such as most mechanisms tackling subtle discrimination, the latter is not too successful because it fails the test of positivism.
Statistically it is better to see progress in knowledge production in relation to the previous isolation of South Africa from the global scene. In a 2006 publication by the Academy of Sciences of South Africa, Johann Mouton argues that: ”If one looks at the situation in 1990 — the heyday of apartheid academic isolation – where only 36% of all articles, were published in foreign journals compared with the situation in 2002 where nearly half (47%) were published in foreign journals, great strides have been made in breaking out of the isolation mould.”
Beyond this, if one looks at internal transformation, the stunted rate of transformation in knowledge production is striking, that is if one asks the question: who is publishing?
A 2005 report titled: Human Resources for Knowledge Production in South Africa analyses the issues of transformation in knowledge production and reflects worrying trends: ”Research on the ageing of publishing scientists in 2001 pointed to the alarming trend that an increasing number of scientific articles published by South African scholars are being published by authors over the age of 50 years — Whereas 18% of all articles produced by South African scientists in 1990 were published by authors over the age of 50, this percentage increased to 48% in 2002 —”
Further analysis shows that these trends are not identical across scientific fields, but that the situation is worse for the medical and health sciences, and the humanities and social sciences.
”— the contribution of female authors to scientific production has increased slightly over the 13-year period from 16% in 1990 to 22% in 2002. — the total contribution of black authors (African, coloured and Indian) increased from only 4% in 1990 to 11% in 2002.”
There is also a need to examine what is published. This needs to start with simple questions such as: why do we find no history books written by African academics at tertiary institutions? Why do we still find more black social science students at any given class and more white academics at any given staff complement? Why do we find very little written by the black academics in international journals against which excellence is defined at many research institutions? Who are the peer reviewers of the internationally acclaimed journals focusing on Africa? What do they look at in sifting the knowledge? It is only after looking at this qualitative data that we can say that the skewed profile of international knowledge production is simply coincidental.
The knowledge production field is not only trapped in the patronage of a particular generation of peers, but it does not allow for a diversity of discourses.
It is trapped in a system of global apartheid that ensures Africa applies theories and models of analysis from elsewhere.
This is an urgent matter because although there is ”well meaning”, there is an accompanying danger with how Africa’s political and social problems are addressed. This thinking suggests that Africa needs to invest its energies in applying knowledge produced by Western powerhouses rather than trying to produce its own. No matter how ”considerate” this thinking is, it may be very dangerous to accept a continued marginalisation of African input.
In South Africa knowledge production needs to be deracialised and the reality of diverse discourses in social sciences confronted.
Socials science colleagues would do more than prescribe the ”mentorship-for-publication” as a panacea for all publication failures.
It is time to realise that not all of those who are not publishing are bad writers, but because they write about indigenous knowledge systems and protest discourses, they are sifted by the dominant peer reviewers.
There is a need to produce scientists who are bold enough to negotiate for African input to be recognised in the international arena.
Now we have simply been excited about entering the global forum on other people’s ideological terms.
Dr Pearl Sithole is a senior research specialist at the democracy and governance unit at the HSRC. She writes in her personal capacity