Sustaining excellent science Swartz, Leslie
South African Journal of Science,
07/2023, Letnik:
119, Številka:
7/8
Journal Article
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There are many excellent researchers working very hard to improve a serious and deteriorating situation, but these data have implications, not just for those working in fields related directly to ...literacy and school education, but also for all scientists. If skills deficits are so serious and getting worse, it may well have implications for the future of science in our country--the pipeline, as others have said, is broken. The contrast between the great achievements showcased by the National Science and Technology Forum and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study data may lead many South African scientists to feel as though we are living simultaneously in two very different worlds--on the one hand, South Africa is a world leader in a number of scientific fields, and on the other, ours is a country of vast, and probably growing, functional illiteracy (including scientific illiteracy).
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In late 2021, African scientists discovered a new variant of COVID-19. We should be proud and grateful, as should and is the world, to our scientists for identifying the latest variant of COVID and ...for choosing, correctly, to communicate this scientific information rapidly. But this important discovery led to global action not based on science. Wealthier countries closed their doors to our country and continent, implementing a travel ban. This reaction was despite the views of scientists in South Africa and recommendations from the World Health Organization. Since then, there have been other travel bans, other mistakes globally in managing the global pandemic. This travel ban, despite evidence of spread of the Omicron variant in countries which selectively closed their borders, had potentially devastating implications for health and well-being on our continent. African scientists were exemplary in continuing to explore and report on the variant. The travel ban, which was not evidence- or science-based, has correctly been described by a group of eminent African scientists as 'political theatre'1, and the health consequences for Africans, as these authors pointed out, had the potential to be grave, given the economic implications of travel bans. The irony of this is clear: as Africa helped in all likelihood to make the world more healthy, many in the world have helped to make Africans more sick.
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4.
Insiders and outsiders Swartz, Leslie
South African Journal of Science,
09/2021, Letnik:
117, Številka:
9-10
Journal Article
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What is clear from our experiences, and these are far from unique to our Journal, is that there is a cohort of scientists and scholars based in lowand middle-income countries (and certainly not in ...Africa alone) who are trying to have their work published in journals which enjoy a good reputation (as measured, for example, by accredited impact factors), and read by a global audience. A further feature of these submissions, and not just of these submissions, is that many authors struggle to write in clear English. Where the quality of written English is good, though, there are many occasions where the authors do not appear to have thought adequately about the multidisciplinary audience of the Journal and write in ways which may exclude our potential readership from being able easily to engage with the research being presented.
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On 18 April 2021, fires destroyed irreplaceable archival materials and other property at the University of Cape Town, as well as fynbos and other properties in the same area. Gas canisters at Rhodes ...Memorial, just above the upper campus of the University, exploded, and there was substantial damage, both on the slopes of Table Mountain and in surrounding areas.All of us at SAJS extend our condolences to those affected by the fires. The loss of important archival material at any South African university is a loss to the entire scholarly and scientific community. There have been many reports of teams of volunteers doing what they can to salvage materials in the library, along with international efforts to collate digitised versions of documents, often collected by individual scholars. These are praiseworthy and important efforts
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The most recent editorial in this Journal1 discussed, in part, the impact of fires on the environment and on the research collections at the University of Cape Town. As we finalise this issue, it is ...again a time of fires in South Africa – some literal, in the context of violence following the arrest of the former State President, and others metaphorical, in the context of the deadly third wave of COVID-19. At such difficult times, there is probably no correct way to act or even to comment editorially – we do not have the solutions for all the huge challenges the country faces. It would be easier, perhaps, to ignore the country’s experiences of violence and pandemic and to focus on other matters in an editorial, but this silence is in itself a political choice. There is no way out for privileged people having to take some responsibility for the privileged voice that we have, especially in times like these. This is the case even if, by the time this editorial is read, other issues have come to seem more prominent than the current ones.
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In an academic world in which competition across disciplines and amongst scientists is commonly encouraged, in a world in which many of us compete for the same resources, the temptation either ...unfairly to denigrate the other or to praise the other without robustly interrogating their work, are two sides of an unhelpful coin. Academic conflict, furthermore, can both flourish and be inappropriately avoided in a divided and high-conflict society. We believe that it is the collective responsibility of all researchers to keep real, robust, debate going. This takes trust both in others and in the academic system which sustains us all.
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The importance of peer review is discussed. The idea of peer review, though, depends on a notion of 'peers' which is complex and open to contestation. There are two key ways in which the idea of the ...'peer' affects the journal in particular. First, we are deliberately a multidisciplinary journal. Scholars from different disciplines, all of whom may have useful contributions to make in terms of how we address large and complex challenges, may have radically different ideas as to how researchers should engage with complex problems. A journal requires both authors and reviewers to imagine how their own scholarship may be viewed, understood, and, indeed misunderstood, by people from different assumptive worlds. A second way in which the idea of a 'peer' is complex for our journal relates to the history of the academy in our context and to the changes and struggles of the unfolding present. There are different views on the impact of markers of identity on scientific practice, but scientometric studies of peer review have shown clearly that perceived scientific status of authors, when these are known to reviewers or editors, may affect peer review and acceptance rate outcomes.
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On 14 July 2022, the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) hosted its 8th Presidential Roundtable discussion, with Prof. Jonathan Jansen as the chair, and with Prof Mary Scholes, Ms Alize le ...Roux and Mr Matthew Hemming as speakers. The topic was 'The Human Costs of Climate Change'. The event was a model of good science communication - clear, sober analyses backed up by evidence, presented in an accessible and understandable way and with no unnecessary use of jargon. The messages were compelling and clear, and a recording of the event (available here) should prove helpful to anybody wishing to share information on this important topic. For the South African Journal of Science, the event is noteworthy in at least three ways. First, the topic is one of existential concern to all who share our planet. Second, the science was communicated accessibly and clearly, and not just for a niche audience. Third, the meeting demonstrated the importance of working together across disciplinary lines to begin to address difficult problems. Our Journal is a mouthpiece for science on our continent, but it is also committed to transdisciplinarity, clear communication across boundaries, and working together to solve big and difficult problems. Our most recent special issue, on COVID-19, explicitly sought this kind of interdisciplinarity to approach the difficult question of understanding and managing a pandemic in low-resource contexts, and a forthcoming special issue, similarly, will examine, from perspectives ranging from engineering to the social sciences, how what is commonly thought of as waste can be a resource in a different kind of economy. But over and above these explicit and planned efforts to encourage communicating and working together across divides, it is pleasing to see the extent to which regular contributions to the Journal, singly and collectively, strengthen the overall messages central to a journal like ours. In a review essay, the disability studies scholar Rosemarie GarlandThomson1 cites (p. 301) the work of Nancy Mairs2, declaring that her task in writing about living with multiple sclerosis is 'to conceptualize not merely a habitable body but a habitable world: a world that wants me in it'. In referring to this world, both Mairs and Garland-Thomson are alluding to a world which excludes people on the basis of bodily difference; they both hope for a world which accommodates and caters for us all. There are, though, of course, many other ways in which a world can exclude and not be habitable for everyone. There are exclusions on the basis of any number of social markers, including race, gender, and age, and there are exclusions on the basis of physical habitability - the inaccessibility of the built environment, and the destruction of the planet in what has come to be referred to as the Anthropocene. The ASSAf Roundtable amply demonstrated the impact of climate change on where, and under what conditions, members of our species and others may or may not be able to inhabit parts of (and ultimately all of) the planet on which we live.
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