Socially Just Research Impact Assessment as a Foundation for the Advancement of Open Access and Open Science: A Case of a Research-Intensive African University

Scholars have argued that open access has neither future nor meaning unless research assessment processes and practices evolve. Moreover, science’s societal impact is the foundation of open access existence, and therefore, research impact assessment needs to embrace openness principles. Scholarly communication, open access, and open science have been significantly transformed over the years by technological developments; however, contrary to these transformations, research impact assessment in Africa has remained largely focused on academic impact and metrics. Although metrics have dominated performance evaluation because of their ease of use, inter alia, they are not without epistemic challenges and biases, notably for African researchers. Hence, the purpose of this study, which draws from a doctoral study on research impact assessment, is to explore how higher education institutions can advance open access and open science through equitable performance evaluation. The paper adopts a largely quantitative approach (questionnaire and document analysis) to ascertain challenges with metrics used for research impact assessment and best practices in research impact assessment to advance open access and open science. Data collection was via an online structured questionnaire with University of Cape Town (South Africa) researchers and academic staff, and document analysis of relevant documents. The study revealed that higher education institutions need to recenter what they value to transform research assessment. Equally, any fundamental change necessitates a shift in policies, processes, structures, norms, and values to allow for the new changes to be adopted and institutionalized. The study provides insight into how higher education institutions can advance open access and open science by extension through aligning values, policy, research assessment processes, and practices as well as changing how researchers are evaluated.