Abstract
In Transforming Science in South Africa, Radhamany Sooryamoorthy, a professor of sociology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, investigates how science in South Africa has grown due to collaboration throughout its colonial, apartheid, and democratic regimes. Now the biggest producer of science in Africa, South Africa has a solid system in basic and technological science that is based on various practices of collaboration with firms and industries. But what is scientific collaboration? What lessons can be deduced from the complex history of scientific collaboration in South Africa? Who are the actors in this collaboration (individuals, institutions, countries)? How do South African scientists collaborate with each other and with scientists from other countries? What are the forms – and the new forms – of collaboration? What are the relationships among the division of work, the use of communication technologies, networks, and the external authorities and structures, and their effect on the emergence of a new kind of knowledge production and its relevance? To answer these questions, the book draws on considerable empirical material, drawn from national and international quantitative data: historical documents, archival data, bibliometric records of publications (journals indexed in the Web of Science database), as well as 200 interviews with scientists and academics. South Africa is viewed as a heuristic case to measure the extent and the type of collaboration and to assess the outcomes of collaboration in terms of the content and the direction of science societies. In this study of collaboration, bibliometrics is used to assess and map the state of science. Sooryamoorthy seeks to develop a model for scientific collaboration. Divided into three parts composed of nine chapters that discuss all notions of development, collaboration, and productivity, the book aims to show first, how the tradition of scientific collaboration has influenced the current South African scientific system; and second, how collaboration is improving the productivity of the scientists in the system. Individual scientists are the central actors in research alliances, whereas institutions play a secondary role.
This is why the first part (Chapters 2 and 3) plays a major role in the book. It constitutes the book’s theoretical foundation by describing the historical trajectories of South African science and discussing the concept of scientific collaboration. Scientific collaboration is not new in South Africa and has been settled through colonial rule, apartheid, and democracy. The narrative offers an essential key to understanding the singular position of South Africa in Africa, and its strong roots – the beginning of the development of scientific activities in South Africa. In the colonial period, South Africa had scientific contacts with Europe, the Nordic countries, the United States, Australia, and Canada. These contacts have been translated into operational collaboration in the pre-apartheid era. During the apartheid regime, South Africa continued to develop its own scientific system without any external support or assistance. The post-apartheid era has provided an encouraging environment for scientific collaboration, which has its roots in the past and explains current academic collaboration within the country, and this is further analyzed in the following chapters. As we know, science is not an isolated practice. The author looks at several dimensions of collaboration from the macrolevel (e.g., countries and territories; institutions such as universities, technikons, research institutes, hospitals, and industries; and governments) to the microlevel (i.e., individual scientists, scholars). Collaboration is defined as a key factor in scientific advancement, and the effects of collaboration are manifested in the productivity of scientists. Also, cooperation is a part of collaboration. To clarify the use of the concept, motivations, determinants, forms, disciplinary nature, institutional structure and cultural antecedents, rewards, productivity, trust, communication, and collaboration efficiency are discussed. The following chapters focus on the study of these dimensions of scientific activity to analyze how scientists work in association with their peers and finally produce knowledge and new rules. Everything is connected. This material is so rich as to lead the reader to suspect that the author holds enough materials for another book that would analyze the relationship among collaboration, competition and conflicts, and discrimination.
In the second part (Chapters 4 and 5), the author examines the major traits of scientific activity and collaboration among South African scholars by focusing on the emergence of co-publications (as a product of collaboration) by year, country/territory, discipline, and subject area. If co-authorship is a devaluated practice in humanities and social sciences, the situation is radically different in sciences. Because co-authorship symbolizes mutual intellectual and social influence in science activity, co-publication offers a tool for understanding transformations in collaboration practices and productivity. The relationship between publications and collaboration is seen as a pertinent indicator of the collaboration of partners, and is also a tool of comparison between collaborative versus noncollaborative research. For the period 1945–2010, scientific activity is described and the proportion of collaboration, by examining the growth, trends, and patterns in the production of publications in the sciences (from medicine to communication). The most productive discipline of South Africa is internal medicine. But it is interesting to note that environmental sciences are becoming significant subject areas for South African scientists. The scientist partners are from the United States, followed by England, Germany, Australia, France, Canada, and the Netherlands. The contacts established during the colonial period have grown into successful scientific research participation. As is the case in many Western countries, co-authored papers have become a new style in the practice of science in the last few decades in South Africa. The results provide insights into the historical background in two ways. First, the data are analyzed under the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. The expansion in the degree of collaboration between 1990 (the closing years of apartheid) and after 2000 is demonstrated by the number of collaborations, the number of co-authors, or in the degree of collaborations. All institutions identified in the database by the author are represented in the research publications of South African authors and their co-authors. Universities and technikons predominated. Natural sciences and health sciences are two major branches of science for collaboration. Second, the ability of South African scientists to develop their own scientific system during the apartheid regime is demonstrated by their multiple publications. Finally, the production of science increased during two political phases: apartheid (despite the long boycott period) and democracy.
The third part (Chapters 6–8) examines the other dimensions of collaboration and productivity by examining current features of scientific research in South Africa, especially the projects of both collaborative and noncollaborative kinds of respondents, their characteristics (e.g., status, age, discipline, field of specialization), degree (including from foreign countries), activities (e.g., supervision, research projects), and collaboration experience (duration, location, and so on). Scientific research continues to maintain some aspects from the colonial and apartheid past. But in the democratic period, the scientific system is producing a new generation of scientist researchers. This point is important to the book’s global argument – individual scientists are the real actors in research alliances – and for predicting collaboration. The study of productivity through scientific journals is convincing and provides many keys for understanding how collaboration is linked to productivity through communication technologies. It also shows the influence of the working environment in the higher education sector. The author analyzes the moment when communication technologies appeared as an important factor in collaboration (domestic, national, or international). Communication between individual scientists (especially scholar scientists) in South Africa helped transform collaboration and publication productivity. The author demonstrates the link between scientific networks and scientific productivity. The book shows that, in institution-initiated collaboration, individual scientists are again the main actors. The institution only offers the support required to realize the project of the collaboration. Through the experience of an eminent scientist, Patricia Berjak, the author proposes a qualitative view of the key themes in the book. This allows us to learn something about the issue of trust processes and informal collaboration.
Transforming Science in South Africa provides several contributions. First, in terms of theoretical sociology, the book nourishes the sociology of work through the study of collaboration in science, and the sociology of institutions through its study of the role that universities, technikons, hospitals, etc. play in the production of science. Through this quantitative analysis, the author makes visible the invisible college of the elite network of a scientific profession; institutional inequalities between the universities of excellence to technikons; and reveals which disciplines are more open for collaboration. Second, the historical review is particularly relevant and significant for building a model for scientific collaboration for other countries. The author describes the main elements that determine the structure of scientific collaboration in South Africa and the permanent role of scientists: they are more valuable in collaborations when they have advanced degrees, teach advanced students, speak English, and work in the same place as their collaborators. Co-authorship is a relevant way to understand the inside of the most invisible social processes of science production. Third, the book contributes to a better understanding of the current transformations of North–North, North–South, and South–South relations. Finally, regarding the deterioration of higher education in South Africa, the author offers insights into the direction of science in the country. But one additional observation needs to be made, although it is not the subject of the book: the lack of distinction in the book between white and black scientists’ experiences, which one would like to see addressed somehow in the post-apartheid period.