% RULE - SciELOSA

Not all of the Research Office staff at all the South African universities are aware that SciELO SA journals being exempt from the 75%/25% rule.

Provide the relevant Research Office with the following documents confirming that SciELO SA is a DHET automatically accredited index and that SciELO SA journals are exempt from the 75%/25% affiliation rule:

• A document from the DHET dated 30 July 2015 indicating that from 2016 SciELO SA is one of the DHET automatically accredited indexes. The other DHET automatically accredited indexes are Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, Scopus, IBSS, Norwegian Register of Scientific Journals and DOAJ.

• A document from the DHET dated 3 May 2018 confirming that the 75%/25% rule applies only to the South African journals that are listed on the DHET (only) list of approved journals and that the South African journals listed on other indexes are not affected by the rule.

• A document dated 25 March 2019 from the then Chair of the Committee of Scholarly Publishing in South Africa, Prof Robin Crewe, confirming the above.

• Also see this paragraph on page 13 of the DHET Report on the Evaluation of the 2019 Universities’ Research Output of March 2019

• Also see point 1 of the SciELO SA quality checks - https://sites.google.com/view/assaf-scholarly-pub-resources/scielo-sa/conditions-and-quality-checks

In conclusion SciELO SA journals are exempt from the 75%/25% rule, as is the case with Web of Science, Scopus, IBSS and DOAJ journals.

If the Research Office has further queries in this regard they may be directed to Mrs Susan Veldsman, the Director of the Scholarly Publishing Programme of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) – susan@assaf.org.za . Or Mr Walter Ntuli in the DHET Universities Policy and Development Support Directorate – ntuli.w@dhet.gov.za / T: 012-312-5675.