The effectiveness of academic research enterprise depends on several factors including talented and interconnected scholars, adequate and dependable resources, and quality research. These elements need to function in harmony in order to result in research knowledge that adds value to society. Given that research capacity and innovation are…

In many countries publications in Web of Knowledge journals are dominant in the evaluation of educational research. For various purposes comparisons are made between the output of philosophers of education in these journals and the publications of their colleagues in educational research generally, sometimes also including psychologists and/or…

In the context of open-access (OA) academic publishing, the mounting pressure cross global academe to publish or perish has spawned an exponentially growing number of dodgy academic e-journals charging high fees to authors, often US$300-650, and even triple that amount, promising super-fast processing and publication open-access (OA) online.…

The pressure to perform has migrated from the corporate world into academe. Academics across the globe feel this pressure to perform, often expressed as "publish or perish". I reflect on the rising culture of performativity in recent decades and how it has penetrated South African universities. In doing so, I specifically look at the…

This article explores the question of opening educational resources in the context of an educational technology unit, the Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. It describes the impact of a high level of policy intervention for the transformation of higher education and of a diverse, multilingual student…