The office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Engagement in collaboration with the Library office at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) recently hosted a webinar on the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) Policy and Predatory Journals: Making Critical Decisions About Publishing Your Research Articles/Books via Microsoft Teams.  

Researchers and postgraduate students were invited to this session to discuss ethics and integrity in Research Publishing. The purpose of the webinar was to address the issue of predatory publishers that target academics for their own financial gain through article processing fees for open access articles, without meeting the traditional hallmark of scholarly publishing. This leads to loss of income for future research articles and may not count towards academic performance which negatively impacts on a researcher’s academic advancement. The session also provided clarity and provided pointers for researchers to be aware of, when choosing where to publish.  

The topics discussed were:   

• Integrity and Ethics in Research Publishing (Article types and features of a good journal);  
• DHET Policy on Research Publications (The South African research outputs accreditation system); 
• Web of Science, Scopus citations and Impacts (Citation indicators currently used to evaluate journal  performance);  
• “Open Access” and hybrid options for publication;  
• ORCID & Unique Identifiers (Unique author identification; co-authorship and the order of names);  
• Predatory publishing and tools to assist in sourcing. 
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Facilitating the webinar was DUT’s Director: Research and Post Graduate Support, Dr Linda Linganiso who said the purpose of the workshop was to capacitate students as well as researchers so that they can be able to make critical decisions about publishing research articles, book chapters and books.  

“We are all aware of the Envision 2030, financial sustainability is one of the Envision 2030 strategic objectives. Research outputs bring money to the university and we know that DHET provides subsidy for research outputs. We want to make sure that the money does not go down the drain and also make sure that our students and researchers are well informed of what is going on regarding research outputs as well as expectation as per DHET requirements,” said Dr Linganiso.   

Referring to the first topic on the agenda: Integrity and Ethics in Research Publishing, DUT’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Engagement, Professor Sibusiso Moyo said the good place to start ask yourself why do you publish?  

She said there are a number of reasons such as to share knowledge, for promotion, job requirement and for some its financial.  

“We don’t want to be limited just because of what we want to achieve as academics. The most important thing you need to remember is that while you are motivated to publish, you want to make sure that you uphold the standard and ethics required as no one wants to be labelled as a predatory publisher of a fake academic,” said Prof Moyo.  

She said the first thing they need to remember as the university is their strategy which focuses on values.  Looking at the session, Prof Moyo said it is about Stewardship and trying to enforce ethics and integrity in all that people do.  

“In 2021 out target is to reach 100% of our postgraduate students and researchers. When you look at our values which talk about transparency, honesty, integrity, respect and accountability on the other hand fairness, professionalism, commitment, compassion and excellence. All of these feed in either ethics and integrity. At our university to ensure that we are ethical is to make sure that our researchers receive the necessary training in ethics and integrity. Lack of research skills can cause people to really do unethical stuff, we need to make sure that our students know the research methods involved, data handling and statistics needed in order for them to do research. They also need to understand authorship and its code of conduct,” said Prof Moyo.   

She advised that it is good for a person to share his/her research but the important thing is to translate it to applications and solutions which are useful for society.  

Speaking on DHET Policy on Research Publications, Ms Charity Cele, Research Administrator under the Research and Post Graduate Support office at DUT said the aim of the policy is to sustain research strengths and to promote research and other knowledge outputs required to meet the national demands. She said it describes research as an original, systematic investigation undertaken in order to gain new knowledge and understanding. Cele said DHET distributes research funding to institutions and not to individual authors.  

Postgraduate librarians demonstrated how the tools available in Web of Science and Scopus can assist students and researchers to identify suitable accredited journals in their subject field. They also demonstrated the value of the Cabells Predatory Report to make the attendees aware of the characteristics of predatory journals.  

“The Cabells Predatory Report is a valuable resource that helps researchers identify predatory journals. It is an easy to search database of over 8000 journals which have been identified as violating quality academic publishing practices. It allows you to check whether a journal title is predatory and the violations associated with that title,” said Ms Lindiwe Gumede, Subject Librarian and Co-Ordinator at the Midlands Library.  

In conclusion, DUT Library Manager, Mr David Thomas said the webinar was a great value to all and urged that such conversations should continue. He said they need to repeat this kind of webinar later in the year for all those who were not able to attend. Thomas extended an invitation to researchers and academics to touch base with the librarians, to schedule a repeat of this session for their researchers and students.  

Pictured: DVC: RIE Prof Sibusiso Moyo  

Simangele Zuma