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AJIC, Link Centre, University of Witwatersrand, Link

The African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC) invites submissions to its Issue 19, 2016, which will be a thematic issue focusing on matters of “Knowledge Governance for Development”. AJIC is a peer-reviewed, open access journal published under a Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) licence by the LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg. Submissions should touch on an element or elements of knowledge governance (e.g., knowledge creation, access, use, sharing, transfer, management, appropriation) in relation to socio-economic development in Africa, and/or elsewhere in the developing world with relevance to Africa, through focus on one or more of the following:

I. POLICY, LAW, REGULATION AND/OR PRACTICE IN A KNOWLEDGE FIELD/SECTOR, e.g., intellectual property (IP); traditional knowledge (TK); information and communication technologies (ICTs); innovation; innovation incubation; creative industries; media; the audio-visual sector; science; publicly funded research; scientific data; government data; standards; technology transfer; environment; biodiversity; plant varieties; climate change; human rights; human security; competition regulation; health; education; housing; gender; the informal economy; entrepreneurship; micro and small enterprises (MSEs).

II. KNOWLEDGE GOVERNANCE MECHANISMS AND METRICS

• openness-oriented mechanisms, e.g., open science, open access (OA) scholarly publishing, open data, open educational resources (OER), Creative Commons licensing, free and open source software (FOSS), TK commons, open business models, patent pools, technology incubation hubs
• formal IP mechanisms, e.g., copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, utility models
• semi-formal mechanisms, e.g., non-disclosure agreements
• informal mechanisms, e.g., trust, first-mover advantage
• sui generis mechanisms, e.g., geographical indication (GI) systems, access- and benefit-sharing (ABS) agreements
• metrics, e.g., methods for measuring knowledge appropriation; innovation; innovation transfer.

III. USER RIGHTS/ACCESS, e.g., to environmentally sound technologies; medicines; government data; learning materials; plant varieties; audio-visual archives; outputs from publicly funded research.

IV. OTHER: Any other matter of knowledge governance in relation to socio-economic development in Africa and/or elsewhere in the developing world with relevance to Africa.

Click here for the full call for submissions, including submission guidelines and deadlines, on the Unitersity of Witwatersrand website.