Associate Professor in the School of Education Ms Carol Bertram has been appointed Editor of the SA Education Research Association’s prestigious Journal of Education. Bertram’s key role is to take the Journal forward on an online submission system that is open access.

‘We use a free open access software known as Open Journal System, which is hosted by UKZN,’ she said. ‘I am passionate about the importance of making academic articles open and accessible, and not locked behind paywalls.

‘The academic journal publishing business is a multi-million dollar profit-making industry, where publishers essentially take the work of academics (whose salaries are paid for by the public purse) and copyright it and sell it back to academia for huge profits.’

Her vision as an editor is to manage a quality journal that is not for profit, which charges a reasonable article publication fee, where the copyright of the article remains with the author, and the article pdf is available to anyone online.

‘I am proud that the Journal of Education is indexed with Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO SA), which means that it meets a range of quality criteria,’ said Bertram. ‘The Journal is also indexed with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) – an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.

‘Special Thanks to Faith Magwaza of the UKZN Library who is also committed to open access publishing and to a Scholarly Publishing Programme at the Academy of Science of South Africa which has amazing staff who are committed to supporting open access publishing in South Africa!’ added Bertram.

The journal can be accessed at https://journals.ukzn.ac.za/index.php/joe