WHILE SA has been struggling to improve its patent record, scientific publications have increased, a sign that the country’s innovation and research and development capacity is growing.
SA’s scientific publications have increased 60% since 1994, according to a report in the South African Journal of Science published last year.
The report, A Bibliometric Analysis of SA’s Scientific Outputs, analyses two five-year periods — 1990-94 and 2004-08 — and says publication output grew from 20892 in the first period to 33671 in the second.
Its author, University of Stellenbosch professor Michael Kahn, says the reasons include increased government funding for publication, a shift to fields with higher publication propensity, and more of SA’s science publications being included in global scientific journal databases.
David Kaplan, a professor at the University of Cape Town’s economics department, concurs, saying "in publications we’re doing well because there are clear incentives for academics to publish (their scientific papers)".
Jonathan Youngleson, head of the new National Intellectual Property Management Office (Nipmo), says academic institutions "fall into the publish or perish paradigm" and that the state offers incentives to researchers who publish. "But despite our research and development and publishing, we’re not protecting the information contained in them — our most important intellectual asset," he says.
The Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research Act, passed in 2008, made provision for Nipmo. As a result of this, "researchers and their institutions, by law, have to identify, disclose, evaluate and protect intellectual property".
Nipmo offers a 50% rebate on the costs incurred by institutions in patenting their products. Every institution has to have a technology transfer office or report intellectual property to a regional office. It was set up to deal specifically with intellectual property generated with public funds.
However, Roy Marcus, director of the Da Vinci Institute in Modderfontein, says there is a more endemic problem standing in the way of innovation. "We (SA) have a very serious propensity to do all things, and what everyone around the world is doing … (instead) the government should be giving incentives for (innovation in SA’s) core competencies."
Prof Kaplan agrees: "In terms of patents, there are very few clusters with high value. The only major area where SA has a significant number of high-value patents is in mining … yet this does not feature in the Department of Science and Technology’s innovation priorities. We need to identify what we’re strong at."
However, the department’s deputy director-general, Imraan Patel, says: "It’s not one or the other. It’s all about balance between new opportunities that we can stay with for a long period of time, so that we don’t get left behind." He cites the government’s investment in different research councils, such as the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
(Source: BusinessDay)
