South Africa just locked in a national policy that demands open access for publicly funded research. Headlines call it a breakthrough for equity and speed. The reality sits somewhere messier, where good intentions meet tight budgets and uneven infrastructure.
The 2026 policy in plain terms
The Department of Science, Technology and Innovation released the South African Open Science Policy in March 2026 after approval late in 2025. It requires open access publication for outputs from public funding. The guiding line reads “as open as possible, as closed as necessary,” leaving room for security, ethics, privacy under POPIA, and legitimate intellectual property concerns.
Open access here means immediate free online availability without paywalls. Open data gets similar treatment where feasible, with requirements for data management plans. The policy also flags needs for skills training, revised incentives that reward open practices, better infrastructure, and citizen science involvement.
Progress already shows. South African research moved from roughly 75 percent closed access around 2000 to about 32 percent closed by late 2025. Hybrid journals that South African authors use most now offer free immediate open access routes in more than 80 percent of cases through read-and-publish deals.
Here's the catch
Mandates sound decisive on paper. Delivery depends on who pays the article processing charges that many open access routes still carry. South African institutions already spend hundreds of millions of rands annually on subscriptions and charges. Shifting the bill from readers to authors does not automatically shrink the total cost or guarantee wider participation from under-resourced researchers.
Diamond open access models, where neither authors nor readers pay, exist and matter here. Platforms such as SciELO SA and the South African Journal of Science operate this way. Scaling them requires sustained public investment that the policy acknowledges but does not fully fund in detail. Without that money, the default may remain hybrid deals that still route payments to large commercial publishers.
Infrastructure gaps compound the issue. Reliable high-speed internet, trusted repositories, and skilled support staff vary sharply across institutions and provinces. The policy calls for an Open Science Observatory to track results, yet monitoring alone does not build missing capacity.
Parallel move on publishing standards
ASSAf released a revised Code of Best Practice in Scholarly Journal Publishing, Editing, and Peer Review in July 2025. The update modernises guidance for editors, reviewers, and authors to address digital-era risks, predatory outlets, and transparency expectations. It aims to raise trust in the local journal ecosystem that already includes diamond titles and regional platforms.
These two developments sit alongside each other. The policy pushes outputs into the open. The code tries to ensure what gets published meets clearer quality bars. Both respond to long-standing complaints about cost, speed, and credibility in scholarly communication.
What researchers and institutions face next
Authors will need to plan open access routes earlier in projects. Data management plans become standard. Institutions must decide how to cover charges or steer submissions toward diamond venues. Libraries and research offices already run workshops on these choices, and the policy will likely expand that demand.
Transformational agreements negotiated through bodies such as SANLiC have helped some hybrid journals flip to immediate open access without extra author fees. Their reach remains limited to participating publishers and institutions. Smaller or independent journals outside those deals still require separate strategies.
Citizen science and public engagement sections of the policy open doors for broader input, yet they also raise questions about credit, data governance, and capacity at community level. Early pilots exist, but scaling them needs coordination that the policy framework only sketches.
Regional context and comparisons
South Africa is not alone. Neighbouring and continental efforts include African Journals Online and growing diamond open access networks. The policy positions the country to influence and benefit from these platforms rather than simply importing models from the global north. Whether that influence materialises depends on consistent implementation and visible results in citation counts, collaboration rates, and local problem-solving applications.
Optimism about open science rests on evidence that faster sharing accelerates discovery, as seen in rapid COVID-19 responses. The allergic-to-hype view notes that openness without quality controls or sustainable funding simply moves problems around. South Africa’s dual-track approach of policy mandate plus updated professional standards tries to address both sides.
Photo by Lisa Marie Theck on Unsplash
Early signals from deputy ministers and ASSAf point to continued commitment through 2026 and beyond. The test will come in budget allocations, repository usage statistics, and whether smaller institutions see measurable gains in visibility for their outputs. Concrete tracking via the proposed observatory should clarify whether the policy changes how knowledge spreads or merely rearranges invoices.