Can South Africa afford its open science plan?

Financing a problem for later, says policy drafting group

The authors of a policy proposal that all South African publicly-funded research should be published on open access platforms have admitted that they don’t have a clear idea of how it might be financed.

The country’s draft open science policy, released earlier this month, was discussed during a consultative workshop on 22 February. Addressing the meeting, members of the drafting group agreed that affordability was crucial for the proposal.