David Mills

David Mills is Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. He is also Deputy Director of theOxford Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Vice-President of Kellogg College, Oxford. Having trained as an anthropologist, Davidfocused on studying higher education. As part of this, he writes about publishing practices in African universities, and how they are beingchanged by the pressures and incentives of a global research economy. Here he speaks with Jatinder Padda about how he came to his interestin African publishing. 

David, a belated welcome to ABC! We’re delighted you’ve joined the team, bringing your scholarly expertise on publishing practicesin higher education. You took up the role at the start of 2023. How are you finding it so far?

I have long admired ABC’s ground-breaking work, so it was an honour to become one of its three directors, along with Nii Parkes andExecutive Director Stephanie Kitchen. It has been a very steep learning curve for me. There have been a lot of changes at ABC, and ourchallenge is to build on all that the previous directors and team have ably achieved, whilst anticipating a future of rapidly changingtechnological needs.

As well as supporting African publishers, ABC distributes books through a whole range of international intermediaries, and through its newe-book platform. ABC needs to be able to access and provide a whole range of data (from book pricing to ONIX metadata) to these differentstakeholders. Nii’s and my job is to support and work with Stephanie as she steers ABC through these challenges.

How did you come across African Books Collective?

Living in Oxford, I was vaguely aware of the Collective and its connections to the city. It is only when I got interested in Africanacademic publishing that I began to realise all that had been achieved since the 1980s, both through ABC and grants to the Bellagiopublishing network. I have come to learn and appreciate the work of the pioneer African publishers.

What made you turn your ethnographic lens to higher education? And then why focus on African higher education?

As a doctoral student, I arrived in Uganda and rented a room with the university’s deputy librarian. I was immediately intrigued by Makerereand its academic coloniality. Its student halls of residence had been built to echo Oxbridge-style colleges.  It was an eliteuniversity model that was already out of place in Britain. Its legacy continues to shape student life today. It made me realise the powerfulrole that campus cultures play within universities. I spent a lot of time at the university bookshop and at Fountain Press, keen to read thevoices of Ugandan scholars that never reached Western journals and presses.

An area that comes up in your research is ‘predatory publishing’. Could you speak about that a little, explaining the term and whyit is important?

Yes, I don’t like the term at all. The term was coined by a US librarian called Jeffrey Beall who saw it as his personal mission to shameprofit-oriented commercial open access publishers. He began assembling a list of such publishers that became increasingly controversial. Itfrustrates me that the discourse continues to get deployed across the sector, by academics and policy makers alike.  It is used todenigrate and dehumanise a whole swathe of publishers and journals. Yes, there are some commercial publishers that do no real peer-review oreditorial control, but they could be seen as providing a subversive service – of sorts – rather than ‘preying’ on researchers. Some mayadopt ethically problematic practices. Many more are struggling in difficult conditions to build publishing capacity and credibility. It’s acrude label that doesn’t get at all the different issues involved in publishing. I would rather we didn’t use it.

The challenges publishers in Africa face are well documented, including global marginalisation of African/black voices, the lack of alevel playing field with their peer publishers in other continents, lagging technologies, lack of distribution across the continent,unsupportive governments, and sometimes donor policies in higher education. What needs to happen within Africa /outside Africa to allowparity of voice in global higher education spaces?

Your question cuts to the heart of the issue. The challenge for African publishers is to negotiate the deep epistemic injustices andmaterial inequalities built into colonial-era knowledge systems. In the future, African governments will have to work together to fund andsupport publishing and research infrastructures, and so university policies will be able to incentivise African-centred publishing. Thiswill be the best way to build regional and continental research and knowledge ecosystems. One day African journals will be fairlyrepresented in global citation indexes and have the same reputational prestige as their Northern counterparts. It will take time but thetables will turn.

Africa as a continent has the highest youth population globally. To what extent can the potential of these young people be realisedthrough publishing to share knowledge and new ideas? Or do you think knowledge production via other online avenues provides alternativeoptions?

I am probably biased, as I work in a university, but I have an absolute conviction that life-long learning is at the heart ofself-formation. Education is not just about skills and jobs. And knowledge is key to the journey.

Are you able to share any plans you have for ABC? Are there any aspects of work ABC publishers are doing that you would like to seereplicated, accepting of course that the publishers are autonomous with their own missions, markets, and challenges?

E-books and digital publishing offers huge opportunities for Africa’s publishers, as people change their reading habits. Social media allowsauthors to reach new audiences. We have to be quick to adapt.

Any final thoughts to share with our audience?

I enjoy learning about our African publishers and the amazing things they are doing. We are doing a special issue in ‘Logos’ on Africanpublishing , full of interviews with publishers across the continent. Do look out for it.