Friday, 23rd July 2021
Image courtesy of Kojo Kwarteng, Unsplash
What is Open Access?
As the world continues to grapple with the uncertainties that the COVID-19 pandemic presents, the need for accessible, rigorous, unbiased knowledge has never been more urgent. However, this need stands in the wake of a barrage of misinformation, disinformation, and ‘fake news’.
In spite – or perhaps because – of this, the Open Access (OA) movement has gained even greater traction over the past 18 months, in an effort to make research on COVID-19 more widely available and to make research in other fields accessible to remote teachers and learners. But what is OA? Why is it increasingly important and how has COVID-19 advanced the OA cause?
OA is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers, providing users with full re-use rights.[1] OA seeks to make research and data available for anyone, anywhere in the world to read, use, and build upon the knowledge, thus making knowledge outputs more valuable to a greater number of people.[2]
Open access can be applied to any published research output, including peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed academic journal articles, conference papers, theses, book chapters, monographs, research reports, and images. OA journals are categorized using a simple colour system.[3],[4]
Table 1 The OA publishing system
OA can, to an extent, be contrasted with ‘traditional’ publishing models for research outputs, with often exorbitant journal subscription fees that have consistently outpaced the consumer price index by a factor of four to five over the past three decades.[5] The high cost of journal subscription fees has meant that educational institutions, educators, researchers, and students may be locked out by paywalls and often cannot afford to access these articles, or are forced to buy them without knowing whether the content is relevant for their purposes. Moreover, publishing in scholarly peer reviewed journals usually involves long delays from submission to publication, which takes an average of nine months. This is partially due to the length of the peer review process, but can also be attributed to the prevailing tradition of publishing in issues – which has become less relevant because of the digitization of materials. This custom ultimately creates backlogs of manuscripts awaiting publication.[6]
Open Access during COVID-19
Why is OA more relevant now than ever before? The last 18 months has provided an extraordinary research context in which researchers have bypassed traditional systems to provide up-to-date research and findings about the evolving COVID-19 pandemic. As a group of United States-based patient and disease advocacy organisations recently noted, ‘information critical to health should no longer be held hostage by arcane publishing’[7].
Throughout the pandemic, researchers have embraced open publishing platforms and preprint servers to disseminate their findings as rapidly as possible. The first article related to COVID-19 was published on bioRxiv on 19 January 2020 – just 20 days after the Chinese government informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of the impending COVID-19 threat. The article was licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence.[8] Some publishers have committed to publishing scientific articles relating to the disease as OA. Others are facilitating rapid open peer review and expediting the publishing of related research. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzig refers to this convincing demonstration of the value of OA to scientific research as one of the most important positive disruptions caused by COVID-19.[9]
At a practical level, the adoption of open practices has ignited collaboration and interaction amongst the scientific community. As Heather Joseph, the executive director of SPARC explains,
One of the things that COVID is showing us is that when scientists start openly pooling their data and articles, they start to have conversations about science in real time. Instead of waiting months for key findings to be published, scientists are sharing their findings on the sorts of channels many people use every day—such as Slack and Twitter.
This demonstrates how OA is part of the evolution of research publishing and in so doing, how it has contributed to our understanding of the disease. It is easy to see how the greater availability of information has propelled more rapid progress in various areas relating to COVID-19 – freely available scientific information has never been more necessary than in this age, where misinformation from unidentifiable or unrecognised sources muddies the waters between fact and fiction. But how has the pandemic highlighted the need for more people to consider making their research and data OA?
What about other research?
While most COVID-19 related studies were commendably made freely available to all, much of the world’s publicly funded university research remains hidden behind paywalls. However, the tide seems to be turning. Publishers, research institutions, and funders are collaborating to deliver high-quality OA publications for free at the point of publication.[10]
Efforts to remove journal paywalls have also gained significant traction since 2018, when an influential group of research funders announced that the scientists they fund should publish their peer-reviewed papers outside journal paywalls. This initiative, named Plan S, created instantaneous speculation over its efforts to eliminate journal subscription models. After many deliberations over policy, the project officially began in 2021, with 25 funding agencies rolling out similar OA mandates.[11] This has catalysed a significant shift, as an article in Nature explains,
Despite the complexity it’s brought, Plan S has already catalysed a shift in the OA landscape, advocates say. Journals that previously offered no route to make peer-reviewed articles immediately OA now do — even if only for authors with Plan S funders — and there’s been a blossoming of experiments with OA business models.[12]
Other significant developments include the global OA advocacy initiative OA2020’s efforts to implement transformative agreements in transitioning scholarly journals to OA. Transformative agreements allow users to repurpose former subscription payments to cover open publication of a country’s or institution’s research articles, thus eliminating author-facing article processing charges. Transformative agreements also allow one to restructure financial streams, creating enabling conditions for OA publishing and a more transparent, competitive market.[13]
In Africa, Côte d’Ivoire has launched a country-level Open Access repository, while Ethiopian university and government stakeholders have implemented OA policies for repositories, journals and infrastructures. In South Africa, institutions like University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand have made similar inroads in promoting OA, with the former institution developing a continental platform for publishing OA journals, monographs and textbooks in Africa.[14] In addition, countries such as Ghana, Malawi, and Uganda, have finalized their national policies for data and repository management.[15]
These kinds of arrangements have contributed to significant progress in mainstreaming OA. Piwowar et al estimate that, as of 2019, approximately 31% of all journal articles are available as OA and 52% of article views are to OA articles. Given these trends, they project that, by 2025, 44% of all journal articles will be available as OA and 70% of article views will be to OA articles.[16] However, there is still a lot of work to be done, as noted in a recent article:
In addition to and sometimes combined with geopolitical arguments and regional skepticism, active attempts to discredit open access as “bad science” are never far from the surface, e.g. the insinuation that open access publications may not be properly peer reviewed or that the APC model inevitably leads to lots of publications with questionable merit.[17]
This drives home the point that OA requires a consistent commitment to make sustainable – and sometimes incremental – gains in realising its goals. The current COVID-19 crisis highlights the importance of unfettered access to scientific and scholarly information, for researchers, educators, students, journalists and non-academic professionals alike. But sustainable change needs to happen at both the systemic and individual levels. Ultimately, it is not a question of whether OA is better than other publishing models, but rather of how OA can enhance a more equitable publishing ecosystem and thus make knowledge and data more accessible.
For more information on how to publish OA research, OER Africa has created a learning pathway to give you practical guidance for doing so. Visit Publish Using Open Access to access this tutorial. Other learning pathways are available here.
Related articles:
- What is Open Science and how does it relate to open knowledge?
- Sharing Africa’s knowledge through open data
- How can OpenCourseWare help you to improve your courses?
Access the OER Africa communications archive
[2] Open Access Weeks. (2012). PhD comics. Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/71/PhD_Comics_Open_Access_Week_2012.ogv/PhD_Comics_Open_Access_Week_2012.ogv.360p.webm
[4] Open Access.nl. (nd). What is Open Access? Retrieved from https://www.openaccess.nl/en/what-is-open-access
[5] Burns, P. (2017). Academic journal publishing is headed for a day of reckoning. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/academic-journal-publishing-is-headed-for-a-day-of-reckoning-80869
[6] Björk, B. and Solomon, D. (2013). ‘The publishing delay in scholarly peer-reviewed journals’. Journal of Infometrics. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259165321_The_publishing_delay_in_scholarly_peer-reviewed_journals
[8] Kiley, R. (2020). ‘Open access: how COVID-19 will change the way research findings are shared’. Wellcome. Retrieved from https://wellcome.org/news/open-access-how-covid-19-will-change-way-research-findings-are-shared
[9] Tavernier, W. (2020). ‘COVID-19 demonstrates the value of open access: What happens next?’ Association of College and Research Libraries. Retrieved from https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/24414/32251
[10] Boyle, P. (2021). ‘Covid-19 underlines the need for full open access’. Times Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/covid-19-underlines-need-full-open-access
[11] Else, H. (2021). ‘A guide to Plan S: the open-access initiative shaking up science publishing’. Nature. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00883-6
[12] Else, H. (2021). ‘A guide to Plan S: the open-access initiative shaking up science publishing’. Nature. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00883-6
[13] Open Access 2020. (2020). OA2020 Progress Report. Retrieved from https://oa2020.org/wp-content/uploads/OA2020-Progress-Report-December-2020.pdf
[14] Makoni, M. (2021). New continental platform for open access publishing. University World News. Retrieved from https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210203114558607
[15] Markin, P. (2020). Open Access in Africa, Institutional Repository Development and Open Science Challenges. Open Research Community. Retrieved from https://openresearch.community/posts/open-access-in-africa-institutional-repository-development-and-open-science-challenges?channel_id=2448-players
[16] Piwowar, H., Priem, J. and Orr, R. (2019). ‘The Future of OA: A large-scale analysis projecting Open Access publication and readership’. bioRxiv. Retrieved from https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/795310v1
[17] Spichtinger, D. (2020). ‘Not yet the default setting – in 2020 open research remains a work in progress’. London School of Economics. Retrieved from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/01/17/not-yet-the-default-setting-in-2020-open-research-remains-a-work-in-progress/
What's New
Why might you want to publish your research in an open access journal? Open access journals use Creative Commons licences, which lay out the terms under which they can be used and distributed. Although most open access journals are highly respected and entirely legitimate, there are scores of journals that can be classified as ‘predatory’; they prey on the unwary who want to publish or to read a reliable article.
Introduction: Why is open access publishing beneficial to academics?
Why might you want to publish your research in an open access journal? Open access journals use Creative Commons licences, which lay out the terms under which they can be used and distributed. All Creative Commons licences require full attribution. Open access can benefit scholars because wider access to their research, enhances visibility and citations.[1]
Figure 1 shows some of the possible benefits of OA publishing, many of which are relevant to researchers around the world, including those in Africa.
Figure 1: Benefits of open access publishing
What are predatory journals?
Most open access journals are highly respected and entirely legitimate. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists more than 20,000 journals, many without an author processing fee:
Figure 2: DOAJ coverage[2]
The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in South Africa includes the DOAJ journals amongst its list of accredited journals. Academics, researchers, and librarians are sure to find a reliable open access journal on the DOAJ database or any of the others that DHET lists.[3]
Even so, there are scores of journals that can be classified as ‘predatory’; they prey on the unwary who want to publish or to read a reliable article.
What is a predatory journal? In 2019, a group of legal experts and publishers agreed on this definition:
"Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices."
Though it might seem straightforward, there are so many forms of predatory practices that this group of specialists had trouble agreeing on a definition to describe how predation manifests itself.[4]
Experts [5] believe that there are now more than 15,000 predatory journals, which promise:
- Peer review with a fast turnaround time.
- Low author processing fees—low in comparison to some of the top tier journals, but high in terms of what authors get for their money.
- Online publication and visibility.
- Indexing in platforms such as Scopus and Web of Science.
Figure 3: How to spot a predatory journal[6]
OER Africa has a free online tutorial on open access publishing, which includes suggestions on how to verify a journal’s legitimacy.[7] There is also a discussion in Open Knowledge Primer for African Universities on the ways in which DOAJ tries to ensure that the journals in its database are legitimate.[8]
All researchers are under pressure to publish to keep their jobs and become eligible for promotion. The pressure on African scholars is increased because they cannot afford the high publication fees some journals charge, and some may not be familiar with the steps necessary to evaluate journals.
Two researchers are quoted in a 2022 article in the Africa Edition of University World News to illustrate the dilemmas facing African scientists who must publish but have neither the funds to pay the APC costs of top-tier journals nor the knowhow to discern the legitimate from the predatory.[9]
One scientist, Euclides Sacomboio of Agostinho Neto University in Angola, had two articles published in disreputable journals. His preference would have been high-impact journals, but, as he told University World News:
"I earn US$500, and the article processing fee in reputable journals is about US$2,180. Where do I get the money without any support?"
Sacomboio added:
"To me, it was important to share my data. Worse, it was difficult to choose [where to publish] because some of these journals we call predatory have peer review processes."
The second scientist, Moses Samje of the University of Bamenda, Cameroon and a member of the African Academy of Sciences Chapter of Affiliates, was also taken in—this time because the journal’s focus was on research like his and because of the journal’s allegedly high impact factor. Samje said:
"The impact factor was quite attractive. It was too good to be true … We had to try and we submitted a paper and, in the space of 24 hours, they [the publishers] asked for the processing charge, which was getting way more affordable. In less than 48 hours, we received an e-mail [saying] our paper was online. I was quite excited."
Samje subsequently went online and discovered that the journal’s peer review process was not as it seemed; he believes that the journal is a sham.
‘Plagiarism, fraud, and predatory publishing’
The noted bioethicist, Arthur Caplan, wrote those words in 2015 and called predatory journals ‘polluting journals.’[10]
Although the points in figure 3 elucidate the major ways to identify a predatory journal, there are two additional strategies they employ. Predatory journals are noted for accepting plagiarized articles and those that have already been published elsewhere. Even though predatory journals may report that they check for plagiarism, they typically don’t.
A 2018 blog post in the Indian newsletter, The Wire, succinctly described the situation in India and gave examples. The authors wrote:[11]
"Fake journals and plagiarism in academics go hand-in-hand. The lack of peer review and a complete absence of quality checking provides a safe channel to publish plagiarised articles. It is therefore no coincidence that along with fake journals, almost all academic fields have also seen an epidemic of plagiarism."
Sometimes plagiarism is intentional; other times it is the result of a researcher’s lack of expertise on what the concept means.
It isn’t always easy to find specific examples of plagiarism. Science Integrity Digest is one source of information. In 2020, it reported on a clear case of plagiarism in which the work of the OstrowskiLab was stolen and published in a predatory journal.[12] In 2019 in the Journal of Nursing Scholarship, authors wrote about numerous instances of plagiarism in three predatory nursing journals.[13]
In South Africa, Professor Nicki Tiffin, a former researcher at the University of Cape Town (UCT) found that not only had she been plagiarized in a predatory journal, but her name had been stolen too.[14]
Unwary researchers are also trapped because some predatory journals have titles very similar to those of reputable journals. The three journals in the figure below all have similar titles but the similarity ends there.
What's in a name?
The first journal, Plant Physiology and Biochemistry is published by Elsevier, a reputable scientific publisher. The second, Journal of Plant Biochemistry and Physiology, is published by Longdom Press. Note it has phone numbers in Great Britain and in Spain and a registered address in Brussels. The journal is not included in any of the major indexing services that have quality controls, such as Web of Science, Scopus, or PubMed. The third, Journal of Plant Biochemistry & Physiology, is published by Omics, a publisher that was sued by the US Federal Trade Commission for predatory practices and ordered to pay a fine of more than $50 million.[15]
How to help researchers distinguish between the fake and the real
Above, we outlined several ways to determine legitimate journals from predatory ones. The two OER Africa publications we cited offer detailed help to students, researchers, and librarians.
Intellectual property rights, plagiarism, and referencing are taught in the Use of Libraries or embedded in the Use of English course, which is an integral part of the compulsory General Studies (GS) for first year students in Nigerian universities. However, the effect of the course on students has been found to be minimal.[16] Traditionally, African academic libraries run library orientation activities for new students. This window of opportunity could be widened to include provision of information packs or tutorials (online and physically) on information literacy, copyright, and plagiarism issues (including an introduction to plagiarism detecting software), as well as information about predatory journals.
Figure 4: AfLIA poster for use in libraries
Academic libraries can play an important role in raising awareness to the need to be wary of predatory practices. But universities as a whole should be engaged in preventing staff and students from falling prey to these journals. They can list the open access journals for which academics associated with their institution can use for purposes of promotion, tenure, and contracts. The DHET site discussed above would be a good place start. Supervisors can advise their PhD students about conducting a literature review without including predatory journals. Sarah Elaine Eaton of the University of Calgary wrote the following about the need of universities to support their students and academics against predation: [17]
"There are implications for mentors of graduate students and early-career stage academics, as well as for institutions as a whole. The issue of questionable conferences and publications is so complex that early-stage academics require support and mentorship to cultivate a deeper understanding of how to share their work in a credible way."
Dr. Eaton’s statement is valid around the world, particularly in circumstances such as Drs. Sacomboio and Samje described—insufficient funds to pay fees and insufficient guidance within the institution.
[1] See Sharing Africa’s knowledge through openly licensed publishing for more information on open access. https://www.oerafrica.org/content/sharing-africa’s-knowledge-through-openly-licensed-publishing
[3]See https://www.up.ac.za/news/post_3048195-the-department-of-higher-education-and-training-2022-accredited-journals-
[4]Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K.D. et al. (2019). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature, Vol. 576: 210-212. Retrieved from https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-019-03759-y/d41586-019-03759-y.pdf
[5]The Interacademy Partnership. (2022). Combatting Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences. Retrieved from https://www.interacademies.org/project/predatorypublishing
[6]European Pain Federation. (2021). How to Spot Predatory Journals. Retrieved from https://europeanpainfederation.eu/news/how-to-spot-predatory-journals/
[7]Lelliott, T. (2023). Publish Open Access revised. OER Africa. Retrieved from https://www.oerafrica.org/communication/publish-open-access/ - /
[8]Levey, L. (2023). Open Knowledge Primer for African Universities Revised and Updated Edition. Retrieved from https://www.oerafrica.org/system/files/12591/open-knowledge-primer-june-2023.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=12591
[9]Makoni, M. (2022). The battle against predatory academic journals continues. University World News. Retrieved from https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20221213224021432
[10]Caplan, A.L. (2015). The Problem of Publication-Pollution Denialism. Mayo Clinic, Vol 90(5):565-566. Retrieved from https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196%2815%2900190-1/pdf
[11]Raniwala, R. and Raniwala, S. (2018). 'Predatory' Is a Misnomer in the Unholy Nexus Between Journals and Plagiarism. Retrieved from https://thewire.in/the-sciences/predatory-journals-fake-journals-plagiarism-peer-review-mhrd-ugc
[12]Bik, E. (2023). Investigation finds ‘egregious misconduct’ by CUNY scientist. Retrieved from https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/07/28/plagiarism-in-chemistry-a-case-report/
[13]Owens, J.K. and Nicoll, L.H. (2019). Plagiarism in Predatory Publications: A Comparative Study of Three Nursing Journals. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, Vol. 51(3):356-363. Retrieved from https://sigmapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jnu.12475 - :~:text=This focused study has clearly,evidence accurately to inform practice.
[14] Simon, N. (2023). Protecting research integrity from predatory journals. University of Cape Town. Retrieved from https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2023-11-09-protecting-research-integrity-from-predatory-journals
[15]Federal Trade Commission. (2019). Court Rules in FTC’s Favor Against Predatory Academic Publisher OMICS Group; Imposes $50.1 Million Judgment against Defendants That Made False Claims and Hid Publishing Fees. Retrieved from https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/04/court-rules-ftcs-favor-against-predatory-academic-publisher-omics-group-imposes-501-million-judgment
[16] Ogunmodede, T. A., Adio, G. and Odunola, O. A. (2011). Library Use Education as a Correlate of Use of Library Resources in a Nigerian University. Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). Vol.604. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/604
[17] See Sarah Elaine Eaton’s Resource Guide Avoiding Predatory Journals and Questionable Conferences. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED579189.pdf
Education systems around the world have traditionally been characterized by closed knowledge systems, overly prescriptive curricula, narrow conceptions of success, and a failure to fully empower teachers as facilitators of learning. A recent paper by Neil Butcher & Associates argues that a key reason for these issues is that many education systems are inhibited by complex policy environments that, likely unintentionally, impede learning and create educational closure.
Image courtesy of Michael Anderson, Unsplash, Unsplash licence
Education systems around the world have traditionally been characterized by closed knowledge systems, overly prescriptive curricula, narrow conceptions of success and achievement, and a failure to fully empower teachers as facilitators of learning. This inhibits their ability to develop a full spectrum of human learning capabilities amongst learners, especially in their formative schooling years. A recently published paper by Neil Butcher & Associates (NBA) argues that, while there may be various reasons for these issues, one critical problem is that many education systems are inhibited by complex policy environments that, most likely unintentionally, impede meaningful learning and create educational closure.
Education policies often create new rules that accumulate over time, giving rise to inefficiencies and unnecessary constraints that do not support (and often obstruct) learner success. One manifestation of policy complexity within education systems is the growing granularization and rigidity of the formal national curriculum, which has led to the proclivity to use standardized testing and high-stakes examinations as a proxy for learner success. This complexity has also eroded autonomy for teachers, constraining what they can do in the classroom and increasing the tendency to ‘teach to the curriculum’ (or, worse even, to the examination). Standardized testing and high-stakes examinations have also increased anxiety and tension amongst learners, parents, and teachers, who perceive a false equivalence between test performance and success in later life.
The paper argues that despite the diverse nature of education systems around the world, many share a common problem of complex policy environments. Increased use of standardized testing models and resulting curriculum rigidity does not lead to better quality education but can have a deleterious effect on learner achievement. As complexity filters down into the classroom, another consequence is that the teachers who are tasked with delivering curricula are increasingly constrained and disempowered by these central policies. The consequences of this are far reaching as they emphasize rigidity and closure in knowledge acquisition, leaving little space for substantive learner-teacher engagement, contextual adaptation, and discovery.
In response to these challenges, we can use the principles of open learning as a tool to reflect on policy complexity in education systems, including the extent to which a policy environment is facilitating openness or promoting closure. A useful mechanism to tackle policy creep and ensure that education systems are geared toward a broader definition of learner success is to adopt and systematically implement the concept of openness within education systems, which begins at the policy level. Prioritizing openness offers significant opportunities for teachers and learners to reclaim what happens in the classroom and become more engaged members of society.
Integrating open learning principles into policy discourse would be a step forward in reducing unnecessary complexity and closure within education systems.
African languages are vastly underrepresented in the global knowledge pool, even though scholars at Harvard University believe that Africa is home to about one third of the world’s languages. This week, we delve into how Artificial Intelligence can assist with African language representation, and some of the challenges therein.
Much has been written about Artificial Intelligence (AI), mainly in English, including by OER Africa.[1] English is the predominant language on the Internet, in research and publications, and in education. African languages are vastly underrepresented in the global knowledge pool, even though scholars at Harvard University believe that with between 1,000 and 2,000 languages, Africa is home to about one third of the world’s languages.[2]
Artificial intelligence (AI) can play an important role in mitigating these language challenges. Already, international search engines, such as Google, play a large role in using AI to translate English into African languages and vice-versa. Efforts are constrained, however, by the paucity of documents on the web written in most African languages. Additionally, networks of African researchers have become actively engaged in looking for ways to increase the data on the web in African languages, including documenting scientific terms in the African languages where no such terms currently exist. Such data will then be available for use by AI to improve access to African languages. Importantly, they are trying to grow the field of African AI researchers by building networks and finding AI language technology solutions.
Many of us think about Google Translate when we want to understand what has been written in a language that we do not understand. Google Translate is now supported in 25 African languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Bambara, Chichewa, Ewe, Hausa, Igbo, Kinyarwanda, Krio, Lingala, Luganda, Malagasy, Oromo, Sepedi, Swahili, Sesotho, Shona, Somali, Tigrinya, Tsonga, Twi, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu. Several of these languages are spoken across borders. The good news is that the number of them keeps increasing. The bad news is that there does not seem to be any one place to ascertain which African languages are covered; this can only be determined through searches within Google Translate. Furthermore, Google Translate uses machine translation, which is mostly accurate, but not entirely.
The Nigerian linguist, Aremu Adeola, uses an interesting example about why context matters in many languages, including Yoruba:[3]
"Most translations done by machines render some words wrong, especially words that are culturally nuanced. For example, Yorùbá words ayaba and obabìnrin have their meanings situated in a cultural context. Most machines translate both words as ‘queen.’ However, from a traditional-cum-cultural vantage point, it is essential to note that the meanings of ayaba and obabìnrin are different: Ọbabìnrin means ‘queen’ in English while ayaba is ‘wife of the king.’"
Using AI as a translation tool is not straightforward. Most AI tools:[4]
"Rely on a field of AI called natural language processing, a technology that enables computers to understand human languages. Computers can master a language through training, where they pick up on patterns in speech and text data. However, they fail when data in a particular language is scarce, as seen in African languages."
The South African science journalist, Sibusiso Biyela, gives an excellent example of just how difficult it can be to make scientific discoveries understandable and relatable in African languages, such as isiZulu. Biyela was given an assignment to write about the discovery of a new species of dinosaur, Ledumahadi mafube in isi-Zulu. He explained:[5]
"But there’s no word for “dinosaur” in Zulu. Nor are there words for “Jurassic,” “fossilization,” or “evolution.” Despite the fact that Zulu—or isiZulu, as the language is called in South Africa—is spoken by some 10 million people, it simply doesn’t have the words for communicating science.
So my news piece wasn’t just a news piece. It was an attempt to tell a science story in a language that science overlooked—to help right a societal wrong. It was a small contribution among an increasing number that aim to help decolonize South African science writing. And it was rife with more pitfalls than I could have imagined. The task of describing science clearly, concisely, and accurately—already challenging in English—became exponentially more difficult in my native tongue."
At the end of his article, Biyela gives a lexicon of some of the English-isiZulu scientific terms that he used. Biyela uses technology joined with his expertise in science for his work on conveying scientific terms from English to isiZulu. He was one of the partners in Masakhane, which is discussed below.[6]
The underrepresentation of African languages online makes it more difficult to use AI as a translating tool because computers have trouble identifying datasets with which to work. Several organizations are trying to mitigate this challenge, among them the Masakhane Research Foundation. Masakhane is collaborating with the African scientific preprint server, AfricArXiv,[7] to find a way to translate the papers that AfricArXiv receives into African languages.
Masakhane is a grassroots natural language processing (NLP) network that was formed for NLP research in African languages, for Africans, by Africans. The Masakhane community consists of:[8]
">1000 participants from 30 African countries with diverse educations and occupations, and >3 countries outside Africa. As of February 2020, over 49 translation results for over 38 African languages have been published by over 35 contributors on GitHub."
Masakhane has a trial translation page, but the translation results do not always match those of Google Translate. For example, ‘kisukuku’ is how ‘fossil’ is translated in Google Translate. ‘Mabaki ya Wanyama’ is the translation given by Masakhane. (Most online translations use kisukuku).
Figure 1: What is the correct translation?
These efforts are just getting started. If Africa is going to join the global knowledge pool, its languages must be represented too. Both AfricarXiv and Masakhane welcome volunteers; there are other such organizations that would also appreciate assistance.
And for those who are interested in the interrelationship between AI and library and information studies, the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) will host a webinar on this topic on 25 October 2023. Visit the webinar’s information page for more information.
Related articles
- Three ways Artificial Intelligence could change how we use Open Educational Resources
- Where does ArXiv fit into Open Science? But first, how do I pronounce it?
- Panel Discussion: How can AI assist African Librarians
References and attribution
[1] July 28, 2023 https://www.oerafrica.org/content/three-ways-artificial-intelligence-could-change-how-we-use-open-educational-resources
[2] https://alp.fas.harvard.edu/introduction-african-languages - :~:text=With anywhere between 1000 and,third of the world%27s languages.
[3]Lost in Translation: Why Google Translate Often Gets Yorùbá-and Other Languages-Wrong. Aremu Adeola. Rising Voices. 20 November 2020. https://rising.globalvoices.org/blog/2020/11/20/lost-in-translation-why-google-translate-often-gets-yoruba-and-other-languages-wrong/
[4] A roadmap to help AI technologies speak African languages. 11 August 2023. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230811115430.htm
[5] Decolonizing Science Writing in South Africa. Sibusiso Biyela. 12 February 2019. https://www.theopennotebook.com/2019/02/12/decolonizing-science-writing-in-south-africa/
Image at the top of the article courtesy of albyantoniazzi, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA